week 5

yeoch. got tough all of a sudden. we blew off a bike ride earlier in the week because of resa's school, and made it up today with a bit of a mini tri. we rode about an hour and a half, ran about 6 miles and did our longest ever swim. it was a pretty relaxed swim, well, we were kinda tired so it was relaxed because we didn't have a lot of gas left. but i set a new all time distance record at 2300 meters. did it in 55ish minutes. which i think works out to about 1 hour and 30 minutes on the triathlon day. which would be a lot faster than i thought it would be about 5 months ago.

trying not to get too excited about that yet as i also have my first scary injury in about a year. i dislocated my right shoulder about a 10 years ago playing hockey. i managed to wrench it back in, but i missed a shift so i felt kinda lame about it. then over the next 3 years i had it come out about 7ish times. at the end it came out so easily i decided to get surgery to fix it. which worked and i have had no trouble with it for 7 years. until thursday. it feels like its coming out of the socket when i reach out with my right arm as i breathe to the left. so only once in a while, but gads its scary right now. i sure don't want more surgery. well, more weights and some thinking about what i am doing in the pool should help that.

in other news i have been reading some websites on sports nutrition and vitamins. wrote someone there and they referred me to one of the top triathletes in canada. this guy said to take your vitamins and also something else called beta-alanine. so i ordered that, it is supposed to keep your muscles from wearing down too much due to lactic acid burning. well... ???? i should be able to tell if that's helpful or not within a month. let you know how that all works out.

and this week should be one of the more difficult weeks we get this summer. probably the 4th most difficult. running a trail marathon on sunday. should absolutely destroy us, especially because rather than taper for it - we are going to be doing a pretty tough week anyway first.

also, we hope to get our wetsuits on saturday.


scores:

workouts: 9, about an 8 on results, but we did them all and felt hungry about it, so that alone bumps it to 9 on results. great if tiring week. :-)

mental: 7, really bummed about my shoulder. this would totally suck if i have a problem with that, i would be swimming one armed. nasty.

physically: 8, pretty tired but not all that bad. no other injuries, sore spots or problems. other than shoulder i am better off than last week.

ha ha ha finally

finally finally it gets angry.

sprinting up hills and sprinting on our run and the swim about doubled in distance. and thats the first 2 days. i didnt feel i could do any of them at the time... now i feel good :-))


good stuff!

Off week.

last week was an off week. didnt feel we needed it going into the week - but after a few easy days we started feeling better. so i guess we did. to make it an even easier week we did the level 1 workout week by mistake. so it really was an easy week.

being kinda a lame week i dont really have much to report on it. the weekend was pretty fun, we bumped the 1 hour bike and 1 hour run up a bit to about 4 hours biking and about 3 hours running, but otherwise nothing all that extreme.

in other news i need new equipment. everything is falling apart right now. the bikes need a lot of work, both our mountain bikes are pretty much un-rideable and sheila's broke the de-railer off completely. need bike gloves and some new bike shorts that everyone seems to use for the tri's. saw some people riding around with them yesterday - looked like something i could run in too. could use some new bikes too! :-)

also time to get our wetsuits. thinking to get something pretty thick with long sleeves so i dont freeze up in canada. my swimsuits are pretty worn out, need those and my goggles are so clouded up and scratched they could be replaced.

on the running i am thinking of getting a hat to run with, did that for the first time ever yesterday and i liked it. i hate running with glasses on, bouncing, fogging and irritating. but the hat was pretty good. shoes seem good. about 5 years ago i bought 6 pairs of running underwear, over the years i have thrown out about 3 of them, saturday another one ripped up and the last two have holes and are pretty thin, so i need those too.

this getting in shape thing is expensive!

back to the grindstone tomorrow...


weekly scores:

mentally i give me a 9. some lingering worries about maybe not getting in good enough shape by race day, but my confidence has gone up lately. the swimming is getting better. i think i swam a mile in 30 some minutes saturday. so thats for the good. i think my running is pretty poor and biking about average. so... more running over the next few months. :-)

physically a 9 too. a bit sore from the bonus workouts on the weekend. but seriously a one hour foundation bike ride is just too lame.

workouts i give me a strong 9. no blowups. ran ten yesterday if not really strong, then at least pretty good with 10.5 pace ( for us thats very good - with out super goal at 10min pace ) kinda blew off some of the stuff, did it all but didnt go all out a couple of days.


things seem pretty darn good right now. got some challenges coming up. trail marathon in 12 days.

first peak.

monday again...

