Can't sleep...

Well, it's late here in Warsaw, IN and I can't sleep.  Not sure why, but I just laid in bed for an hour; my mind was racing and I could not seem to calm myself down.  So, why not talk about training and IM preparations?

I'm in the middle of the third week of my build phase and I can't wait for next week's recovery.  Tonight I had an excellent 10mi trail run at an easy pace as to avoid rolling an ankle on all the rocks/stumps/roots/holes on the trails in Winona Lake.  Regrettably, the trails did not possess the same level of concern for my ankle as I did; a wicked bad roll about 4mi in caused some serious concern for my abilities to even walk home.  But after a serious dose of HTFU, I finished the last 6mi.  I'm only joking, I winced and wimpered like a child for 5 minutes before getting the nerve to even rotate my ankle to see if it was ok.

I can really feel the bump in fitness and I haven't been hurting too much on any of my workouts, yet.  Last week I hit 14hrs of training and I'm shooting for 16+ this week (currently at just under 8).  I still have a good amount of sessions scheduled for this week including a steady-state bike during lunch and speed session at the track tomorrow evening.  Then Saturday afternoon will be a hammer-fest on the bike for 100mi then a short transition run followed by two runs on Sunday (13 AM, 9 PM).

Although, while my physical preparation has been on track, I am continually influenced mentally by outside factors that are difficult to avoid.  Nothing triathlon related, rather work, roommates, school, job search, moving, finances, travel plans, etc.  Usually I do a good job balancing all these aspects of my life to make sure they all stay upright.  However, it seems that if one seems to get a bit shaky, the rest start moving with it.  This time, it's the roommates.  Luckily, they move out on Saturday and I get the place to myself for two weeks!

In the thick of it

Ironman Wisconsin is only 37 days away!  It's all starting to feel very real now.  Last September when I signed up, it was on a whim because my friends were going to do it.  Now, just shy of a year later, I'm getting a bit anxious.  I'm not worried about finishing, that will happen.  The part that that makes me nervous is the mental aspect.  Specifically, can I keep myself in the correct mindset for 10 hours?  An hour in the water focusing on easy strokes, body rotation, 6-beat kicks, and a good catch.  Five and a half hours on the bike staying relaxed on the uphills, keeping a high cadence, calming my outraged ego as people pass me, gel/water/gatorade/heed/salt/powerbar every 20 minutes, and peeing on myself.  Then three and a half hours of running, counting down the aid stations, more water/gatorade/gel/salt/coke every mile, eyes up, swing the arms, high cadence, and more pee.  And that is only the list of things that I can control.  There are just as many environmental aspects that I will simply have to deal with: weather, other people, mechanical failures, etc.

Seems like a lot to pay attention to for hours at a time, right?  I find it very easy to sit at my desk and visualize that I will be strong enough to tell my self to HTFU and run.  But will I?  I will only be able to partially answer that question after a few race simulation workouts.  But even if I go balls to the wall on those workouts, they will take 6-7hrs max.  That still leaves another 3-4hrs of untested territory.

Enough with that, lets get to the nitty gritty of the training details.  I started my final build block last week and it lasts until August 20th.  12-13hrs this week and last, then 15-17hrs for the next two weeks which will include 5+ hr race simulations.

A very macroscopic view of the disciplines:
Swimming: 3x / week (1 OW session, 1 drills/stroke session, 1 speed session)
Biking: 2-3x / week (1 speed/strength session, 1 long ride, 1 easy ride)
Running: 5-6x / week (2-3 easy, 1 speed/strength session, 1 long)
Other: 1 cords session, 1 yoga session

Nutritionally, I am doing very well.  I have nearly cut out pasta from my diet by replacing it with brown rice, lentils, or quinoa.  Very limited amounts of meat and cereal, and a frozen fresh fruit & veggie smoothie is almost a daily occurrence.  Mounds of tuna, potatoes (idaho and sweet), black beans, corn tortillas, and stir fry veggies.  This morning I was down to 164 lbs before my run and hoping to be down to 160 in 37 days.

Shit's getting real...

Biggest Running Week Ever!

I am stoked!  I just had one of the biggest running weeks ever and my legs, although sore, were well prepared for the challenge.

I competed in the Great Lakes Relay with 9 other amazing friends, many of whom are former MSU Tri Club teammates.  The event is a wonderful and raw display of running in it's purest form.  A three-day relay from Oscoda, MI on Lake Huron to Empire, MI on Lake Michigan totaling 273.2 miles.  Most of the runs were along the Shore to Shore Trail and the scenery was drop-dead gorgeous.

