BigRedTri

Very Unimaginative

The same workout was up on the board from yesterday's master club ... with my mind being a bit foggy today I didn't want to think up some creative workout. I pretty much did the same thing as yesterday, but tacked on a few more yards and tacked on a bit faster pace

200 yds swim
200 yds kick
200 yds IM
200 yds pull
200 yds swim

100 yds kick
100 yds pull

5x100 on 1:30 hold 1:15

100 yds cool down

1,800 total yards

A Miling Monday

It was just a quick mile today. Had errands to run so I had to get in and out as quick as possible and the workout went something like this:

200 yds swim
200 yds kick
200 yds IM
200 yds pull
200 yds swim

5x100 on 1:45 negative split

150 yds cool down

1,650 total yards

TGIF

It wasn't too bad of a workout. I felt a little tight the entire time especially in my shoulders and neck. Just a good solid performance to cap off the week. Can't wait to start seeing my body transform now ....

Workout after the jump ...

]]> 200 yds swim
200 yds kick
200 yds pull

4x100 IM's on 1:45

3 x [
1 x 100 yds on 1:45m
2 x 50 yds :50s
]

200 yds pull
200 yds cool down

2,100 total yards

The comeback

Back at it? Well kind of. Just trying to get in some quality swims and here is how I rolled up this one ...

]]> Warm-up:
-300 Swim
-200 IM (Drill)
-100 Kick
-200 pull

Main Set:
-Repeat 3 Times:
+150 swim, faster each 50 - 10 second rest
+50 swim at race pace on :45s
+100 swim on 1:45m

200 Pull

4 x 50 on 1:00m, build into each 50

200 Cooldown

Back to the grind ...

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!!!

Recovered?

Well I don't know if I would go that far, but for the first time in over a month I am back at it. Man Feb was just an unreal month and I am glad it was only 28 days. I had mountain's of work, school work to do and was only getting 5 hours of sleep without working out at all. Needless to say I would have had to give up some of that sleep time to workout and 5 hours is about eh bare minimum I can survive on I found out.

]]> So I am basically back to square one again. Now don't get me wrong since I have been swimming and have only been out of it for a month it is far from starting over after having taken years off. You go through the similar soreness/endurance/strength cycle. Just happens to be on a smaller scale. So I am back to basics with this workout:

4 x 200yds on 4:00m
4 x 100yds on 2:00m
a 50 cooldown

1250 total yds

Far from spectacular, but you gotta start back somewhere. Nice to have that exhausted feeling again, this time being from working out versus work.

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.

Frustrated

I know what it takes to get into shape and keep improving upon it. I have done it for most of my life in the swimming arena. It is really becoming frustrating though to try and combine work with training because I have never really had to do that. Getting up at 4:45 am when you are getting called at all hours of the night for work is not a match made in heaven. Last night my wife was doing gymnastics in bed tossing and turning and I am pretty sure it was about 1 or 1:30 am when I finally got to sleep.

]]> So this morning I missed my spinning class, but got up to get a run in. Only 2 miles and with a broken computer I just have the data in the watch ... no pretty graphs for analysis (hopefully I will get my baby back soon). I will update this post with those stats later on, but the basics were a 2 mile run and both miles were under 10 mins. Kept a nice pace and really stretched it out on the last quarter mile. HR was somewhere in the 180's ... I can tell I have lost ground from a couple weeks ago, but I hope to get control of that and try to get some semblance of a routine back together. Over this next week I have work 12 hour shifts and so will be difficult to judge when I can get in workouts, but I am just going to grab them when I have free time and after Val hopefully I can get back to the usual routine.

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.

All Systems Go

Well for the past two days I have just been swamped and all of that I think just completely drained me. Literally I felt about at 70% energy ... just lethargic and weak ... I thought for sure I was going to be sick, but I woke on this morning feeling fresh and ready to take on the pool. I skipped monday 's swim due to work related issue's. Then yesterday I just could not move from bed ... weak as could be .. both physically and mentally!

]]> Which brought me to today. I don't know if I am back at full power, but enough so that I could go flutter around in the pool for a bit. My workout was pretty typical of what I have been doing:

200 yds :45s rest
100 yds :30s rest
4 x 50 yds : 20s rest

500 yds 1:00 rest

2 x [ 200 yds :45s rest
100 yds :30s rest
4 x 50 yds : 20s rest ]

50 yds cool down

I am not sure why I threw that 500 in there ... I guess to change things up since I do just about the same freaking workout each time I get in the water. I did however cut my resting times and that saved me some overall time in the workout as well as kept my HR from ever getting too comfortable. If I needed to recover it would be through swimming and not resting on the wall.

As far as my energy levels the last couple days ... I am not sure why I felt so tired ... I mean I know I am on a very tight sleep schedule right now, but I had been doing fine for two weeks. So I am going to dismiss my sleep from this. The other big thing to look at is nutrition. Am I getting the right amount of calories per day for my body to recover, or if I have the right amount of calories are they the right mix of protein, fat, carbs, fiber, etc. That is what I will be looking into this weekend.

A New Day

Oh man ... what a morning ... was just plain tough to get out of bed. It shouldn't have been, I did not have a huge run planned, just a 1 mile quick down and back type run. The day though has caught up with me and I guess my body had sensed that this morning.