this last week was a little harder than the first two. again we missed a day, and made it up with a triple on friday. waking up friday morning we felt totally caught up physically. so we rode our bikes around the city for a while and then went running. the run was a bit harder than we thought. did both hills and a track workout then off to softball practice and more sprinting in the outfield. after 3+ hours of hard running we went to the pool for our last workout of the day. that night we went out on the town and didnt get re-hydrated. kinda the opposite. woke up really thirsty. saturday was going to be bike day but we switched it around and made it swim and run day instead. the run was pretty rough. only went 5 miles but it was pretty hilly and at the end i was completely out of water. so. bad move on friday night for sure. later we went for another swim and got our first massage.

not really sure what to think about the massage. was a lot of stingy moments in there. she found a knot in the middle of my back on the left side which stung for about 20 minutes as she smashed it into the front of my body. also both calves had ginormous knots in them. otherwise nothing at all. which sorta surprised me. i figured every part of me would be messed up in some way. when i swim its upper back, arms and neck that usually hurt. running is knee and calves, biking is more upper legs and oddly neck again. also my right shoulder has dislocated about 8 times in my life and has had surgury to repair it. the left shoulder was shattered in a bike wreck in africa and slumps down 2-3 inches lower than my right. my left hand hangs a few inches lower than my right because of this and sitting in the aerobars is not symetrical. i am guessing this is the cause of the knot in the left side of my back, it was just under all the mashed up bones of my previously sound scapula. the resa is on a board of some county something or other and gets coupons for stuff in the county. one of them is this massage person who gives us each an hour a week and at a great price. so we are probably going to stick with it. saturday is her last day of the week and so we decided to start our massages last week. now with mondays off we have decided to make that massage day. so our second week is today. kinda looking forward to it.

sunday we went on our bike ride. i think the book called for a 1:10 long ride. but riding an hour on the weekend just seemed a bit too short so we bumped it up to seven and a half hours. was a great ride. we took the mountain bikes on this trail by the house. they have made great strides in lengthening and improving it over the last year. its now almost connected between canton and cleveland. there are a few small exit areas - one in downtown akron and another halfway between akron and canton. this second one looks like its almost ready. the downtown one could use some better signage as we got lost in the city for about 20 minutes. but otherwise a great time. you ride through swamps, hills, valleys, cities, forests. just about every type of scenery you would want. flowers, squirrels and homeless people. one group of three meth heads were trying to figure out the deep meaning of some of the graffity as we rode by. tons of people were on the trail, but it was pretty wide. the ones the scare me are the people showing off their kids learning to ride a new bike. "jerry, get out of their way. jerry. come on jerry. jerry! oh, i am so sorry you guys had to ride through the bushes to get out of jerry's way." people with dogs were never a problem, my guess is that dog owners like their dogs more than parents like their children. but the worst people were the fat people. the 400 pounders. again i have a theory on this. and it goes like this. the trail is for exercise, if only slowly walking. but still its exercise. and these large people feel that if they are going to exercise, if they are going to be that put upon by the world as to actually have to walk on a trail for 1/4 of a mile. well the world owes them back. and to get off of the CENTER of the trail is just too much to ask. cant everyone see they are exercising? why should they have to not only walk a quarter of a mile, sometimes UPHILL but to then have to dodge people on the trail? or worse, walk on the side of it??? ah, well. another slightly less annoying set of people are the ones that walk side by side or ride side by side. one on each side of the trail. we say "on your left" as we come up on them. about half the time the resa, as we pass through the middle of the group says "or, as you like, on your middle" but thats a bit funner as their expressions are worth a chuckle usually.

but most of the ride is just the three of us riding along. resa's sister sheila came up for the weekend.

so. done with week 3. week 4 is a taper or recovery or something. didnt feel like i would need it until saturday morning. then i really needed it. but recovered all day saturday after realizing how bad i did it friday and so the sunday ride was hard on my butt and especially hard on my shoulders as i dont have areobars on the mountain bike. but was otherwise a really fun ride.


weekly scores:

on the workouts i give me a 9. no blowups. saturday's five miles sucked more than it should have, but that was two hill days and a 2 hour sprint day in 2 days. so... duh. biking was great, swimming was also very good - did my first longer sprints. learning new stuff each trip to the pool and finally going often enough to be able to experiment. plan on getting some video wednesday. resa wants to add weights on the weekend so probably next week we will hit the weights after the pool.

