June 27, 2006
Where the hell have I been?
That is an awefully good question. I have been absolutely 150% swamped over the past few months with school, work, moving .... again. It has been a hellacious time and during this period let's just say my goals of hitting that first triathlon in June went way off the road. Over the summer I have pushed forward with school and it consumes about every waking free moment I have. I am currently on my 2 days summer break before the second session starts and I am just realizing what it feels like to take a deep breath for the first time in 6 weeks. I have another 6 weeks before I can breathe yet again and after that time I can definitely start to focus again on exercise and training. I don't know what triathlons lie ahead towards the end of the year and if none I will just put my focus on to the Spring and trying to compete then. For now the updates will probably be few and far between, but rest assured I have not forgotten about my goals, just temporarily placed them on hold. I will be back!!!
Posted by bigred at 10:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 09, 2006
Complete drainage ...
I don't know what is going on. I was ready to go this morning, even though it was 8 degrees out ... had my alarm set for 4:45am ... would hit spinning class and come back go for my run. I missed it all, apparently I even woke up to turn my alarm off, but I remember nothing. I don't know where my energy has gone. The first couple of weeks I seemed to react fine to the early mornings and I really wanted to try and get back in that routine. I can not seem to get a grasp of it though. Everytime I workout one day I miss everything the next. I don't know if I can get back to a normal routine until after Val because work is going to get in the way. I am OnCall tomorrow from 8:30am to 8:30 pm and then Monday night from 8:30pm to 8:30am which brings me into Val just dog tired. I will try my best to maintain, but I have missed cycling for two weeks now and swimming complete this week. I have only been running once and hopefully I can get out on Sat for a run and then get back in the pool on Monday since I have the daytime off.
Posted by bigred at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 02, 2006
Very disappointing
I missed out on another round of spinning and running this morning. This week has just been unreal with how it has completely messed up my schedule. I mean getting up at 4:45am to go to spinning and then go running requires you get at least for me about 4 -5 hours of sleep to function. My job however requires that we be oncall from time to time and I have run into it head first this week. Getting calls in the middle of the night, which disrupts the sleep, which in turn requires me to sleep in when I should be working out.
There really is no remedy to the situation, it is my job and I gotta take the good times with the bad. When teh bad outweigh the good, well then it is time to move on. With working out, a job that reuires more than 40 hours a week of my time and taking three night classes, I can't say I have much room to wiggle my workouts into other time slots. SO all I can be is disappointed I was not able to acheive my workout schedule for the week and try to get back in the routine every chance I get. Tomorrow I am heading to the pool again over my lunch hour, and hopefully I won't have anything that stops me from doing that.
Posted by bigred at 04:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 03, 2006
Happy New Year
Well it is 2006 and half the decade is in teh past now. Pretty interesting that times seems to move at the same pace, yet for some reason that pace is very rapid! Yesterday I finally joined the YMCA and they have a great lap swim schedule that will give me plenty of opportunities to fit in a few laps. Next week I will be getting back into the swing of things. I am going to be making up my schedule this week of when to swim, run and start lifting again. Sometime during this month I will be reviewing and hopefully purchasing my first road bike, until that time though I may be investigating a spinning class or two to start beating my legs into shape. I will probably ease into all of this just to make sure no injuries occur within the first weeks of training. I am also planning on recording my weight each week to keep track of weight gain/loss as I workout or more/less.
Posted by bigred at 01:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 05, 2005
The Winter Months
Where have I been ... very good question. Well the first weekend of November I went on hunting trip and spent the entire weekend walking around. Was geeting a ton of exercise I had been counting on, but then everything kind of fell apart after that.
Had planned on taking the next week off to recover from that hunting trip and then get back into a rythm and I just never did. Very disappointing and now with Christmas rapidly approaching I need to find something to do to get that fire built back up. I can promise you that waking up this morning and seeing that it is -2 outside doesn't do anything to fuel that fire :)
I am hoping to find a pool at the local YMCA or somewhere else that I can join and start getting back into the water during these winter months. I also need to locate a good beginner bike to purchase and start riding indoors. I am still planning on starting the competition in June ... just need to get moving as the New Year rapidly approaches!!!
Posted by bigred at 06:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 03, 2005
Map out your runs!
I know I know ... where the heck have I been! don't wory I am still running, I just haven't had time to enter all my runs or even upload them to my polar software. I have put in a few miles since the last update and even got turned around and ended up running more than I had planned just to get going back in the right direction. At any rate I just ran across this website and wow ... if you don't have a watch that tracks your distance and you have had to resort to driving your routes to figure out the mileage ... jump on over to MapMyRun.com ... you won't be disappointed! At this point it works well in IE (may have to reload the page once), but had some trouble in FireFox.
Posted by bigred at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 13, 2005
On the road
Well I am in the triangle getting some training and thought traveling might put a hamper on the old running workout, but with this foot pod you just gotta run and you are set. Doesn't matter where you go you just run til you hit the mileage ....
I have been getting my workouts completed even being on the road and I will be updating the results from those workouts once I get back home and can dump them off my watch. Today was a pretty rough day ... and my knees are starting to feel the pain of the beating they are taking. Keep on trucking and things have a way of working themselves out :)
Posted by bigred at 08:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 08, 2005
Head Cold, Head Hot!
Well I never expected to get sick, does anyone really expect to get sick? Just seems to happen at the worst time too, was just getting into a good routine. I knew when I woke up Tues morning with a sore throat I only had one out, wake up Wed morning without a sore throat or I was doomed .....
