Introduce the Wetsuit

One mile swim today in the open water. And by open water I mean the FRIGID open water.  Many thanks to Mark of Team MMS who opened his lake house for us to go out and get some open water time in.  After this, I feel very good about the swim portion of Rockeman Florida!

Time to Refocus

What should have been a couple of the strongest training weeks have dwindled into almost nothing. Sickness and home repairs knocked training down to the bottom of my priority list. Not good when my first 70.3 is only 31 days away. Here is my plan to get started again: Tomorrow, I'm running at 5:00am. I'm going to run for 45 minutes, then swim 2000 yards at 6:00am. I'm rested, so I should be able to do both of those. Saturday will be a two hour bike ride with a 20 minute brick run. Sunday is an open water swim with Team MMS. Going forward I have to focus on improving my running, and maintaining my bike and swim abilities. I also have to do a brick run after every bike ride. Even with the setbacks, I'm still confident in finishing. It is going to be a great day, and I'll wear my medal with pride!

Where Does The Time Go?

Wow, it has been over a month since I posted... oh well, I can't go back and change that. Training is going pretty good. Swimming is still great, biking is still good, and running... well, I can't drown on the run. I've been able to swim the 1.2 miles with relative ease, and a couple of weeks ago I got in a 56* mile ride on the bike. Running is coming along OK. Two weeks ago I set a PR in the 5K at 31:46 - over two minutes faster than my previous PR! Now, I just need to work on my brick runs and get my distance up. There is only 6 weeks until the Rocketman Florida 70.3. Just as I did with the blog today, I'm sure I'll be saying, "Where did the time go?!?," but I'm looking forward to the race. I had to take the last week off of training due to illness. And by illness, I really mean "the crud" that comes from allergy and sinus trouble. However, I'm back to 100% now, and should be able to bounce back into training. Until next time! *56 miles was really 55.5, with the last .5 walking due to busting BOTH tubes and only having one spare. Lesson learned: I will have two or three spares with me on race day. However, if I go through 3 spares, I might just give up.

My Next 13.1

Here is the last 13.1 miles of the Rocketman Tri.

Make sure you have the Google Earth plugin for your browser.


       
 

Aero Bars

I love 'em!

The Grind

Yeah, I'm a bad blogger.  You can go ahead and get over that.  The good news, however, is that I'm pretty close to being on track with my training.  The swimming is going great, the bike is OK, and the run is behind plan but I'll be back on within a couple of weeks.  I'm in a daily grind with it, but I'm enjoying the training because I can already see the benefits!

The details:

Swimming - Still not a problem for me.  Once the weather warms up I plan on hitting some open water swims, but the pool is being good to me.  Last night I swam 2000 yards in 40 minutes.  Without a wetsuit.  Yes, that was a new PR for me!

Biking - I'm getting stronger on the hills and my cadence on the flats is improving.  I still need to work on my distance, but I'm well on track to peak a couple of weeks before the race and have time to taper.  A friend has loaned me a pair of clip on aero bars and I'm trying them out.  I've only ridden with them once, but I feel good that I'll get comfortable with them.  I think. 

Running - This is the area I need the most work in, but my last two runs have been good.  I can settle into an 11 min/mile pace and feel very comfortable on my runs, so I think I'm going to back my goal down from the original 10 min/mile pace and be thrilled with an 11 min/mile pace on race day. 

My Weight - Many thanks to Justin, I'm back on the diet train.  He and I are in a contest to see who can lose the most weight by March 15.  I offered to make the contest percentage of total weight, but he insisted on raw pounds.  I weighed myself on January 13 and frowned when I saw 257.  This morning, I weighed in at 241.  Still a long way to go, but it is movement in the right direction.  I rarely eat bread, or pasta, drink mostly water with a Coke Zero every once in a while, and stay away from anything with a high sugar content.  Think South Beach Diet or Atkins. 

I'm only 95 days from the race, and I can feel the excitement building.  It is going to be a great day, and I'll get to add another medal into the case!

Training Schedule

I've had a few people ask about my training schedule.  Here goes the ultimate action of accountability - posting it on the internet for all to see.

Jerry's Rocketman Florida Training Schedule

As of right now, I've completed the calendar to Feb 3.  I'll add more in the coming days.

Now, off to go search for leftover Christmas cookies...

Happy New Year!

     2012 was a great year for me.  2 job promotions, a new road bike, my first triathlon, and a new car for Brooke.  I'm sure there are plenty of things that I missed, but those are just several of the highlights that came to mind as I started writing.

     It also brought my desire to do a 70.3 triathlon.  After seeing some friends do one, I wanted to challenge myself as well.

     Scheduling my training has been challenging, but doable.  I've missed a couple of workouts due to the holidays, travel, and family coming into town, but now my calendar is dedicated to training.

     Today started with a nice bike ride - I got a little over 20 miles in.  I also found a wicked downhill which allowed me to get up to my fastest speed yet - 40mph!  I won't talk about the uphill trek that happened to get there.

      I'm working on getting my training schedule into a Google calendar.  Once I get it all put in, I'll post it here.