Month: January 2012

Categories
Triathlon

You don’t want that!

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been trying to lose weight for the upcoming season. Unfortunately things got a little bit out of control this past week when I got the stomach bug that my son managed to pick up from school. That’s a quick way to drop some serious pounds quick. Last Monday I posted that I weighed in at 162, this week the weight loss continued and I was 161. However, the last couple of days I was as low as 158. Clearly a large part of that was just being “empty” from being so sick, but also a bit dehydrated too. They always say to drink plenty of fluids, but that is easier said than done. Now that the stomach is feeling better hopefully I can continue the slower weight loss descent.

Fins

I bought some fins last week to try out in the pool and finally got to use them this morning. I was actually able to keep up when we did the kick sets today. Usually I do about half the distance everyone else is doing. Looking forward to using them more and building up my kicking strength. I should be able to hit the pool 3 times this week since the Prep will not be at the Y Wednesday morning.

CompuTrainer

I did have a few good rides on the CompuTrainer, but after being sick it was a tough weekend. I attempted to do Thursdays session on Saturday morning. That was ok and I made it through, but my heart rate was way higher than normal, topping out around 170-172. Usually for that ride it is 160-162. That left me pretty much wasted for the Sunday long ride, where I managed to eek out a mere 1 hour and 50 minutes. I’m hoping tomorrow will be a better morning. It is the last week of this 4 week build up and the hardest of the sessions I will have to do.

Also need to start picking up the running now. Great Bay half is 2 months away and I’m barely running 10 miles a week, if that!

Weight: 161

Categories
Cycling Technology

Something new on the CompuTrainer

This week my friend Mike decided we need to try out the Team Time Trial at Breakaway Computraining. He put a team of four together and we went over to check it out. They have a very nice facility with eight CompuTrainers setup facing two very large screens. Each team sets up on one side of the room or the other. The course that was selected is one that the local TriFury triathlon club uses outside, a little over 13 miles. One of the cool things was that you can actually draft off of your teammates. That is a skill that I have to work on, I either seemed to be too close or too far back. The winner is determined by the 3rd rider over the finish line. That encourages you to really work as a team.

I thought it was a lot of fun and definitely want to try it again. It is definitely a challenge to figure out how to ride with a group on the CompuTrainers. Looking back on it now I know I wasn’t working hard enough when I was leading. I felt like I could have done the entire ride at the Watts I was holding while leading. For me that means I needed to be working probably another 20% harder. I also wasn’t always in the best draft position, but the few times I got there I can see that it would be easy to recover and then take the lead and ride hard again. Especially with working with four riders. I heard the first groups say they were going to switch every 15 seconds. I think that would be way to fast for me until I had a few more rides under my belt. I’d prefer to pull hard for 2 or 3 minutes at a time and then rest for 6 to 9 drafting the other 3 riders. Then repeat. Do that four times, race is over.

If you have never done it, I highly recommend checking it out. Definitely a lot of fun!

The rest of the week

The rest of the week was pretty standard. Saw some good progress in my swimming and managed to get under 1:20 for some 100s on Monday. Didn’t manage that again the rest of the week, but at least there is hope.  I definitely need to work on my kicking and ordered some fins.

The CompuTrainer rides are getting harder as each week I keep building for another two weeks. I feel like my legs are definitely getting strong and I’m glad I included some weight lifting in the program this year.

Running hasn’t been much fun, it has been cold, windy and slushy. Not exactly my kind of running weather. I managed to get out for a 10K yesterday afternoon after riding for 2 hours on the trainer. Doing those bricks is definitely something I want to do more of this season.

The weight loss continues. Weighed in at 162 lbs this morning!

Categories
Uncategorized

First Long Ride

Bike

Did the first long ride of the year this weekend on the CompuTrainer. Two and a half hours of riding at about 80%. Felt pretty good throughout the ride, but have to remember to take more salt in during the ride. This year the rides won’t get up to the ridiculously long over four hours, but will probably have a few three hour rides.

The Tuesday and Thursday rides were pretty tough, the short intervals on Tuesday had me seeing stars. Six minutes never seemed so long! Then Thursday was twenty minute intervals, talk about mind games to keep from stopping! Made it through, only going to be harder this week.

Run

I had planned on going for a run after the ride, but the weather has been brutally cold and in the single digits here. Maybe next week if it can get above freezing I will follow the ride with a run. While my running has been ok, I need to run more than once a week. I’ll get out for another run Wednesday morning, but the cold keeps me from pushing as hard as I would like.

Swim

I think my swimming is progressing a little bit. I was able to get in the pool three times last week. On Wednesday I was fortunate that the Prep were not using the pool and I think that is the case again this week. The reason I think my swimming is progressing a little is that we were doing 100s on 1:20 this morning and I managed to keep up for the first set of 4. In the past I would have just had one continuous swim with no rest. Second set wasn’t so pretty and only had rest after first two.

As stated in my goals for the season I was planning on posting my weight each week here. So this morning at the weigh in I was 163.25 lbs. Looks like I’m trending in the right direction so far.

Categories
Triathlon

Happy New Year!

Well, it is time to start lining up he races and goals for this years triathlon season. A couple of the races are ones that I have done this past year. Some of them are completely new and I’m really looking forward to them.

Events

4-7-2012  – Great Bay Half-Marathon

6-16-2012 – Patriot Half-Ironman

7-14-2012 – Nubble Light Challenge

7-22-2012 – Volunteer at Ironman Lake Placid

8-18-2012 – Boston Light Swim (relay)

9-9-2012 – Call To Honor Triathlon

Goals

For this year I have set a pretty high bar for my half-ironman race. I would like to go under the 5 hour mark. Last year my half-marathon run was terrible and I feel I should be able to take at least 15 minutes off of that. The hard part will be getting the other 10 minutes out of the swim and bike. I feel like my biking should be stronger this year for two reasons. The first is I’m continuing to improve on the CompuTrainer through the winter. The second is that last year there was no tapering before the race because I was training for Ironman, so I should have fresher legs. I would also like to take a couple minutes off of my swim time and have started to really concentrate on my form to get under 30 minutes for the swim.

The other goal is to hold a 7:30 pace for the half-marathon. I’ve been pretty close a couple of times, but I think if I concentrate on more speed work and maybe a few track workouts thrown in I can get there.

The last goal is to finally get my weight down. I wasn’t able to manage that last year for Ironman and have renewed my effort to weigh in at 155 lbs for these races. That will be an 11 lb drop. I will see how I feel at 160 and evaluate that goal again at that time. So, at this time I weight 166.25 lbs. and I’ll be updating my weight on here as I did last year. I thought that would have motivated me to lose, but it didn’t. I think what will motivate me this year is the need to be lighter to reach my race goals.