4th Week of Training complete, 112 Days left till Ironman

I just completed my 4th week of training. This week I logged about 8 hours of training and 62 total miles on the ground and water. This was my recovery week and the final week of the prep period. Next week begins Base 1 period. This should be a fun month.
This was a good month of training. It was a lot of sessions, but so far, nothing overly difficult. A couple 30+ mile rides and my long runs were slow and about 90 minutes. I hit a personal swim distance record of 3,000 yards last week. And my swim is by far my best sport. My running and biking are starting to come along as well. I had been doing about 7 miles in my 90 minute runs, with HR's in the 140's to low 150's and this past thursday I did 7.3 miles with an HR of 138. A drastic improvement. In my biking, today I did the same route as I did two weeks ago. At the same HR of 149, two weeks ago I did it in 90 minutes, and today I did it in 84.5 minutes. Another large improvement. These improvements are very encouraging as I enter the next phase of training. Tonight I had a very brief scare with mother nature. Of course this occurs on the stretch of the parkway where I hit the fastest speed of the entire ride. I'm coming down at about 35 mph, and I hear a noise off to the left, I look over and a deer pops out of the woods, and looks like it's about to run across the road, directly in front of me. I saw it, started yelling at it, and fortunately I scared it back into the woods. I felt a huge sigh of relief and relaxed a bit, then the next thing I knew I looked forward, there's ANOTHER deer who DID run into the road and it's directly in front of me running across!!! Once again I started yelling and that one kept running and cleared the road just as I crossed where it had been standing. I'm not sure who seemed more scared, me or the deer. Wow, what a scary experience!!!
Now on to month two!!

Week 3 in the bag, 119 days to go till the Ironman

Well, I just finished my third week of training. Things are still going great. I'm still enjoying it and not dreading training sessions. So far I've completed 235 miles on the bike, in the running shoes, and in the pool and a total of 28.5 hours of training. I've only lost about 2-3 pounds so I suppose I've been taking in enough food.
I still spend a lot of time trying to put myself onto the ironman course, especially when I start facing difficult stretches in my workouts. These usually consist of climbing hills on the bike or running. I dislike hills very very much. And they're never long enough on the descent.
The annoying clicking sound seems to have gone away since I changed my shoes back to the cycling shoes. My running still sucks. I'm having to do about 12 min/miles in order to keep my HR under 150. My swimming on the other hand has been fantastic. Hit a new personal record of 3,000 yards in under an hour. All my swimming workouts have felt really good, both speed and distance workouts. Next week is a recovery week so the workouts will be toned down a little bit, and that will end the prep period. After that begins the base workout when the workouts will really start to ramp up. Can't wait!!!

Day 17 of Training, 123 days left till the Ironman

Running isn't improving very much, but I'm hoping that's on account of the heat and humidity. Yesterday I did about a 3.8 mile run...something like that, in 45 minutes. I paced a 12 min/mile and averaged an HR of 157. I really hope that's just a matter of the heat. I rode the parkway route yesterday, the out and back I've been doing. It felt good and never felt pushed too hard.
My swim this morning went really well. 2,050 yards and it was very easy. I can't remember if i wrote my my monday swim, but it was another 3,000 yards and it was a piece of cake. Felt great!
Enough for tonight.

Day 16 of Training, 124 days till the Ironman

Ok, so again, i'm super delayed in writing. I at least meant to write at a minumum at the end of each week, so I guess this will sum up last week and yesterday's workout. maybe I'll remember to account for this mornings workout in an entry tonight.

So last week I had a personal record distance for swimming as I did 3000 yards on monday. I was supposed to do 2900, but i figured, i was 100 yards away and added it during the cool down. As far as my week totals, I did about 8.5 hours of training and a total of 81.5 miles between the run, bike and swimming. So far I'm feeling great, and losing a bit more weight than I intended. I figured I'd be racing around 195, but am already down to 200 from 206 when I started. I really need to increase my caloric intake. So far training isn't bad, but I think that's the point for the first month. I guess it called "prep" for a reason. But right now it's all about getting used to the sheer number of workouts, not so much distance. The swimming is definitely more than I'm used to, but I'm handling it very well. The running and biking are long, time wise, but so far, not intense at all. The farthest I've gone on the bike is 32 miles and it was relatively easy. As easy as riding in asheville can be. I've been incorporating some hills into the long rides, but am taking them very slow and easy. I've looked forward a few months into training and need to stop. It's a bit scary looking at what lies ahead...but of course, what I'm doing now would've terrified me a year or two ago and now it feels easy. That's why the program is as long as it is. I'll get there and the comfort level will come. So far so good..

Hopefully, more to come tonight.

