TD 4/27: Swim and climb (day off)

Whoa Nellie I fell off the diet wagon today. Kiko, that bastard, unpacked a chocolate box, and I was off to the m-f races.

Monday was a swim. I started to increase my continuous yardage to 200 yards. It's hard (after a while) to keep going, it seems like I enter oxygen debt, and I need to slow down, catch my breath, and relax. I also concentrated on rolling from side to side, and gliding on my side.

I'm still a slow mofo in the pool, but I'm shooting for comfort rather than speed. Ironic, because in running and cycling, I'm definitely shooting for speed over comfort. But swimming is so technique heavy that I need to dial in a good stroke before I speed things up.

Tuesday (today) was a climbing day. Did a bunch of 10b's and 10c's. Finger strength coming back. This is a good way to take a break from Triathlon training.

Tomorrow: if it rains, I'm swimming. If not, I'm going to to real speed work at the track, like a serious guy would. 

Monday:

• Breakfast: 2pcs toast, 1 coffee, 1 protein drink, 1 bowl grape nuts
• Lunch: 1 small bbq pizza. I can make better @ home.  + diet coke
• Dinner: Met Sarah and Philippe @ Wild Ginger. Ate lots. Had 2 beers. Felt great.

Tuesday:

• Breakfast: 2 pcs toast, 1 coffee
• Snack: 1 protein bar, 1 apple juice
• Lunch: 2.5 pcs pizza + diet coke
• Snacks: 4 pcs chocolate, 3 oranges
• Dinner: homemade swimming rama (yum!) with brown rice. 
• Dessert: the last ice cream sandwich :(

TD 4/25: weekend run and bike

4/24: 6.3 miles, 3 mi warmup at < 142 bpm, 3 mi tempo. Felt OK, slightly tired, and this was mentally tough. Speedwork day on Wed + weights -- apparently still not over it?

On tempo section I focused on quick, 'ballistic' leg movements and relaxing between those. This seemed to help pace and comfort level.

I also did resistance exercises after todays run:
2x15 single leg squat/lunges
2x20 standard dumbell squats w/60 lbs
2x20 good mornings w/60 lbs.

4/25: 38 mi North Loop Lk Washington w/Rob, 2:23.
Rob is an animal. In mtb shoes, on an old cannondale, Rob pushed me very hard up all of the hills. He's got a huge motor, and very strong legs. It was great to have him there, because I was tired from yesterday, and the hills hurt.
The highlight of this ride was the fact that I could hurt as bad as I did and still keep the pace up on the hills. Again I was focusing on each pedal turnover, not trying to make it smooth, but pushing through the pedal stroke as quickly as I could. Focusing on each pedal stroke was a really powerful way to push the discomfort out of my mind, I'm going to have to keep working on it.

Diet:
Saturday:

• breakfast: pancakes
• lunch: pizza
• dinner: stir fry + 1 glass wine

Sunday:

• breakfast: 3 pcs quiche
• lunch: avocado+tomato sandwich
• dinner: 2 pcs costco pizza :(
• dessert: 1 ice cream bar :( :( 

just kidding on the frowns. A mans gotta live, after all!

TD 4/23: swimming

1. 4x100 Free + 50 Breast warmup = 600
2. 10x50 Free + 25 Breast 'rest' = 750
3. 6x25 'form' with fistgloves. = 150

1500 yds total. Felt better than last time, form and strength are coming back. Need to increase the distance, esp the total distance spent swimming free, prior to the race.

Felt tired the rest of the day: long week. lots of late nights.

• Breakfast: 2 pcs toast, 2 bowls grape nuts, 1 protein drink.
• Snack: bagel + cream cheese
• Lunch: bowl chili + bagel
• Dinner: 1 small pizza (gourmet, healthy) and a beer.

