** Thanks so much to Kevin Saint Clair, father of CMSP students Jack and Wyatt, for taking to time to give me a few cycling tips and making some readjustments with my bike set-up. These tips proved to be invaluable and I know that once I get a more natural feel for cycling, they are going to help me to really improve my times. **

After a short tutorial session on cycling 101 with Kevin Saint Clair yesterday, I drove down to the tri course and went at it again yesterday. Probably not the best idea, since I should be “tapering” my training this week, but I had to get at least 2 full 15 mile sessions in on the bike before the race.  Kevin’s tips on posture and pedaling helped tremendously, but I still felt what probably was an unnecessary amount of pain/strain in the nack of my neck from looking forward.  I am getting better though, and was able to do a 2 mile run immediately afterwards without stopping.

All and all it was a tough day:

Wake up at 6:30am and drive to work.  Work from 9am-5:30pm. Drive to Kevin’s house for cycling assistance from 6:30-7:30.  Drive to the tri course.  Bike 15 miles and run 2 miles. Finish at 9:05pm.  Home by 9:30pm.  Long day… This is how most of my days have been this month, so training has been a challenge.

Goal for next time: Get more sleep and train in the morning.

Ultimately, it’s been a tough week.  For some strange reason I’ve had the same migraine headache for 5 days now.  It comes and goes but I feel it for about 70% of the day.  It’s realy affected my focus and endurance.  I feel as prepared as I can be for tomorrow, but I’m hoping that 1. my headache goes away and 2. I’m able to perform at a high level in the morning.

Race starts at 8:00am.

Yesterday:

Bike: 15 miles, 57 min. (full tri course, need to shave 10 minutes off that time!)

Run: 2miles, 19 minutes

This morning:

Run: 2 miles, 21 minutes

It’s going to be a long week.  I stopped by Fairmont Park today on my way home from work to put in some quality time with my newly borrowed bike.  It was tough.  I was pretty tired 1/4 of the way through the course.  I finished, but it was through complete and stubborn will - not through strength.

I tried to then run, but I was so wasted from biking that I barely made it 0.7 miles before turning around to go home.

It was a really poor day of training….

I was supposed to go swimming and running this weekend at the jersey shore, but it rained all weekend and I ended up being very unproductive due to the weather and no gym access.

So I think taking 3 days off was not a good thing.  I’m going to get some quality sleep this week in hopes of making at least a little bit of progress on the bike/run.

Bike: 15 miles, full sprint tri course, 1hr 4min. (VERY different from a stationary bike)

Run: 1.25 miles, 16 min (pathetic!)

I finally picked up my bike last night - great bike that I borrowed from a friend of the family (I’ll post pics soon).  It took a bit to get used to having shoes attached to my pedals, but I’m getting the hang of it.

I took it out to fairmont park today for a ride through the triathlon course.  It was definitely alot different than training on a stationary bike, particularly dealing with the wind and the hills.  The course is going to be a challenge and I look forward to getting getting my biking skills up to par this week.

Bike: 10 miles, 1 hour with a few breaks (approximately 1.25 distance of the full bike course)

Looking forward to doing some open ocean swimming tomorrow if the water is not too cold.

T-minus 2 weeks.  Yesterday was a great training day!

As I drove to the gym, I thought about my workout and set my goals for the day as I often do.  I decided that today was going to be my first Sprint Triathlon simulation. I had planned to be ready for this the week of the Triathlon (June 21), but I felt really good today, having had a great night’s sleep.  So I decided to make a go for it.

I didn’t want to focus on time and how long each leg took.  My main goal was to complete all required distances without stopping.  Unfortunately, I got to the gym at 1:15 and I had to be out of there by 3:30pm in order to get home, dressed, and to work on time.  So time was a little bit of a concern.

Nonetheless, I started at 1:18pm and finished at 3:01pm.  Not only was I successful, but I think I made pretty good time for my first try.

1:15pm: Arrive at LA Fitness gym

1:16pm: in the pool stretching and getting myself mentally prepared.

1:18pm: Start swimming. My main focus here was two-fold: maintain a slow, consistent pace and set “mini-goals” within my total distance in order to stay mentally alert and positive.  The first 20 or so laps were tough, but then I started to fall into a nice groove and probably could have swam for another 50 laps by the end. I lost count at some point, so I may have did an additional 2 or 4 laps…not sure.

1:43pm: 44 laps complete.  I then literally ran out of the pool and quickly toweled off, nearly giving some guy next to me a heart attack.  As everyone stared at me as if I had lost my mind, I ran into the locker room to change.

