Bike 2/5

In the afternoon I took advantage of sunbreaks and no rain to do 25.8 miles in about 1:55. I used my Garmin Forerunner to measure the distance, and forgot to stop it for traffic lights and bathroom breaks. Time was 2:00:30 so I lopped off 5 mins as an estimate.

I rode for 20 miles along the flat SRT, an out and back that left me at the bottom of 520 and Leary. From there it was the hilly 520 and Old Redmond Road climb, along 132nd Ave, back to my house.

Good ride, but I had to adjust the rear fender a few times. I'll see if I can figure something out, but overall, I am happy with their performance given they are clip on.

Run 2/5

I met my friend KO, who is on my volleyball team, and we ran for 49 minutes. KO lives in the Madison Valley area of Capital Hill (a Seattle neighborhood), so we ran from there up to Volunteer Park and back. According to TOPO, the total distance was almost exactly 4 miles. There were some nice hills, and we kept it easy.




You can see a high correlation between the hills and my heart rate!

Rest 2/4

I'm still a bit shocked from the news at work, so my plan is to get some good bike rides in over the weekend, and run tomorrow as well.

Naturally, I've already thought about how relocation will affect my IM plans. Bottom line is: very likely. Time will run short on the weekends, and I'll have some extra travel between now and April. I can only see maintaining a skeleton training schedule during the move, so this could be very disruptive.

Plus, now I'll need to fly back for the event itself, and get a rental car for my time back in the Pacific Northwest. At a minimum that will add $500 to the total cost...

I suppose right now I don't need to worry about it too much. Sometime in April or May I'll see where I am and make the call then. Florida does have an ironman, but I thought it was going away. Plus, the swim is in the ocean, and that means salt water, which chafes skin and tastes terrible. There is an iron distance event in nearby Clermont (Great Floridian) - I might be interested in the half-iron distance if IMCdA just isn't possible for me.

Well, I read tri message boards and see people having to withdraw for this very reason all the time. I still have time so it might still work out.

Rest 2/3

This is one of those days that was just unplanned - read all about it here.

I planned to do a short, easy ~30 minute run during lunch, with my friend CB from work, but a meeting we had totally pre-empted that. In the evening I planned to do an hour on the bike trainer, but our 2nd line manager offered to take us out to eat/drink, so a bunch of us went and I stayed until the last four of us left. I had a little to drink and am not altogether ready for the bike trainer. ;)

I was supposed to go to Whistler this weekend, but I think I'll skip it. The time I don't have to drive can be spent biking, and the rest of the time be spent getting stuff in order and doing some research.

Run 2/2

It was another unseasonably beautiful day: low 60's and sunny. So I drove over to the Redmond Watershed at lunch and did a 5 mile trail run in about 53 minutes. I kept my heart rate around 70% most of the time, only getting above it on hills, and I slowed down in an effort to keep my heart rate as low as possible.

Strength 2/1

I went to the gym for the first time in weeks - after the mysterious shoulder pain I developed while visiting my parents, I decided to take extra time off. That time passed so it was time to get back to some general strength training.

My new plan is:

• angled leg press
  
• leg extension
  
• leg curl
  
• calf raise
  
• straight bar arm curl
  
• chest press
  
• lat pulldown
  
• tricep pulldown
  

I kept the weights low and tried for 2 sets of 15 reps. I think this routine is minimal but useful, and fast as it takes about 45 minutes to work through it.

So I did the workout, and tomorrow I'll see how sore I am!

IM and the Median

I told my friend John in NY about my ironman plan. John is a runner and we were also talking about speed work, and I mentioned that I'm really not planning on any at all. This is largely because IM is an endurance event, and I'm not kidding myself - I'm not going to be fast enough for speedwork to matter.

As an example, at Ironman Wisconsin, a 4:00:00 marathon was in the 7th percentile - turning in a 4 hour marathon meant you were faster (on the run) than 93% of the other participants. Whereas, at a standalone marathon, 4 hours isn't anything special. Hey, I would be very proud of that time, but overall, as far as competitive running, it isn't really that fast. We see that ironman is really about slowing down the least. And of course, the pros and top age groupers are just from another planet altogether!

So I got to wondering what the median times were at IMCdA last year. There were 1789 participants, so I looked to see how #895 did, ranked by times. The results:

• swim - 1:15:34
  
• bike - 6:16:21
  
• run - 5:06:37
  
• overall - 12:59:06
  

I didn't bother to dig up transition times and find the median there. ;)

At IMCdA, the 235th fastest marathon was 4:00:02, putting it into the 13th percentile.

I love looking at various stats - in some ways it reminds me that thousands of normal people train for and finish an ironman.

Swim 1/31

Hit the pool and for the first time, I wore my watch in. Why didn't I think of this before? I'm too lazy to put on my contacts for a pool workout, and thus I never really had a good sense of how fast I was.

I warmed up with 5x100 wearing fist gloves. Each 100 took between 2:15 and 2:20, and I took 19-20 strokes per length.

Then, I did 5x100 without the fist gloves. Each 100 took between 1:55 and 2:00, and I took 16-17 strokes per length. That works out to be about 5 seconds faster per length without fist gloves.

This sounds nice and all, but for this 1000 yards, I was pulling as hard as I could through the stroke. I am unlikely to do that during the entire ironman swim.

So I did my last 500 yards (2x200, 1x100) just swimming relaxed, not pulling particularly hard through the stroke. My number of stokes increased to 18-19 per length, and time for the 200 yards averaged around 4:30.

Some quick math shows ~9 mins for 400 yards means ~90 mins for 4000 yards, so I am in the ballpark for correct pace. A calculator shows for the 2.4 miles (4224 yards) I would finish around 95 minutes at that pace.

I'll keep doing the TI drills and using the fist gloves, as they promote efficiency.

Total time: 44 minutes, including rest time between each set.

Week 4

Jan 24 - Jan 30

	Time
Swim	0:45
Bike	4:55
Run	1:00
Strength	0:00
Weight	141.8 lb
Body Fat	16.7%

Trending the right direction as far as biking is concerned.

Cumulative Training

	Time
Swim	6:30
Bike	25:27
Run	12:30

Bike 1/30

I rode from my house to the SRT, and headed towards Seattle. I had vague notions of seeing if the bald eagle were still there (I packed my camera this time), but I wasn't able to go that far in the time I had available.

I wound up riding 20.7 miles in 1:30. I fiddled with the sensor magnet but wasn't able to get the computer to read. Instead, I wore my Garmin Forerunner 201 instead. Runners are more interested in their pace (minutes per mile) while cyclists are interested in speed (miles per hour). Since the Forerunner is mainly a running tool, it reports pace. I tried to stick about 4 min/mile, as that is 15 mph. One this is for certain - I'm not used to seeing paces that low!

The clip on fenders worked pretty well, although somewere along the 2/3rds mark I had to stop and readjust them as the rear fender was rubbing against my wheel. Still, they are easy-on easy-off and did keep a lot of the mud and crud from landing on my back.

During the ride I thought of all the bike gear I could use - an few extra long sleeve jerseys, bike pants, a bike computer, perhaps another ergonomic saddle to test... that's a lot! I think I'll be frugal and wait for my REI dividend - I should be getting around $200 this year, which should go a long ways towards this stuff. Besides, waiting and spending the dividend on things I need will help prevent me from blowing it on other gizmos. ;)