A good friend, Eric, running the first leg of the weekend.

Great shot of Scott finishing his leg and Monica about to start hers.

This is a picture I found online.  The trails looked exactly like this, but without the fall colors and horses.

All team members are "required" to run at least 24 miles over the weekend.  But you don't actually turn in any forms and no one really checks all that closely because I don't think there are any prizes for being in first place, so who cares?  Anyway, I was slated to run 33mi, the most of anyone on the team: 13mi Friday, 12mi Saturday, then 8.5mi Sunday.  I learned my lesson last year when a few friends tried out-running eachother on the first day and then were trashed for Saturday and Sunday.  So, I figured I would add extra distance on Sunday if my legs were up for it, which they certainly were.

I stuck to my assigned legs on Friday and Saturday and they were wonderful.  Sunday was the hottest day, which would making running extra distance harder.  But both Lauren and Iris had shorter-distance legs early in the day, so I decided to run with them, adding an additional 7 miles to my already assigned 8.5 for the day.  It was tough, but I managed to run with Iris and Lauren and still run my legs at a respectable pace (7:40/mi for 6mi of sandy hills, then 6:18/mi for 2.3mi on road).  I emphasized that last run because it was miles 40-42 in three days and I was shocked at the pace I was able to hold.

I've taken the past two days off to take care of a bad case of Chiggers that the team got Saturday night by camping in a field (oops).  But they're significantly better now, so I will be returning to my workouts tonight with a 4mi run and an OW swim in this 108 degree heat index day.

Ironman Wisconsin is only 7.5 weeks away, so I have time to recover this week then do a serious 3 week build before I begin a 3 week taper.

Long Day

Today was a long training day 90 mile ride on the CompuTrainer and then a 10 mile run.  I had never bricked that long before (6hrs total).  I felt like Ethan Hawke being mentored by Denzel Washington...

You wanna go to jail or you wanna go home? Huh? 

Except, that while I was biking I watched today's stage of the tour and Denzel Washington looked more like Phillipe Gilbert and Ethan Hawke was one of the Schlecks (pick your favorite in the picture).

Good luck trying to catch me you ninnies!

This is probably too long of an analogy to get to what I'm trying to say.  Basically, my 90mi ride and 10mi run schooled me just like Denzel did to Ethan and PhilGil did to the Schlecks.

My 90mi ride took me 4:40:00 (19.3mph), which is quite a bit slower than I want to ride in IMWI.  My 10mi run was wicked hot (~90deg F) and I ran out of water/heed fast.  I had to stop 6 miles in to fill up at the gas station because I had already drank 24oz of fluid.  I definitely needed more access to water/GU/food/Coke on the run.  The good news is that I think I'm a lot closer to nailing my nutrition on the bike.  I was at about 200 Cal/hour for the first 4 hours (1 scoop heed and 1 GU each hour).  Then I had a 210 Calorie PowerBar Harvest Energy bar at 3:45:00, which sat very well.  I didn't have any GI issues on the bike or run.  I had nearly 80oz of pure water and 56oz of HEED total.  I could have probably used a bit more fluid.  

Final race before Ironman WI!

So, just a few short weeks ago I raced the Warsaw Optimist Sprint Triathlon.  A dinky little race in the bustling metropolis of Warsaw, IN (where I have spent quite a bit of time for my co-op rotations).  I raced in 2010 and came in 2nd overall so I got free entry to the 2011 race.  I was excited to race as I thought my main competition from last year was on vacation in Italy and wouldn't show up.  Apparently I was wrong :(

The race was a 400m swim, 13.1mi bike, 3.55mi run.  Not ideal distances for me.  But I held my own I think.

Here are the splits:

I didn't get a good swim warm-up in, so I felt slow for the entire thing.  The bike felt great!  And on the run, my legs were gone.  However, this is the exact same time I had last year and I have been training in a completely different way this year as I'm preparing for IMWI.

Here are some quick pictures from the race

.

...Long time no post

I briefly gave up on blogging, not because I didn't want to do it, I just felt really really lazy and there wasn't much blog-worthy to post about.  But, now that I'm back I'll give you a quick re-cap since my last post in April.

Triple T - May 20-22, 2011

Held in Portsmouth, OH in the Shawnee State Forest, this is a ballin' race, excellent venue, with epic volunteers, and is very well organized.  

This race is very unique in that it is 4 triathlons in one weekend and when the summed the distances all add up to IM distance.  Matt and I (The Cunning Stunts) were the 4th overall team and the 1st Junior Team (combined age 48 and under).  It was a great race and I am very disappointed because I don't think I will be able to do it next year. Here is how it all went down:

I'm not sure what race this picture is from, but I am guessing Friday evening, given the steep shadow.