]]> So my new laptop I have had for only 3 months has Blue Screened me to death, thanks Mr. Gates for that one. All my Polar info is on there, thankfully I have it backed up from last friday so I shouldn't have lost too much. The bad part is the machine is completely toasted ... no hope of fixing it without blasting it away. So there is that, plus the fact that work has increased about 10 fold because the client I am working with no is holiday dependent, so I have another reason to hate valentines day :) Searching for some good news, I had my first mile back under 9 minutes so that is positive, I did not make it to swimming today, but plan on getting a nice 5 am beating in spinning class and then cranking out a 3 mile run. Just hanging on through the rest of today first.

A Long Swim

So I was not feeling the best today, just had a nice solid headache going on .. still do. I spent maybe an hour comtemplating even going swimming, thinking, maybe Friday should be my day off :) I am glad I could not talk myself into taking the day off because I think after today swim and the way I felt in the water I can say with 95% certainty I just busted through to another level of fitness. I was only going to warmup 500 yards, but felt so good doing it I decided that at some points during my workouts I am going to have some long continuous swims. That is what you have to do in a triathlon, they don't give you a chance to warm-up, you just go at it.

]]> So that is what I ended up doing. Here is how I broke things down today

1000 yards
2 x [
  200 yds, 1:00m rest afterwards
  1 x 100 yds, :45s rest afterwards
  4 x 50 yds, :30s rest afterwards
]
50 yards warmdown

2,050 total yards

I was really cruising on most of these swims and just kept my HR level. My stroke is starting to feel more powerful and I am actually moving in the water now with it, versus struggling to go anywhere slowly. I am looking forward to the few days off of swimming and biking, but tomorrow's run will give me the 100% confidence in my body having stepped it up to the next level.

An Anomoly?

Wow ... the last two times I have gone running right after cycling it is such a struggle for that first mile to get in the groove ... a painful struggle, but this morning was a completely different story. I was preparing to struggle the entire time, but it never came. Not only that, but my mile times dropped, my HR also dropped about 5 - 10 beats per minute and this run felt effortless.

]]> When I finished and I looked down at my watch and saw the time I was just amazed. The foot pod I thought had maybe screwed up when measuring the distance, but I ended about the same place I always end ... maybe a few steps off at most. My breathing stayed controlled the entire run, which I really try to focus on, I have found through trial and error that when I really focus on my breathing I am controlling my HR. I can usually drop my HR by 5 - 10 beats per minute just by controlling my breathing. So that lines up with the drop I saw in my HR, but how did I go that much faster ... especially when I am at the end of the week when my body is pretty beaten up? Here is what the run looked like:

Overall
2.00 mile run
.30 mile walk - cooldown
avg hr: 160 bpm (max of 183 bpm)
avg speed: 5.3 mph (max of 7.2 mph)

1st mile - 10:13 min
avg hr: 166 (max of 176 bpm)
avg speed:5.6 mph

2nd mile - 9:32 mile
avg hr: 175 (max of 177 bpm)
avg speed:6.2 mph

The speed was not that far off, just the time and HR dropped significantly. I watched my HR most of the run and was just amazed at the ease of the run and how my HR wasn't jumping up at all. Maybe all this work is starting to pay some dividends. Or maybe that extra day off last Saturday was too much rest ... and took me till Thurs to get back into the comfort zone. No way to really tell if this was just a moment in the zone until the next combo on tues morning. I am definately looking forward to it now!!!

Saddle Sores

Yeah not yet, but I thought that would get some people's attention :) Man what a morning thus far. Got a VERY heavy quad burn going, did some acceleration work while increasing tension. It was pretty brutal, and I think I cried a little, but no one saw me so there is no proof! We did some climbing work as well, but it was more geared towards strength and speed ... high cadence, something I need a ton of work on.

]]> I felt really good leaving after class, usually when I walk down the stairs after class I feel like my legs could go at any moment and not be able to stop me and I would go tumbling down the stiars. This was not the case this morning .. I almost still had a hop in my step. I think it is due to a combination of things, 1. It is thursday which signifies the end of the hectic schedule I am keeping, 2. I am close to surviving another week of stacked workouts 3. possibly high on endorphins from the workout. Who knows, but I sure felt good leaving the Y this morning and actually looking forward to the run now.

The power stroke

It is nice when you get into a groove. I gues I was a bit amped due to working conditions today and so getting into the water I had a lot of energy/anger to burn off. Exercise for me is a great way to relieve the everyday battle's. So I felt like a speed boat in the water today and tried to keep my set's shorter, although quite similar to other workouts I have done (like last mon :) ). I just don't want to take the time to be that inventive, I just want to get in teh water and get it done and know that I am improving each time.

]]> I have decided that from now on I will do no less than 2,000 yards per workout. I am setting that as the minimum and how I break it all down, well that is up to me. Today it went like this:

500 yds warmup
2 x [
  200 yds, 1:00m rest afterwards
  2 x 100 yds, :45s rest afterwards
  4 x 50 yds, :30s rest afterwards
]
3 x 100 yards warmdown

2,000 total yards

that many yards just seem to be the easiest to get done in the short time period I have over lunch to get it done. I need to increase my speed and do longer sets to reduce rest if I plan on getting in more yards. That will all come with time. Right now though I gotta jet because I need to shower before class ... the joys of taking on more than you can handle!!! :)