** 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

Ok.  It was a little foolish taking so much time off last week due to the weather.  I swam 44 laps in preparation for the swim leg today. I tried to not stop and put my feet down once.  This did not work.  I also tried to pick my head up and look forward from time to time to get used to maintaining my position in the river.  That was tough as well.  All in all, it was a sluggish swimming session.

I then changed and ran on the treadmill.  I started out strong, but began to tire after about 3/4 of a mile.  Missing so many days really put a dent in my endurance.  Wish I had 2 more weeks. Oh well.  He’s to hoping I finish in under 2 hours at least.

Swim: 44 laps, 28 min

Run: 2.25 miles 20 min

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!)

Been too busy these past 3 days…

Since Saturday my schedule has been devoid of training discipline:

Sunday: took the day off to cathc up on some work.

Monday: wen to the gym and swam 64 laps - longest distance yet.  6 sets of 10 laps each with 30-120 seconds rest in between each.

Tuesday: had to take off to get some work done

Tonight (Wednesday): Did not get home until 830pm.  It was raining and a bit cold, but I forced myself to run.  I set my gol to do 3 miles as fast as I could. I was pretty tired since I’ve been getting 4-5 hours of sleep per night this week due to some other responsibilities.  I made it 1.3 miles and turned around.  I barely made it home without stopping.

Run: 2.6 miles in 20.25 min.  (not too good, but had very little energy)

Gonna go to bed early to try to prepare for a better end to this week of training.

Pretty exhausted today.  Haven’t really felt well all day for some reason.  I pushed myself to run.  I made it about 1/2 mile and felt like turning around and walking home.  It took everything I had in me to keep going and not stop.  In the end, it wasn’t a complete failure, but today was definitely my weakest workout in a while.

Looking forward to feeling better tomorrow and banging out 50 laps at the pool and 3 miles on the treadmill!

Run: ~2 miles at 15.75 min.

Today was a great day!

Preface: I had to play last night at Chris’ Jazz Cafe in Downtown Philadelphia last night and did not get home until about 1:30am.  I then had to get up early to teach this morning at Temple University, so I didn’t think my training would be very productive today.  Well, I took a nice long nap this afternoon (very rare) and hit the pool first.

I started out with a warm-up.  My goal was to repeat my routine from last swim training session and bang out 12 sets of 4 laps, taking necessary breaks between each set. I got to the gym at 7:10, so I had 50 minutes to achieve my goal before the gym closed.  I was lucky enough to get an open lane immediately upon getting to the pool, so I jumped in and stretched a bit and started my warm-up.

Now, initially my warm-up was intended to be 4 laps, but after reaching lap 4, I felt pretty good and decided to make it 10 laps.  At around lap #8, I started thinking about my last milestone of 9 laps straight and decided to try to beat it by 3 laps for a total of 12 laps without stopping.  I thought that that would be a nice improvement.

So I swam 12 laps.  It was on this last lap that I started to become very focused mentally and started daydreaming about making 20 laps non-stop.  I felt good and I was starting to find a rhythm, so I just kept swimming.  I figured that I had made it this far so why not try to push myself to make 20 laps without any rests.  That would be half the distance of what I need to accomplish for the race.

I remained relaxed and focused on my form.

Now somewhere between laps 12 and 20 I starting think about how I barely make 9 laps non-stop (last week) and swimming 20 laps non-stop comfortably was such a huge improvement.  I starting to find this rhythm in my swim that I had not experienced as of yet.  I was relaxed in my breathing and not only was I really focused on maintaining my stroke and technique, but I had fallen into a really deep state of thought. Today I felt really strong for some reason.

So I swam 20 laps, but around lap #16, I started to daydream about making 24 laps.  And so that’s how it went.  I really focused on making small strides in my swim.  I knew if I had started out with the intention of doing 40 laps without stopping, I would never make it, essentially psyching myself out before ever giving myself a chance.  My accomplishments were 90% mental today.

For every mini-goal I set for myself on the fly as I was swimming my “warm-up”, I pushed myself further. At lap #24, I felt strong and focused, so I pushed my goal to 30 laps non-stop.  At lap #28, I pushed my goal to 32 laps.  Then 36 laps.  At this point I almost faultered as I was finally starting to get tired, feeling the effects in my technique which started to get sloppy.  I began to tell myself “2 more laps and I’m done”, but I regained my composure, maintained mental focus on my technique and set my new goal to 40 laps. At lap #40, I had a little bit left in me but had reached my distance goal I had anticipated reaching 3 weeks from now.

And so I stopped swimming at 40 laps.  40 LAPS!  NONSTOP!  SUCCESS!  Success 3 weeks ahead of schedule.  This completely changes everything.  I was a little worried about being able to make the swim distance.  That is such an amazing improvement - about 350% since May 28th.  I am so surprised.

My new goal: 70 laps, non-stop by June 25.  That will be 1 mile of swimming.  Wish me luck!

I then drove home (30 minutes) and ran 5 miles, beating my most recent distance of 4 miles from 4 days ago and my last time of 4 miles in 41 minutes.  My new running goal is 3 miles in 20 minutes.

Swim: 40 laps, non-stop in 26.75 min.

Run: 5 miles in 48.5 min.

So I had made arrangements to take a swim at my girlfriend’s gym yesterday, but work got in the way.  Balancing my training with work will probably be the biggest challenge as I work towards June.  So, I took the night off since the sidewalks were pretty much all ice from sunday’s snowstorm.

Tonight I took another run, as I don’t have a pool or a bike yet.  The run will probably be the hardest part of the training for me.

Time: 8:30pm
Temperature: 28 degrees - cold!!
Conditions: Fair
Location: Mayfair, Philadelphia
Duration: 9:16 minutes
Distance: 1.65 miles according to my mapmyride iPhone app…