mentally i give me a 9 also. feeling better about all three events. legs are getting stronger and the pounds are still dropping off. 195 now. goal weight is about 188ish. so its very much in sight now. would be a 10 mentally but i have a bit of a worry, not an important one. but my worry and shared by the resa is that the weekend events are going to crush our weekly workouts. like the next event is a trail marathon at the end of the month. but seriously there is no way - knowing this trail that we can finish in under 8 hours. good runners finish this focker in 5. we ran there 4 times last year and ran 13-17 each time. 3 times we couldnt finish. 2 from me and once from the resa. now we add 10 more miles on it. to get this done we would have to taper for 2 weeks and do nothing but sit. but we will probably have a full schedule right up to the day of the event. also the other 4ish events we have planned are going to be a bit too much maybe. but - like i said this is a not very important worry. probably we will show up, get just obliterated and have fun anyway running a 18 hour trail marathon :-)

and lastly physically i am about 7 to 8. feeling pretty spent. but very happy. glad today is off and this week is an easy one. wimp that i am.


:-)

week two ...

so week 2 is about the same as week one.

except we missed a day of working out because of resa's school. we had to make it up sometime and it was always in the back of our minds. i think from now on i wouldnt try to make up a missed day as it played havoc with the whole week. otherwise i swam for 3 sessions of 1 hour each time. i am getting much better at swimming, can go the whole mile without really trying to hard now. what a huge improvement that is. the only negatives on swimming are that i use a small floaty thing between my legs to help keep me vertical, i am going to have to dump that sometime, but i was kinda hoping the wet suit would do the same thing. need to go out and buy some wetsuits for us and find out i guess! also the ear ache is gone and so is most of the nasty nauesia. for the first few months i would get so sea sick bobbing around that i had to get some dramamine or a handful of advil before i swam. seems thats getting better too. :-)

the biking front has been pretty non-eventful, pretty lame actually. we have done plenty of hour long bike rides, but more 2-3-4 hour rides than one hour ones. so all these one hour rides are pretty short. usually we run a bit afterwards just to get the distance up a bit. we are thinking of going off the schedule on the bikes, doubling the distance or more on the weekends at least. sounds snobbish maybe, like we are looking down on the bike parts, but really maybe we just need to up the intensity a bunch. rather than go one hour at moderate like the book says we could go very hard or go 3 hours moderate.

running is still my worst moments now that i dont feel like drowning any more. saturday the book called for a one hour bike and a 40 minute run. something like that. so we rode the one hour, and it was pretty hard oddly. then we doubled up the run to 10 miles. about 7 miles in i was totally cashed out. the last three were pretty hard. not sure what it is, i just get completely out of breath. it doesnt make much sense to me why i could run 7 miles breathing normally, then slow down a bit and still be totally out of breath. might be some mental thing, but really, if i wasnt in need of the oxygen all that heavy breathing would just make me pass out. so thats my biggest concern right now. i think if i stop every 2 miles for a drink i could run a ton more. but we put water every 3 miles and that just killed me. very odd.

that night i went to bed feeling pretty hammered. the next morning, sunday we had to make up the last of the missed workouts and ended up doing all three events. biked first, went one hour on the fan bike at the gym. went great. got off feeling tired and had the balloon legs, but not as wrecked as i feared i would be from the previous day. then on to the treadmill. i set it to a higher pace than i would run outside and the plan was to just pound out 5 miles quick. i made it 3 miles before backing off a bit and managed the last 2 ok. i think that at the time it sucked, but i didnt have to workout the next day and could let it all go, rather than trying to hold some in. in fact typing this right now has giving me the idea that maybe thats the problem, that i am worried about the next day while working out the current day and when i get tired - especially on the running, that i am going to really hurt the next day and therefor i try to not get tired and tense up more. hmm... that might be it actually. thinking back over the last half year, my more difficult runs were always the first of 2 long runs. ( well, i had some serious hard runs solo too ) but mostly the first of the 2 were the hardest. something to think on! :-)

lastly the swim was a no-thinking 1800 yards. got in the pool, started swimming, moved the floaty each hundred yards down the pool. got out showered and watched the sparties make it to the final four again. good day!

monday is rest day and i feel great.


give myself an 8 on the last weeks workouts - nasty explosion on the long run

currently my mental is about 9 - some lingering worries, but very confident. also some fear of the next few events coming up with 4 triathlons in a weekend and the 200 mile bike with 1/2 marathon and the trail marathon. all of which should be harder than i can handle. but otherwise feel great about things.

physically i feel about a 9 also. very fresh so far. too fresh maybe. we are going to try to turn the next weekends 5 mile run into a 15-18ish run and bump the bike up a few hours too.