Sunday, March 20, 2011

Race Swim Simulation and Just the Stats Ma'am


First, wow, thank you so much everybody for the donations this week!! I'm in awe that about $2700 was raised this week in honor of Hailey White for LLS. Truly amazing so thank you - let's keep it going! Had to put one of the pics from our TNT RnR San Diego Marathon trip. I'm third from the left with the Coach bib. As you can see, it was time for a cold one after 26.2!

This week was week 11 of Training though I think just 3.5 weeks for me with the Team. I joined the IronTeam after they had already been training for a couple of months so I've just kind of 'jumped in' to where they were at that point. I'm really still trying to catch up to everybody else which may or may not be realistic but I'm going to give it my best.

I've had some questions about stat kind of stuff so let me give you the facts. No questions are off limits so here we go. First, I'm 42 (will be 43 race day), Brooke (our daughter) is 4yrs old and our only child. I'm generally about 123 pounds - I know this because I had my pre-employment physical a month ago and they let me know - I'm 5'6 or 5'7 I think. I work about 45-50 hours a week at the office, generally 7:30a -5 or 5:30p and I'm the Manager of Wellness & WorkLife for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. I try to do all of my workouts (except Wednesdays) in the early am. I've done 5 marathons and a good number of triathlons with Half Ironman being the longest (back in 2005). Right now training is around 10 -12 hours a week I believe, I really haven't tracked that closely but I will now so you can get a sense since there have been some questions about it. Does that cover it? If you want more, let me know, full disclosure here!

Today brought recovery week to a close. Training distances and intensities were reduced which some would say is great. I had a pretty bad week though on the running side which technically should be my strength. Here's the week wrap up:

Monday: 2150y swim. Quite a few shorter drills so really focused on my usuals - catch up drill, keeping the elbows high and using the forearm as a paddle. I also found out that I don't really bend my left arm much so I'm working on bending my left arm more and really pulling with it. Very sore triceps with the stroke changes. Strength training after swim.

Tuesday: 4mile run. Again, just a tough run. I was trying to keep my HR in zone 1 & 2 but in order to do that I just kept slowing down and slowing down. Really frustrating. Gastric issues after the run so yeah, that was fun.

Wednesday: 2700y swim - group practice. Tonight was a simulated race swim - woohoo, my first whirl in the TNT blender! How does this work you may be asking yourself? Well, you take 40 or so triathletes, all training for IMAZ and all at different swim levels/speeds. Shove them all in one lane treading water and then blow a whistle to watch the fun unfold in the water as they all take off at once kicking and hitting. If you're on the deck, it's hilarious, but if you're in the water like me, it's a flesh blender, just like race day. We did a serpentine swim so you make it down one length, kick off and swim under the lane marker so you emerge in the lane next you. You keep doing that weaving through the lanes til the end, get out on deck, walk to the start, jump back in and start all over again. It took me a couple of times through the whole snake before I felt like I had any 'clean' water to spread out.

Thursday: 15 miles on my bike trainer at home. Watched the RH dvr'd. I'm trying to save my trashy tv for the trainer rides to keep me entertained on these shorter rides on the trainer. I was sooo tired at work thursday. Really, the late wednesday swim getting home around 10p and getting up at 4:45a the next morning makes thursday pretty rough.

Friday: 5Mile run. I had the same issue as I did earlier this week. Couldn't keep my HR rate down, gastric issues again. I talked to my coach Mike and I think he's right - I'm definitely not drinking enough throughout the day and night and am dehydrated starting my run in the mornings. I'm also not eating enough throughout the day so I'm going to keep working on drinking and eating more continuously. I'm not trying to lose weight during training and that's already happening so I'm going to start packing it in a bit more to balance the training out.

Saturday: day off, finally!!!! First day off in a few weeks.

Sunday: 2 hours on the bike Trainer. Couldn't see my distance as my cateye is malfunctioning for some reason. I'm guessing I was around 16 or 17mph but who knows really. Now I'm going to have to take my bike in and see what's up with that.

Next week we're back to distance and intensity so stay tuned!!

No comments:

Post a Comment