Recent Posts
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Scenes from my bike ride
Love New Hampshire
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Observation: If I want to race at all this year, I should probably start swimming more than once a week.
Even if that one workout is a master’s/tri swim.
I was thinking about racing tomorrow, just a sprint. Not sure it could happen logistically, but also not sure my swim fitness is there.
Its funny, when I first started in triathlon a few years ago, my swimming was terrible and I just barely was able to do the yardage in the pool that was equal to my race. So many races I did I justified by saying “If I can do 450 straight in the pool on Thursday, I’ll race on Saturday”.
That’s just not good enough for me anymore. I’m happy that I’ve progressed beyond that. But now I feel like I’m not good enough to race even a sprint even though I’m sure I can make it through. I want to do better than just flail about for a half mile.
But to do that, I better get to the pool more than once a week.
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So how long can I go without a race before I can’t call myself a triathlete anymore?
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This is beautiful
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Tentative race schedule
I’ve finally worked out my schedule although I still need to register for all of these. I want to do more than one 70.3 this year, so the schedule is a little tight in the middle in order to fit it in.
6/16 - OLY, Ashland MA
7/14 - OLY, Mass State Tri
7/27 - Mascomaman 70.3
9/8 - Pumpkinman 70.3
Not sure about having just two weeks between the Mass State olympic and Mascomaman. I’ve been on my training schedule and think I can make it work. Mascomaman won’t be an A race, but will give me a good idea of what to work on so I can kill Pumpkinman. There’s plenty of time between those two races for recovery, a good 3 weeks of training and a nice 2 week taper.
Once I work out my training plan, I’ll post it. I’d love to get feedback and thoughts.
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A few things
1) I’ve been sick for 6 days now and have logged zero workouts since last Sunday. I’ve actually been handling the lack of workouts well. Usually I get pretty upset when my schedule is thrown off. I guess I’ve grown enough as an athlete to know my entire season isn’t lost because of this. Think I’m going to try to run a few miles later today which may reverse any recovery I may be having, but I gotta get out!
2) I was looking at race results from the 70.3 Texas race today and Timberman last year. Seeing the results for the fastest people in my age group, I can’t help but think that’s not entirely impossible for me. It’s obviously a crap load of work and time, but for the first time I feel confident about my ability to improve dramatically. May never be the fastest but I don’t need to stay at the back.
3) Someone please come to my house and throw out my Easter candy. I can’t bring myself to do it and I’m eating ALL OF IT.
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March goals follow-up
I’m home sick today which is a perfect time to work on my year-long race & training schedule. I tried sleeping but my mind is racing with thoughts of racing.
For March, my primary goal was to beat last March. My secondary goal was to do 2 IM’s worth of workouts. Here’s how it shook out:
Running:
Goal: 31 miles
Actual: 64Biking:
Goal: 149 miles
Actual: 226 milesSwimming:
Goal: 9 miles
Actual: 4.1 milesDid great on everything except swimming. I missed by double IM by 1350 yards in the pool. Those 4.1 miles represent only 3 or 4 visits to the pool. I need to work on dragging my ass to the pool when I don’t feel like it.
Next steps are to finally finalize a race schedule and to start logging workouts more consistently. I’m finding I’m not logging everything DailyMile. Plus DM only saves info for a year which makes it hard to go back in time to look stuff up. I think I’ll dig up my Training Peaks password and get that started.
What do you use for tracking workouts?
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Progress
I set out for a long run this morning the length of which are usually determined by my knees. They’ve been around 8 miles for the last few weeks. I feel like I can increase mileage, but haven’t had the cooperation I need.
Today I managed 10 miles. Knees were a little creaky, but nothing too bad. I just focused on form and that seemed to help a lot.
The last 10 miler I ran was last August - it took me 2 hours. Today is only took 1 hour 35 minutes.
I took a full 25 minutes off my time!
Even more important, towards the end I realized that I didn’t stop to walk at all. Ran the whole way!
Consistency & patience. It works.
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Kick some ass
(Source: mindy-fit, via be-inspired-to-be-fit)
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March goals check-in
Since we’re about 1/3 of the way through the month, I thought I’d check my stats to see if I’m on track.
My primary goal is to beat last March’s numbers. My secondary goal is to do 2 IM’s worth of workouts this month which I’m logging on my Ironman Challenge Facebook Group (which everyone should join join!!!!).
Running:
Goal: 31 miles
So far: 23 miles — yay!Biking:
Goal: 149 miles
So far: 87.5 miles - about 60% of total, yay!Swimming:
Goal 9 miles
So Far: 3.3 - On paceStrength:
Goal: 5 hours
So far: 2.5 hours - Yay!So far, so good. I hit a 70.3 on Saturday after the first hour of my long trainer ride. I should hit the 140.6 mark this weekend and have two full weeks left to do it all over again.
Swimming is a bit tough, last year I was swimming 3x a week, but I can only get there once or twice a week. Interestingly, I’ve only hit 9 miles in a month two times last year. Once in March and again in July, right before Timberman. That reflects the swimming problems I was having last year.
I’m glad I’m looking at these numbers. It makes me realize how far I’ve come and all hope isn’t lost. I might even be ready for a 70.3 in early June if I can scrape together the funds! I have my eyes on the former Mooseman race, it’s been sold & renamed.
