The Past Few Weeks & Upcoming Training Plan

The past 3 weeks after Mooseman has been a great time to relax, spend a little more time with Jess and catch up with coworkers for a few drinks after work. The first week after Mooseman was great to really reflect on what I had just accomplished and how well I had really performed considering the weather. It took a few days for that to all sink in after I really analyzed the results and talked it over with my dad. I spend the first 5 days after the race doing absolutely nothing, which was a great reward, but looking back, I should have stretched a little each day. After 5 days of rest I decided to give swimming a try and only ended up swimming 550 yards and then on Saturday I decided to try a group ride with TriFury to only bike 24 miles at a 20 mph pace.

Well after a week of rest, 2 weeks post Mooseman, I was hoping to get back to a some what normal training level only to find that my muscles still had that deep fatigue feeling to them. So my totals for my second week post Mooseman consisted of swimming 4,638 yards and biking 59 miles with no running.

Three weeks after Mooseman and I finally feel like I'm back to normal with no deep fatigue in my legs muscles and I started to amp up my miles this week. The only problem I ran into was the crazy Thunderstorms we were having this week really hampered my efforts with the swimming so needless to say I was only able to get 2 swim days in this week. I still ended up taking 3 total rest days and working out 4 days, which wasn't to bad. My totals this week were 3,806 yards of swimming, 74 miles of biking and 5 miles of running.

So what's to come, you may ask? In the big scheme of things my main goal is to concentrate on training for my 1st Ironman Distance Race, Beach 2 Battleship in Wilmington, NC on November 1st. I've been using this Secret Book, that my friend Scott Dewire mentioned on his blog that he has just learned about. I was surprised to learn that he didn't have this book with as many books that he has on triathlons. The book was issued by Triathlete Magazine and authored by Matt Fitzgerald. The title of the book is Triathlete Magazine's Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide - Plans, Scheduling Tips and Workout Goals for Triathletes of All Levels. I found out about this book while skimming through their magazine before I even started training for my first half this year. Needless to say it was a great guide and it has training plans from Sprint Distance to Ironman Distance. For every distance of triathlon it also has different levels with a Level 1 plan being the easiest and Level 10 being the hardest. I ended up choosing a Level 4 for my First Half and I've now gone through and picked a plan for my First Ironman distance. After looking through the different levels of training to see where they all peak out for mileage I decided to go with a Level 6 training plan for B2B. I figured that with the base I have from the training for my half that I'll be able to train at a higher level.

This coming week I'll finally be looking to get on track for my Level 6 training plan for B2B since I only have about 18 weeks left.

Mooseman Half - June 8, 2008

Results: 5:07:32, 84th OA out of 723, 5th AG M25-29 out of 36

This was my first half ironman event and I was so nervous and anxious the week leading up to this event that I never fell into a deep sleep all week. The worst was that by the middle of the week they were predicting weather in the 90's for race day. Needless to say the temperature reached 89, which was 1 degree of from the the record high up there. But on the course the temperature easily felt like it was in the middle 90's if not hotter with the dew point and humidity. This was the race I had been training for since the middle of January and the only downside was that I wasn't able to get in my long ride until race day. Needless to say I'm pretty happy with my performance considering the heat conditions and the hilly course. I was predicting myself to finish in around 5 hours, but 7 minutes over my predicted time for the race conditions I'm not going to worry about.

1.2 Mile Swim: 31:32 (151th OA, 10th AG)

The water was 62 on race day which was very chilly considering I have a wetsuit that doesn't cover my arms. The swim start was an in water start about waist deep. I had predicted that I would finish the swim in 30 minutes to 34 minutes. I was in the first swim wave, which included the Elite/Pro's and males 34 and under. It was really awesome to be starting the swim wave with the Elites in the front. The swim was pretty uneventful and there isn't much to report here. The worst part of this was that going into T1 and to the Wetsuit Strippers was that my hamstrings tightened so bad that I couldn't move! I was screaming in pain it was that bad! I'm not sure if it had something to do with swimming in the cold water or not, but it was painful! I would say that swimming is my 2nd best discipline in triathlon, but isn't that great for me this year I think. Part of this could be that I gave up lifting weights about half way through my training plan, which I think affected my swim time.