TD 4/22: run (intervals)

I ended up running about 8 sub 1/4 mile sprint intervals spread out over 5.3 miles. I originally intended to do 4 1/2 mile intervals, but I'm really glad I did the shorter more intense intervals because I had forgotten what it feels like to be in that much pain. The thing that has changed since 20 years ago is the speed at which I feel the pain. I am SLOW.  Where before I could and did bust out 6 minute miles w/o training, now I'm gasping to do a 6 minute mile over less than 1/4 mile. Wow. Apparently, I'm getting older...oh well.

Resolution: I'm going to run these on the track, and mix intensities. Do some striding and some sprinting, and work my way up to 800s. Hurting this bad for any period of time can only be good for when I'm not sprinting but pushing my limits on a longer run.

Food:
Breakfast:2 pcs toast, 1 protein drink
Lunch: 1 Chicken Pesto Panini, 1 cookie, 1 bag chips, 1 diet coke.
Snack: 1 orange, 3 pcs chocolate
Dinner: brown rice stir fry (veggie), 6 mini egg rolls.
No Dessert! that brown rice is filling :)

TD 4/21

Got up this AM all stoked for a run, but it was raining. Almost went back to bed when I realized that I could actually swim instead of run.

Swim:
500 yd warmup
3x100 yard form intervals with fist gloves
3x100 yard standard swim, working on bilateral breathing
200 yds easy, swimming breastroke when my form went south.

I'm still coming up the curve on the swimming thing, as this is my 3rd swim this year. The bilateral breathing thing is coming along, but I start to thrash when I get tired and it's one vicious cycle from there on in. Also, when I'm going pretty hard, breathing every other stroke doesn't quite cut it.

Pool work is pretty important, and I've got to get my shit together before june 5. However, I'll be happy simply improving my form and comfort level and not worrying about speed until I can swim 500 yards with good, bilateral breathing, easy floating and gliding form.

Meals:
Breakfast: 2 slices toast, 1 coffee, 1 protein drink
Lunch: gnarly chinese food (free lunch Weds), diet coke
Snack: 2 oranges
Dinner: 2 cheese and mushroom quesadillas.
Dessert (!) 1 ice cream bar. My willpower was sapped by the hard day at the office :)

In other news Kiran's test results have come back and he's qualified to take the COGAT one more time. The first time they pulled him in on a day he wasn't supposed to take it and he wasn't prepared at all. This time he'll be ready, and his test taking has gotten better. He's so much like me, spacey, that is, and I worry that it's going to get in his way, like it has for me. But he's got a lot better support than I did, so maybe he'll do OK. I have to keep reminding myself that he's eight, not eighteen, and if I can turn things around, so can he.

TD 4/20

Ah, 4/20, the holiday of choice for the herb friendly crowd!
I drove and parked downtown, then spun on the fixie to the climbing gym, for the first climb in 6 months. Forearms were weak, but it was good to be back. I think that this is a good counter point to triathlon training, since it stresses other muscles and is a great mental break from endurance sports. I'm going to try to get in at least 1x/week! (travel permitting)

Diet today: not bad.

• Breakfast: 2 pcs toast, 1 protein shake
• Snack: 1 protein bar, 1 mojo bar
• Lunch: 1 bowl chili with cornbread
• Snack: 2 oranges
• Dinner: 1 pc fish, lentils, egg rolls
• Post Dinner: I was seriously contemplating an ice cream sandwich, but then forgot about it (really!) and ended up drinking some warm water instead. Wow. Senility trumps willpower, I guess. 

Training diary 4/19

I was thinking of doing a long, slow run, but then I decided to sleep in instead. These days I always choose sleep over a non key workout :) I did ride to and from work, for a total of 10-11 miles of 'easy' riding on the fixie. Easy for the most part except those hills, of course.

Breakfast: 2 pcs toast, 1 protein shake, 2 coffees

Lunch: 1 bowl chili, 1 pc cornbread, 1 diet coke

Snack: 1 mojo bar, 1 orange

1 green tea

Dinner: party: 3 glasses red wine, 1 pc salmon + 1 serving lentils, and 2 pcs of incredible dark chocolate cake. Damn that was good! worth the calories in pleasure!