Day 10 of Training, 130 days till Ironman

Shew, been a while since my last post. Almost 30 seconds now. At least at the conclusion of this I'll be caught up and maybe I'll be able to stay caught up. Today was a "race specific" swim as the program called it. I don't know why, but I guess it may have something to do with the face that I was gassed at the end. It consisted of 4x50 for a warm up, which I did way too hard. Then it was 2 x 1000 and an RPE of 4 then 6. Shew, that was tough. I'm not used to swimming that long for that far. I guess it's getting me ready for the 4000+ yards of swimming I'll be doing at race pace on race day. Of course I have no intention of hurrying through that swim, I'm not exactly gitty about the prospect of riding my bike for 112 miles. But anyway, the swim went as well as could be expected. I was drained and my heart was pounding. I was over 180 for a good bit of it, which certainly is more than RPE 6. I think if I had slowed down my warm up I'd have been better set for it.
See ya tomorrow after my 90 min run!

Day 9 of training, 131 days till the Ironman

So again I'm a day late, so I'm posting today, for yesterday's training sessions. Yesterday's training consisted of a 45 minute run and a 60 minute bike ride. I did the run early morning, hoping to beat the heat, and I did sort of. It wasn't too bad at first, but it started getting pretty warm as the run went on. As usual I went amazingly slowly, but my HR was considerably lower than the day before for the same distance. I completed 3.5 miles with an average HR of 141. Pretty low, so goal accomplished. Again, I haven't had any cramping issues in a while, so I'm doing something right.
My bike ride was a simple out and back out meadow rd to riverside and back home. I averaged about 16.6 mph with an HR of 133. I probably could've gone a bit harder. But it said to take it easy and who am I to argue. I am having a bike issue that I hope I can resolve. It's got this very very annoying tick sound on every revolution and I can't figure it out. But anyway, it was a good ride, no issues at all.

8th Day of Training, 132 days to go. Week 2.

I completed my first week of training a couple days ago...and of course I have neglected to post daily. One of these days I'll get better at it. So I logged 65 miles over about 8 hours or so. So far it's been pretty easy, but these first couple weeks aren't so much about logging a lot of time or hours, but getting adjusted to the amount of training sessions. It's going to get a lot worse.
Everything I've been doing has been very low intensity, so I've been running on average of about 12.5 min/mile, and cycling in the 14-15 mph range. Though, that is due to the fact that it's incredibly hilly around here. When I've ridden on flat ground, i'm moving closer to 20 mph with little effort.
Yesterday began week two of training and that consisted of a swim and run. The swim was my long swim of the week and I set a personal record. I swam 3000 yards, and the main set consisted of 4 x 500 yards. The run was 45 minutes with strides. I completed 3.5 miles in 45 minutes. Though it was very hot and very muggy yesterday when I ran.

4th of Training, 136 days left till Ironman

So yea, only took one day for me to fall of the whole posting every night thing. Gotta get back into the swing of it.
Today was my first real long run, that really made me feel like training is upon me. Today was a 90 min run, where I only ran 7 miles. Quite slow, but oh well, my HR averaged only 148. Which is my goal. It was a good run, though I had to use the bathroom about 40 minutes in. Hope that's not a recurring problem. Ate a hammer gel at the 1 hour mark, and felt no ill effects. Drank water every 10 minutes as well. It was a flat run, I ran at the French Broad River Park to Carrier Park. No hills at all. It was also 70's but humid.

Day 2 of Training, 138 days till Ironman Arizona

Day 2 consisted of a long swim and another easy run.

Swim was 2500 yards, or about 1.4 miles. Started out with a 4x200 warm up. The main set was 1500 yards, and 4x50 cool down.
The main set was surprisingly easy. I paced about 1:55 min/100 yards pace. My heart rate was about 130 at the end of the main set.

The run was 45 minutes, and an average HR of 150. I ran a total distance of 3.7 miles or so. Pretty slow pace, but am really trying to run at a pace to keep my HR down. Still in the base part of training at this point.
So far so good with training, but I have been SUPER hungry lately. Gotta pick up the eating.

139 Days Till Ironman...Day 1 of Training

So today officially kicks off Ironman Training. I'm going to try and really get back to making daily posts at the end of the day about each days worth of training.
Today was supposed to be an easy 45 minute run and speed work in the pool. However, the holiday forced me to switch tomorrow's easy bike with today's swim.
So I did what turned out to be a 54 minute run, since I completely mis-guessed the distance out I needed to go, so I wound up running much farther than I was supposed to. No bother, it was such a light intensity it didn't bother me much. I was quite slow and nonetheless my HR was higher than I wanted it. But I've been out of working out for some time now so at least this gives me a lot of room to improve.
For the bike, I chose my home to parkway route. It's a pretty easy route with a few steady climbs. I did get my first real experience of riding in the rain. That was a joy, but I did learn that it's really not all that hard. I just have to take the hills nice and easy.

All in all, it's really exciting to "officially" begin my Ironman training. It's been all talk up to now, but it's finally put up or shut up. It's going to be an interesting summer. Despite the hills, I'm so glad to be training in Asheville. The weather is so much more pleasant, and training in the hills should only make me that much stronger on the flats of Arizona.