56 Mile Bike: 2:50:28, 19.7 mph (148th OA, 10th AG)

I knew the bike leg was going to be my worst event of the day and was something I knew I was going to suffer through after the first loop. The course was a 28 mile, 2 loop course that had 1 very gnarly hill and a bunch of rolling hills. I was very surprised that I ended up being ahead of a few people in the final results considering this is not my strongest leg. The first 4 miles of this course had some very rough road conditions from the bad winter here in New England. In fact for must of the course there was very few areas to actually ride in the aero position. Another reason I didn't want to ride aero was due to the fact I didn't want to snap my aerobars again! The first loop of the bike went well. I brought with me on the bike leg, 1 bottle of Cytomax, 1 bottle of Monster Energy Drink mixed with Gatorade, 1 Bottle of Water and 5 Hammer Gels. Needless to say I ended up going thru my water, Cytomax and the 4 gels in the first loop and ended up picking up a few waters, 1 gel and gatorade endurance formula during the rest of the bike. I had predicted to finish the bike in 3 hours so I was happy to finish 10 minutes faster than what I had predicted considering the hills.

13.1 Mile Run: 1:40:10, (59th OA, 2nd AG)

Going into T2 I was expecting my legs to cramp up heading into the run and have that awkward feeling, but they didn't. I started out my first mile very strong and much better than I had expected, a 5:50 first mile! After I saw that on my watch, my quads started to cramp and gave up on me, so I started to walk. I hit the first aid station and picked up water and gatoride. By the time I got to the run, the heat was starting to get really bad! There were plenty of aid stations on this out and back run course, which was great! I ended up hitting all the aid stations for the sponges and the occasional hose down from the neighbors that lined the course. The run only had 1 real major hill with 1 small hill. I ended up having to walk both of these hills because my legs were absolutely dead. I can't even count how many times I ended up walking the run. It was awful because I have never ever walked a run in training, needless to say a race! I was hoping to run a much better half, but with the weather and the fact that I hadn't done a long bike ride prior to the half; pretty much killed my run leg even though I ended up having the 59th Overall fastest run time.

Post Race / Comments:

Keith Jordan, the race director, puts on one great event! They had plenty to do post race for athletes as far as food, drinks, etc. and from what my parents and Jess said there was plenty going on during the race. It was also great that Jess and my parents were up there to share with me my great accomplishment in my First Half Ironman.

Week 20 - Race Week

Coming into Week 20 was great after having one last week of quality training in Week 19 and I was really looking forward to the up coming Half this weekend. I was definitely worried about the heat they had predicted for the weekend, since it was suppose to be in the 90’s. With my bike in the shop until Wednesday of this week, I only went out for one, 5 mile ride to see if everything was working okay. The reason for the ride was to test my race day setup. I ended up renting a set of Zipp 606 wheels for Mooseman. It was a good thing I went out for this short ride because I ended up having to run back to the bike shop on Saturday morning as soon as they opened. I had allot of front end vibration at only 15 mph and anything above that I thought I was going to dump the bike. After they took a look at it, for some reason there was an 'extra piece' of metal in the headset. There's nothing like a little last minute stress going into the race weekend!

This past week was a great taper week with only 2 days of swimming and 1 day of running. I was supposed to bike 3 times this week, but because the bike was in the shop I wasn't able to get the training in.

Here are the totals for this week (not including the race):

• Swim - 3,168 yards
• Bike - 0 miles
• Run - 5.93 miles

Week 19 - Taper

Well this was my first week of my two week taper and it's great to be that much closer to race day. This week was pretty productive considering it was my taper week. The downside was that I have no biking miles this week since I was waiting for my replacement aerobars and then dropping the bike off at the shop to get them installed. The good thing is I'll have the bike back in time for the race and that is all that counts. I was also able to get in a long run of 10.2 miles, even though it was a littler slower (a 6:40 per mile pace) than my normal training pace (6:09 per mile pace), it was still great to get out for my 1st long run since my half marathon in April.

Here are tht totals for Week 19:

• Swim - 7,084 yards
• Bike - 0 miles
• Run - 21.46 miles