4/11 - 4/18 log

OK, time to start logging stuff, now that I've committed to Issaquah as the first race.

4/11: 25.17 mi ride. Not feeling super motivated, but got on the bike anyways.
4/12: nothing
4/13: swimming, 45 minutes. Still working on bilateral breathing.
4/14: run 8.6 mi (North end loop). Pretty fast on a couple of the mile splits...still, I think I need more speedwork. Shorter distances?
4/15 - 4/17: out sick with cold. Thanks, kids!
4/18 : standard MI double loop, 28 mi. Was supposed to be an easy ride, but I felt great and just fucking crushed it. broke p.r. by 3 minutes : 1:20 down from 1:23, for an average of 19.5 mph. 21 mph for the first 10 miles. This was _after_ leg resistance exercises in the AM. Apparently those are working.

Nutrition: I went on a freaky cookie binge on Friday, and mentally added 5 lbs.  I think it's time to get serious about not eating whatever the f**k I want. As part of this I'm going to record my dietary intake every couple of days.

Today was decent:

breakfast: 2 coffees, protein shake, 4 pancakes.
ride: 1 powerbar goo, 1 bottle cytomax
lunch: avocado + tomato sandwich on protein bread
snack: apples + 2 cookies
dinner: 4 slices frozen pizza (boo! a sunday tradition, though)
dessert: 1 ice cream bar.

decent, I said. Not stellar.

Garmin back, but motivation not

My get up and go has got up and left. It always happens at this time of year:

1. Daylight savings has just taken away the 6:30 AM sunlight (although, it's back now. But it's been a month)
2. There are no races for me to 'scare myself into shape' with
3. The weather usually goes into a '1 day great, 4 days rain' pattern. After the previous 7 months of darkness and rain, this usually makes me want to curl up into a ball. 

After a very blah March, my motivation has been creeping back as the sun has started to rise earlier and earlier. Running without a headlamp is nice! And not having to layer up for 30-35 degree runs is nicer!

I have been getting out on some long(ish) runs, between 8-9 miles, where I'll warm up for 3 miles, run a couple miles hard, then a couple easy, then finish with a couple hard. My findings from the 'long, hard run' experiment:

1. running fast is hard, painful, uncomfortable.
2. running fast makes running slow much more enjoyable
3. in fact, what once felt fast feels very do-able right now.
4. too bad that my 'fast' (7:15 miles) is a lot of other people's 'slow' :) 

I'm going to keep up with the whole 'run as fast as I can' thing, just to see where it takes me. It's better (and seems more entertaining) than 'run slow for a marathon'. I think I'll start running short and fast and see how I an extend the distance -- at the very least this will be fodder for humorous tweets. The other thing  I was thinking about investigating is the whole plyometrics thing. I'm scared of hurting myself, but from what I've heard the P-90x plyometric program seems relatively safe, and it also looks fairly painful.

I've been trying to spend as much time as possible in the Hurt Locker, but honestly, I'm kind of a wuss about going there. I've been doing a whole lot of reading and I'm convinced that the more I can convince my body that being uncomfortable is not so bad, the faster I can go. Because I notice that on my last hill, I can move a lot faster than I can on the hill in the middle of the run. Mental? Definitely. My head has always been the most suspect part of my body, at least now I'm admitting it.

In other relieving news, my Garmin is back. Turned out the USB cable was crunked, a new one fixed all issues. I've started on my pet project of making a browser enabled run tracker, only to get foiled by a strange firefox issue. One day, when I dont have an assload of real work to get done, I'll figure that bug out.

The first race of the year is looking to be the Issaquah sprint triathlon, on June 5. It's mid April now, so its time to get swimming again. I haven't been swimming in so long that I'm basically starting from scratch. This is good! I get to work on bilateral breathing (again), maybe this time I'll get it down...I've actually been doing OK with the whole bilateral breathing thing since I started focusing on relaxing and gliding along on my weak side...the fistgloves, of course, are really helping me get my balance in the water while saving my shoulders.