January 2005 Archives

The first week of my base is complete. I exercised for 5 hours, 39 minutes, and 25 seconds. It's a bit short of the scheduled six hours because of the swimming. I completed swim workouts in my book, but they took me a lot less time than expected. In the future, I will adjust my swim workouts to meet the expected hour-long swims. I also completed my first "brick" workout. A brick is the combination of a run workout directly after a bike workout. Being the first week, it was relatively easy. (30 min bike/15 min run) The week concluded with an hour-long bike Saturday, and a 45 minute run (outside!) Sunday. Here's how each discipline broke down:

The body is holding up well. My left Achilles tendon was sore after basketball Thursday. My basketball shoes are the only ones without arch supports, and that might have been the culprit. By the run Friday night, it was still sore, but didn't hurt while running, so I pressed on. The week ended with a splurge of food at the local Vitamin World, originally just to get some soy protein for some homemade energy bars. I don't know how to explain what happened. It just did. It was very surreal and now we have plenty of low-carb energy food at home.

For Week 2, there is a slight increase in workout time for a total of 6.5 hours.

This week marks the start of my base phase in training. From now until September 11, I will be following a relatively strict workout schedule. Right now, I have the next three weeks scheduled: what I am doing everyday, for how long and at what intensity. Thanks to an excellent Christmas gift: Be Iron-Fit by Don Fink, I've got an idea of what to do every week. This week it's six hours total. Next week it's six and a half hours. Then seven, seven and half, then back down to 6 or so to recover. Then I go back up to eight and continue that trend (three up, one back) for the next thirty or so weeks. I'm psyched.

Up to this point, which I considered my "Pre" phase, (2005 only) I've swum 3.5 miles, ran for 18, and biked for another 105. In three weeks I managed nearly 127 miles in about 13.5 hours. On The Day, I have to cover 140.6 miles in less than 17 hours. I've got some work ahead of me, but am very eager to get it going. In the "Pre" phase, if I missed a workout I could move on without too much consequence. Now, a missed workout isn't so bad, but it's not so good either. With only so many hours to work, eat, sleep and train every week, each workout is precious, especially on the weekends. That's the domain of the long bike and run workouts. Right now it's under an hour for each, but the bike will grow to a six-hour ride, and 3 hours for a run during the peak week. Note that everything is based in hours. While on the bike and running, I'm using my heart rate monitor and stopwatch for my training, rather than miles. It allows me to train anywhere, and not have to worry about measuring it out before or after. And everyone's using their heart rate as a training indicator, so why not me?

I hope to update this space weekly if not more often. Each update will include training time and any thoughts. In the right column there's a countdown to the big day, as well as my event schedule as it stands. There's a couple more events that I'm thinking about, so there may be some additions.

An amazing five-part race report of an age-group with a lottery slot at Hawaii. In part one, he describes what it's like to race in Hawaii:

But Kona is different, special. Kona is the Ironman, where the roads have been baptized with the sweat of thousands, paved with sacrifice, where Pele has crowned champions and crushed pretenders, where agony and ecstasy merge over 17hrs into one blurry kaleidoscope of suffering, sacrifice and triumph.

If you've got some time, you should read the rest. It's in five parts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Here's what I did last year. All since August 16, 2004: