Weekly Brush-Up No.3

Swimming: 1x (34min) 1500mts

Cycling: 0x

Running: 2x (97min) 9 millas

total: 2hrs 11min

Tough week overall, not because of training or hard workouts but because of sickness. I became very sick this week and could barely talk by Thursday. I had to take 5 days off from training and if you know me, you know I just hate missing workouts when I’m forced to. Anyways know and I better and it’s time get back to business and what the plan is. Because of this interruption and I’m now 7 weeks away from goal race and reality has hit in. I cannot expect of train like I will PB in this race. There is just not enough time. So after some thinking my goals are down to just finishing the event, avoid walking as much as I can and be part of history. I’m about 53 days away and I plan on not taking an off day for the remainder of the way. Main focus now is to race simulate as much as possible and just do race specific workouts, no garbage miles or km’s. So I better start working and thinking positive, I know I can do it, I just need a little bit of help from destiny and hold back the cramps just a little. I plan on taking this race just as a Sunday ride, the race will start on the run/walk part and If I got something left I should be all right.

Weekly Brush-up #2 (1-10-11/1-16-11)

Swimming: 2x = 4000mts 90min total

Managed to hit my key workout of 10 x 100mts @ threshold with :10 rest. Goal here was to stay under 1.50. I went a little over that with a 1.52 max and a 1.44 as my fastest. Overall I’m please with this as I am leaving my swimming behind to fit in more B & R.

Bike: 4x = 5hrs 42min 105km + trainer distance

Feeling pretty good here, consistency as wanted. Long ride on Sunday was supposed to be longer, cheated a bit there due to motivation factors and been SOLO. On the other side I went outdoors twice and managed a good quality session on the trainer. I also put lots of aero position practices which so far is so good.

Run: 4x = 2hrs 34min = 24km

Consistency present but I hope to upper that to 5x a week of running. My on course long run on Tuesday was a success given the fitness at the time. Now I’ll start incorporating some threshold work to my medium runs on Tuesdays to try and boost up as much as I can.

TOTALS: 9HRS 36MIN , Overall a good week with some good consistency.  Overall times and paces are glacial.

Weekly Brush-up No.1 (1-3-11/1-9-11)

Swimming: 2 sessions , I hit my target ms of 7 x 100ms @ uncomfortable pace on 10sec rest. I was happy to stay under 1.50 and even pr @ 1.36.

Cycling: 3 sessions, 2x trainer 1x outside. Managed to ride outside on 70.3 course, just shy of 2 hours but incorporated some threshold work that I hope will make a huge difference in 11 weeks.

Running: 4 sessions, Just continuing my emphasis here, consistency and gradual build up plan. Managed to run 1hr for the first time in 2 months, felt ok. Looking forward to improvements here.

Totals:

Swim
1:25
3,800 m

Run
2:20
22.5 km

Bike
3:20
52 km

Total
7:05
78.3 km

Notes: Nice first week overall, got a little bit of everything done, consistency was there, I showed signs of improvement here and there.

Pre season recap 2011 (5 weeks)

Well, after I got better from my dengue I decided to start up really slow and put frequency as the main factor. I started jogging 5 days a week for 20 minutes, just listening to my body and keeping heart rate in touch.  First week was a little shaky , I lacked any strength and I was well dizzy after many of my runs.  On the positive side was my swim, after loosing 37 days I was concerned, boy I was wrong! I‘m feeling sooo good in the water right now and just started adding some intensity to my sets.  I am giving away a little bit of swimming this year to focus on bike to run fitness to see if that alleviates the cramping issues during the last part of tri’s.

 

R-E-C-A-P

Run/// I ran 21 days out of 33 days (575minutes =9.5hrs) , I started with 20min and max @ 40min

Bike///8 bike sessions about 2x week starting @20min and max @45min total =395minutes = 6.5hrs)

Swim///7 swim session starting at 1000mts and max @ 2k total (9900mts)

So far everything is going smooth, the main issue is just to get to satisfactory run fitness.  At the moment running stills difficult on my body even though I tackle it with a great mental attitude. Going into my first A race which is just 11 weeks away by the way, I know I have to build my run, I’ve started to do just that by running at least 4x a week.  Next step is to add some threshold work and just gain the fitness, nothing fancy about speed.  For me I know that the key to a good performance on my age group is to be able to RUN or JOG the run part instead of walking the whole thing.  Pace is not even important I can still do good with 11min miles, but walking is a NO-NO. On to the cycling I now realize I made a big mistake down at Miami. There is no way I should be able to average close to 20mph in a 90k bike segment if my max for a 20k is a mere 21mph. I believe that on a more conservative bike pacing strategy I should be able to get off the bike feeling better and at least run for the first mile.Like I said before, I’ve decided to back off from swimming and paying the price, because the advantage I’ve gain over those in last races has disappear later way too quickly. I’ll be back reporting on my improvement in next couple of weeks when I should be re-testing in all 3 disciplines.