Ironman Training: Week 2

Another busy week of training!

Monday: Swam 2000m in the morning: 400 warm-up, 6x100, 10x60, 10x40. Lifted weights in the afternoon:

• Squat: 3x12x85
• Incline: 3x12x70
• Deadlift: 1x5x145

Tuesday: A 6.22 mile tempo run: 1 mile slow warm-up, then each mile faster than the previous one. I really enjoy these, especially when it's freezing outside.

Wednesday: Swam 2000m in the morning: 400 warm-up, 6x100, 5x80, 10x60. Right shoulder was a bit stiff at first. Lifted weights in the afternoon:

• Squat: 3x12x95
• Bench: 3x12x100
• Pull-up: 8, 6, 6

Thursday: An early-morning easy 7.00 mile run to make room for turkey.

Friday: More morning swimming: 2000m total: 400 warm-up, then 16x100. Despite pigging out the day before I felt great during these. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll be able to do sets of 200m. 

Saturday: Brick! 23.34 mile bike ride, with 3 hill repeats in between, followed by a 4.10 mile run. The ride wasn't very enjoyable: it was brutally cold, the wind was strong, and there were a lot of tourists blocking the road with their cars. Several times I had to slow down while going 30mph downhill because an SUV was in the way.

Sunday: Slow 13.12 mile run. Last week my long run was a struggle, but this one was relatively easy. 

Weekly Totals:

Swim: 6000 meters (2 hours 59 minutes)

Bike: 23.34 miles (1 hour 26 minutes)

Run: 30.40 miles (5 hours 1 minute)

Strength: 1 hour 30 minutes

Total: 10 hours 56 minutes

Swimming before work has become pretty routine; it's no longer difficult to force myself to wake up at 4:15. Having said that, I've trained for 14 straight days without a rest day since recovering from the Richmond marathon, and I'm starting to crave afternoon naps. I may need to rearrange my schedule a bit to allow for a rest day every now and then on Fridays. 

Ironman Training: Week 1

Now that the Richmond Marathon is over, my official focus is the Ironman. It's 50 weeks away, and I have a lot of training to do, but it all begins with the first step.

Monday: Rest day, still recovering from the race.

Tuesday: We just signed up for a membership at One Life Fitness, so I woke up and went to the gym at 5:00am to swim. The pool is only 20m long, but it's salt water instead of chlorine and is heated too, which easily makes up for it. I swam 1640m total (1 mile): 300m warm-up, 5x100, 21x40. There were a few military guys farting around in the lanes when I got there, but they left when they saw that I was there to swim laps.

That afternoon I ran a light 3.11 mile recovery run. Legs were a bit sore, but it felt good to get the flood flowing to them.

Wednesday: Lifted some weights:

• Deadlift: 1x5x135
• Incline Press: 3x12x65
• T-Bar Rows: 3x12x135

I tried doing squats, and in fact got all the warm-up sets in. But right before doing the main sets I went downstairs and my legs cramped up really badly; apparently my quads are still too fried from the race to do squats. Deadlifts were no problem though.

Thursday: 7 mile run in the afternoon. No problems here, and picked up the pace for the second half.

Friday: Woke up early again and swam 2000m: 380m warm-up, 5x100, 10x60, 10x40, 6x20. Had the entire pool to myself.

Lifted some more weights when I got home. Did a few low-weight squats and decided not to risk it just yet.

Bench Press: 3x12x95
Pull-ups: 8, 6, 4

Saturday: 20 mile bike ride at Yorktown. I did the battlefield loop once, followed by 5 hill repeats. It felt FANTASTIC to get back out there on the bike. After a 5 minute breather I threw on my running shoes and ran 4 miles. My legs (specifically my left knee) were a bit achy though.

Sunday: 13 mile run down by the Mariner's Museum. Stomach was a bit off, and the last 3 miles were painful, but I kept a pretty good pace.

Weekly Totals:

Swim:  3640 meters (2 hours 7 minutes)
Bike: 20.4 miles (1 hour 14 minutes)
Run: 27.2 miles (4 hours 32 minutes)
Strength: 1 hour 15 minutes
Total: 9 hours 8 minute

Richmond Marathon - Race Report

This was a tale of two races. But I'll get to that shortly.