Yeah I was doomed, Tues night in class my nose just ran like a faucet turned on high. Wed kicked in the body ache's and runny nose (went through a roll of paper towels) and general congestion. I avoided the pool on Wed and as I write this tonight I am just stuffed up, but with the many head colds I have had before I am nearing the tail end of it. Missed my 2 mile run this morning, but I hope to hit the pool for a good mile plus workout and then a 3 mile run on Sat morning. It is never fun to be sick, let alone when it blocks your workouts!!! I guess I just gotta listen to what has been said before, what doesn't kill ya only makes you stronger!
Posted by bigred at 11:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 16, 2005
Field of Dreams
Well it has been a few days since I have recorded anything on this site and that is mostly due to the fact that I moved from Chattanooga, TN to Newton, IA over the weekend. It was not a bad drive, but I gave up all the routine's I had for myself there and still trying to get things on track here.
Although we won't be living in Newton permanently I do need to get some routines set up. I have yet to join the YMCA to get my pool time, although I did check out their lap swim times and it is far from fitting my schedule. They are basically early morning, lunch or right after work. I mean come on leave a lane or two open all day, they aren't even holding classes or anything, it is just open for the kids to play in ... I call BS :)
I did place an order yesterday to redeem some of my gift certificate money towards a Heart Rate Monitor. I did decide to go with the Polar S625X model. I think this is the most versitile and while I did not play with it in the store before hand, I figure I can always return it if it is not meeting my needs. That should get here tomorrow and I should have a bit of time to calibrate it and test out all it's features prior to starting my running training next week. I am looking forward to that, but I also have to start some time management as my MBA classes start back up next week as well. So much to do and so little time ....
Posted by bigred at 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2005
Is it Thursday already?
Wow this week has flown by and my workout schedule has been severly lacking. A final last night threw a wrench in the works and my workout routine ... what little routine there is into a funk.
Yet another thing I need to do is make sure I have always two weeks of my life scheduled in advance. No more reviewing for a test the day of and skipping workouts. I have to be able to be effective and effecient every waking hour of the day. I will need to plan out meals (got two new nutritional books to help out with that: Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes by Monique Ryan and Chris Carmichael's Fitness Book, by Chris Carmichael w/ Jim Rutberg). I need to plan out my class schedule and my homework load. I will also need to plan out obviously my workouts for each day and the time I expect to accomplish them ... early morning workouts may be making a comeback. Whatever it takes to get the job done and I just redeemed some of my gift certificates from Christmas (yeah I am little slow) in preparation to get some gear to aid in the training. I am still very motivated and over these next couple weeks the preparation is realyl going to pay off ... I can feel it!!!
Posted by bigred at 06:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 02, 2005
Where should I be?
It is always hard to start up something new without setting some goals to benchmark against. I usually don't like to set goals I can easily reach either. So being new to this scene and not knowing what to expect I decided to go out and do a little research.
So being a former sprinter why not start with doing some research in the sprint triathlons and why not start with one I did a few years back as a team member, The Pigman Triathlon. Looking over the 2005 results I wanted to find some times of what the top finishers were putting in ... For the swim, that is appox 550 yards and the top two guys held a 1:05 pace ... ok it is clear now that in my swimming I better start working in some heavy pace work, because the 1:20's I was holding yesterday with 40 seconds rest are just not going to cut it. They also finished the swim in under 6 minutes ... so not only do I have to sprint this, but I better get out in front of the pack too because getting caught behind could be detrimental.
Next is the bike and the same top two guys rode at 25.5 mph as their pace and finished the 15 mile bike in approximately 37 minutes. Never having trained on the bike before now at least I have a target of what to shoot for as far as timing and pace. This has to be juggled with the fact there there is still a run after the bike so I can't blow up on the bike. I will have to hold a touch back for the 5k run. Looking at the first place finishers time he had a pace of 5:30 per mile. WOW!!! I don't think in my entire life I have ever been able to run that fast. Even when I was a kid and nothing could hurt you I think maybe I was able to pull 6:15 per mile.
This is a good starting point. If I want to compete with the best I need to know what they are doing out there. I will be scouring the web for my results of more triathlons to understand what the top finishers are coming in at and pacing at during these races. It will help me set some milestones as I begin working in the other activities. Less than 2 weeks until I start adding running to my workouts and not quite sure on when biking will be added. I also need to work towards my strengths, so I need to step up my efforts in the pool and I also am going to need to incorporate some strength training exercises to prevent injury and build the right muscles up. This is definately getting more interesting the more and more I research it and think about it.
Posted by bigred at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 30, 2005
Heart Rate Monitors
I had this thought the other day that I have a decent idea of how to train in regards to swimming, but I have no idea how to train and monitor myself when biking or running. I have read a couple articles on heart rate monitors (hrm) and decided to explore further.
It seems like there are a few HRMs to choose from out there. Nike, Polar, Timex to name a few, so I decided to try to find some reviews and such on what the best HRM might be for a beginner. I figured Polar would be the way to go because it is what they specialize in and I was right. There is quite a load of information on the net about HRMs and from the research I did I think the best investment would be the Polar S625X. It is a bit on the high price side (suggested retial price is $369.95), but it has a number of features that would be very beneficial. First it covers all teh aspects of running including my speed and distance without using a GPS system. Secondly though it can kill two birds with one stone. I can purchase optional accessories to outfit my bike to work with this watch. So the watch has me covered on both fronts. It aslo comes with software to install on your computer and synch your watch to this software to analyze the data and chart out my strengths and weaknesses to better focus my training. I am thinking this is the watch for me to invest in, the last step though is to actually head to a sports store and try it on and see if it is comfortable and reall what I am looking for.
Posted by bigred at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