1:46pm: Changed, I ran out of the locker room and upstairs to the bikes.  I jumped on and started pedaling.  This was a challenge.  I made it to 10 miles in 30 minutes, but I had struggled the whole way.

2:15pm (aka 3:15pm): After 10 miles or so, I started to again find my groove and this started to become easier.  At this point during the bike leg, as I pondered how differently riding a real bike would be, I lost track of time and mistakenly thought it was 3:15, even though it was really 2:15.  I was pushing to finish the bike leg in 40 minutes, but was also watching the the clock to 1) keep track of my total time since I forgot my watch and 2) To make sure I wasn’t late for work.  So time suddenly became a factor as I pushed to 15 miles.  I guess I should have given it more thought, but at the time I was so focused, that I was only looking at the clock’s minute hand.

2:31pm: 15 miles complete. I cooled down for about 15 seconds.  I thought about taking my shoes off and putting them back on, but now I was potentially going to be late for work, so I opted to just start running.  I jumped off the bike and my legs nearly buckled.  I was definitely fatigued.  I really pushed to complete the bike in 40 minutes, but ended up finishing in 45 minutes flat.  This was still an improvement from my last time of 48 minutes.

2:32pm: Start running on the treadmill.  Started out at a pace of 5.  Then increased by 0.2 each quarter mile until miles 2.  I started to get really exhausted at a half mile into my run, so by 2 miles I was so tired!  I had to finish though.  And if I was going to see it through and reach my goal, I wanted to push myself as much as I could.  At mile 2, I bumped the pace to 6.8 and ran for a quarter mile.  At 2.25 miles, I decided to run for the finish line and pushed my pace all the way up to 8 (besides, it was now almost 4pm, so I thought).  I really tried to stay as focused and relaxed as possible, making sure not to fall.  I made it to 3 miles without pulling my pace back.

3:01pm: FINISHED!

Swim: 44 laps in 25 minutes

Bike: 15 miles in 45 minutes

Run: 3 miles in 28.75 minutes

Total time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Transitions: 5.25 minutes (not sure how realistic that is)

* mental note: It wasn’t until I got into my car that I realized that it was only 3PM, so I made it to work in plenty of time.  Losing track of time probably helped to push me a bit.

Looking at these times and thinking about how different the conditions will be in the real race (waves, wind, navigating around other people, transitions, etc.), I definitely going to have to improve on these times.  More to come on this.

Bike: 15 miles at 45 minutes - improvement of 4 minutes from last 15 mile workout

Swim: 25 laps at 18 minutes, non-stop

I started my workout today with the intention of hitting 40 laps swimming tonight.  I tried waking up early again, but I had to play (music) last night and didn’t get home until 12:30am, so waking up to swim, run, and/or bike at 6am and then work 8 and 1/2 hours was out of the question.  I was a little worried that I wouldn’t hit my goal since working out after work hasn’t been as productive as I’d hoped.

So I did what I could to pace myself.  I started out with 4x25m (or yards?) sets and eventually found my rhythm at 3x25 sets, with 1-2 minutes rest between each set.  I set my goal at 40 laps and actually surpassed to 46 laps!  Nice!

Swim: 46 x 25m/y at 48.5 minutes = a little over 1 min/lap.

Not great, but I’m not putting too much emphasis on time at this point - just distance and endurance.

I then banged out 10 miles on the bike at a pace that was a little slower than I’d hoped.

Bike: 10 miles at 35 minutes.

The issue here is pool length at LA fitness.  I’ve asked numerous employees at the gym about the official length of the pool and I get 25 meters half of the time and 25 yards the other half of the time… This makes it difficult to prepare for the correct distance:

Philadelphia Sprint Triathlon has a swim distance of 0.9K, which is a little longer than most swims for a sprint triathlon.

0.9 K = 900 meters = 984.25 yards

900 meters / 25 meters (possible length of pool) = 36 laps

985 yards / 25 yards (other possible length of pool) = ~40 laps

So regardless of what length the pool is, I’m shooting for 50 laps, non-stop by June 22.  That should be enough preparation to get through the swim portion of the race easily without using all of my energy.  Another thought is to shoot a little higher (60-70 laps), as half of the swim leg of the race needs to be swum up-stream.  We’ll see how rapidy I progress at this swimming thing.

Good day at the gym:

30 minutes on the bike (11.5 miles)

10 min. solid spinning warm-up, 5 min. stretch, 20 minute ride

16 laps in the pool (400 yards)

4 laps warm-up, 3 minutes gasping for air, 6 sets of 2 laps and 2 minutes of breathing really heavy…)