I woke up at 3:30, walked the dogs and had some peanut butter on toast. Left the house at 5:30, got parked by 6:30, and was at the starting line to watch the 8K race begin at 7:00.

The 8K about to start

The half marathon started at 7:30.

A non-Kenyan is winning after 100 feet!

I headed over to the full marathon start and settled in near the 4 hour pace group. The pacer was a Vibrams wearer too!

The National Anthem played, I gulped down a gel pack, and then we were off! Here's the race broken down in 3-mile increments:

Miles 1-3: 26:58 (8:59/mile)
The beginning of the race was hectic but not terrible; there was some good separation among the runners, and I found some room to run on the outside. I was looking for Wiley so I could toss him my jacket (he was about a quarter of a mile down the route), and after I gave him my jacket I realized that I had lost the 4:00 pace group: I didn't know if they were ahead of me or behind me. I decided that my quick pace for the first mile (8:48) made it unlikely that they were ahead of me, so I resolved to keep trucking at my goal pace and see if they caught up to me.

Miles 4-6: 27:08 (9:03/mile)
The pace group caught up to me around mile 4, which was a relief. I fell in with the pack of about 50 people and breezed along for these miles, enjoying the sights in a nicer part of Richmond. I took another gel pack somewhere between mile 4 and 5.

Miles 7-9: 27:03 (9:01/mile)
This section had a long downhill followed by a long uphill because of the Huguenot Bridge crossing the James River. On the bridge I saw two guys in front of me wearing these shirts:

"Ironman Florida 2012 Finisher"

That's right: these guys finished Ironman Florida last weekend, and followed it up with the Richmond Marathon on Saturday. "Oh yeah, you know just a light recovery run" they joked when I asked them about it. I told them I signed up for 2013 and we chatted a bit about the race. Apparently it was 82 degrees on race day this year, which made for a hot run portion.

Miles 10-12: 27:24 (9:08/mile)
My time was a bit slow in this section because of a few very steep hills that really sapped my legs. There was a water stop at the top of one of them which gave me a nice opportunity to walk for 15 seconds (I walk through all water stops to make sure I can drink easily).

Mile 13: 9:16.
This is where the splits stop. I finished the first half of the course in 1:58:50 according to my GPS (2:01:32 according to the official results). Then my GPS started wigging out: it says my next 3 miles were 5:04, 4:30, and 6:36. Yikes. I turned it off since it was now giving me useless data.

But that was the least of my problems. Around this time I somehow smashed my toe, so I walked for a minute or two before running again (in pain). After that everything fell apart. My legs started cramping, which meant more walking. The pace group slowly got farther out of sight, and with them slipped away my hopes for a 4 hour marathon.

I pushed through the pain until mile 17, which is when I started feeling nauseous and out of breath. I started running less and walking more, and the pain in my toe was throbbing. I was worried that I would injure it severely if I kept going, and seriously considered dropping out. It didn't help that mile 17 was only a few hundred feet from the finish line, where my wife was probably finished with her race and drinking a beer! I was mentally defeated and in a very dark place.

I somehow talked myself into continuing to mile 18, deciding that it was close enough to the finish that I could still drop out there if I wanted to. I settled into a groove of running for as long as I could, then walking for 2 minutes. Mile 18 came and went, and I talked myself into continuing. "Only 8 miles left, you could walk it and still get a PR". I drank extra liquid at the water stops. Other stuff was being handed out at this point in the race too: orange slices, gummy bears, flat coke. I took it all; if you were handing it out, I was grabbing it. Anything to try and breathe life into my legs.

Nothing worked particularly well, but I continued on with my walk/run plan. The 4:15 pace group passed me. I had to walk more than I ran in mile 23, but I kept going. At the mile 25 marker I picked myself up and forced my legs to run the remainder of the race which was all downhill to the river. By the time I got to mile 26 the pain was gone from my legs and I was flying, easily at a 7:00/mile pace (this was mostly due to the downhill slope). I finished the race far from my goal time, but it was still a PR by 21 minutes.