After Triple T came a significant amount of recovery and the beginning of training for Ironman Wisconsin.  I've got a plan worked out with total training volume and I have been filling in specific workouts a week ahead of time.  So far it has been working out very well.

Next on the race schedule was Michigan Mountain Mayhem - June 11, 2011

Held way up North in the mitten in Boyne City, MI, this cycling event was more of a mental challenge than physical.  On second thought, I take that back, it was just as much of a physical challenge with over 10,000ft of climbing over 200k (129mi) while my feet were wet the whole time from the heavy rains that happened that morning. Here are the results for that ride:

It should be noted that the Net Time in the above results includes the time I spent at the 5 or 6 aid stops along the way.  My Garmin had my total riding time at 7:14:09 with an average speed of 17.4mph.  Still, either way you dice it, it was a long day.  I ended up riding that with another friend from MSU, Scott Przystas who was a great riding partner.  

An interesting part of the ride happened at mile 40, where we were riding up Schuss Mountain.  On our way up to one of the lodges, the course offered what they called an "Optional Super Hill".  Here is what the race website has to say about it: "This is when you will have a chance to tackle the optional "SUPER HILL" a 1/2 mile climb up the backside of Schuss Mountain. This climb is like no other and most that attempt it will fail.  The Super Hill starts out at 10% then quickly jumps to 15%-20% and just when you can't take it any longer you get a long stretch of 25%-29% before the final 10% finish."  Quite the wake-up call for the legs!  Both Scott and I made it up the optional hill and were the only two from the MSU group that made it up.  Most others did not even attempt it or did not make it up. Here are some pictures from that race:

Pictures from "The Wall" 

(The granddaddy of them all "THE WALL" -->  a 3 mile climb that starts slow and gradually gets steeper.  The final stretch starts at 12% and shoots straight to 18%, what a way to end a 3 mile climb.  This is the hardest climb of the day and comes near the end.)

Mile 124 of 130, at 12-18% grade

I tried to alternate between standing and sitting.  It worked out pretty well.

Finally I was able to see the top and relax a bit knowing that it would shortly end.

Next on the agenda is the Warsaw Optimist Sprint Triathlon.  I was 2nd overall last year and I'm hoping to improve this year!  We'll see how that goes.  I have had some pretty good workouts htis past week and I am looking forward to a 16mi progression run this weekend in Chicago (miles 1-4 @ 7:45/mi, 4-8 @ 7:30/mi, 8-12 @ 7:15/mi, 12-16 @ sub-7:00/mi).  Luckily, my wonderful girlfriend Anna will be biking with me for these 16 mi so I won't be able to slack off!  Then it's off to post-run deep-tissue massages thanks to a wonderful girlfriend and Groupon.

I was on sabbatical...

I apologize for the month long break between posts!  It seems that everything decided to happen in the past few weeks and I completely forgot about the blog.  So, here are a few updates on what has been going on:

USAT Collegiate Nationals - 2:07:35 (44th overall, 3rd on MSU Tri Team)

Swim felt good (21:30).  I was coming out of the water with people in waves 1 & 2 and I started in wave 3 (not sure if that says more about me or them)

Bike was strong (1:02:10).  It was quite the draft fest out there though.  Lots of penalties in the first few waves.

Run was a disaster (41:30).  Started out well...the first 2 miles I averaged 6:30/mi, but then I started getting a blister and it got hot and everything fell apart.  Walked 3 times through aid stations and almost puked with .5 mile left because of the record high temps that day in Alabama.

 Overall it was still a good result as the mens team was 5th and overall (men&women) the team was 4th.  We placed behind some stellar competition (Colorado University, West Point, and UC Berkeley).  Certainly not my best race ever as I should have run in the 38's and swam about 1' faster to put me around a 2:04.

Now that I have recovered from the heavy drinking and bus ride home after the race, I have started training for Triple T Ohio.  This will be my second year doing this race.  Last year I was 2nd in my Age Group and did the whole race solo.  This year, I will be on a team with a good buddy Matt Inch and we hope to place in the Team Category and win some $$.  We had a stellar run yesterday where we averaged 6:55/mi for 8mi and finished with a push for the last mile and held sub 6:00/mi.  Definitely a confidence builder.

Here is the general plan for Triple T:
Swim ~ 10,000 scy/week
Bike ~ 150 mi/week
Run ~ 35-40 mi/week

Lets hope I can hold to this when exams and school come into play in a few weeks!