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.