Finish Time: 4:38:58
3043 out of 4716 (Overall)
1867 out of 2540 (Men)
232 out of 298 (25-29 Age Group)

Briana and I after the race

I learned several things from this race:

1. Just because I can run a half marathon at a 9:00/mile pace doesn't mean I can run a full marathon at that speed. This was definitely too ambitious of a goal, and if I had chugged along at a 10:00/mile pace I would have been much better off. 
2. It's not the end of the world if things don't go according to plan. I really wanted to quit the race because I was struggling, but because I continued on I was able to PR by 21 minutes. 
3. Despite getting in a 20 mile long run two weeks ago, I was physically unprepared for this race. For the last 5 months I've been focusing on swimming/biking for my triathlon, and only had a few weeks to concentrate on running before the race. Next time I'll make sure I have adequate time between races.
4. TMI alert: I really need to do something about my nipples. Originally I was planning on wearing underarmor during this race (which would have eliminated any chafing), but it was too warm for that so I wore just a dry-fit shirt. I had to take my shirt off around mile 22 because my nipples were literally bleeding. There were some shocked people at the last few water stops. It's 4 days later and they're still extremely sensitive.

Past the Point of No Return

At 1:00pm on Sunday I sat at my desk nervously hitting F5 (refresh) over and over on the Ironman Florida registration page. Registration opened, and five minutes later:

It's official: I'm registered for Ironman Florida 2013! And apparently sitting at the computer constantly refreshing the page was not unreasonable, because the registration sold-out in less than a minute. Hopefully this is a sign that they need to add more races on the east coast.

Tapering is going well. On Monday I biked 6.78 miles in the neighborhood, stopping only because it was too dark to continue. I did some weight lifting after that to make up for it:

• Bench Press: 3x12x95
• Curls: 3x14x20
• Pull-ups: 15 (over 3 sets)

Wednesday I ran a short run 5K, and didn't feel good at all. I wanted to start out slowly but the first mile ended up being too fast (9:16), so maybe the lack of proper warm-up did it. 

Stay tuned for my "race predictions" post tomorrow!

Confidence: Reacquired.

When I posted last week my confidence for the Richmond Marathon was waning. A week later and my entire attitude has changed!

Sunday: I was stuck inside (thanks to the hurricane) so I did some weight-lifting for the first time in several months:

Bench Press: 3x12x105 (3 sets of 12 reps at 105 lbs)
Dumbbell Curls: 3x12x20
Pull-ups: 6

My arms were absolutely destroyed after doing the bench and curls, so I tried two sets of pull-ups and gave up. Oh well, it's a start, and I'll be able to focus more on them after the marathon next week.

Monday: Rest (hurricane was still out in force)

Tuesday: 10K tempo run: 1 mile warm-up, 5 miles at faster-than-race-pace, and then the remaining 0.22 miles as cool-down. When I got home I described it to my wife as "the best run I've ever had". Not only did I PR by 13 seconds, but it was mostly effortless. I felt great the entire run and could have run for another hour. I've missed running in the cold.

Wednesday: Short 10 mile bike ride. It was my first ride in cold weather, and I wore my long-sleeved underarmor. I had no problem staying warm even though it was 48 degrees and windy. Having said that, my heart rate was a bit higher than I would have liked, and I struggled to get into a "groove" on this ride. 5:00 of LT work near the end of the ride.

Thursday: Short, easy run, with a sprint for the last 1/3 mile. It was 45 degrees but sunny so I didn't wear any underarmor (choosing to run only in shorts and a T-shirt). I felt fine temperature-wise, but my heart rate was higher than normal.

Friday: More weights:

Incline Press: 3x12x65
T-Bar Rows: 3x12x135
Dumbbell Curls: 3x13x20

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: Another 10K tempo run: 1 mile warm-up, 4 miles at race-pace, 6th mile very fast (7:59), then a short cool-down. I didn't feel invincible like I did on Tuesday, but I still finished feeling great.

The two tempo runs seriously boosted my confidence for the marathon this Saturday. I'll post more about my strategy for the race later in the week, but right now I have my sights set on the 4:00:00 mark!