It's a Wrap ...

Wow, whadda week we just wrapped up!  It was so chalked full of action that the only way this tired and weary blogger can recap is through the laziness beauty of the little round dots known as bullet points.  

• A HUGE Congrats to my lovely wife Annie for setting a 21-minute PR during yesterday's Houston Marathon (She'll have a RR later).  The morning started as humid and ended extremely wet after continuous rain showers.  Despite these tough running conditions she still sucked it up and put in a great effort.  I am very proud of her!

• A HUGE Congrats to our friends Elizabeth, RuthAnn, and Beth for their strong finishes yesterday as well. It was fun training with all of you over the last six months.  You all did awesome!

• I am about 95% back from being sick with bronchitis and a sinus infection.  Over the last 13 days I missed a total of 18 scheduled workouts.  My energy has returned but I am still experiencing the lingering effects of an awful cough which has made it impossible to swim and difficult to run and bike.  My antibiotic cycle ends tomorrow and I am hopeful I can put this setback behind and move forward. Here are my disappointing volume totals for the month of January:  
• Swim -10h 35m - 22,600 Yds
• Bike - 17h 54m - 334.61 Mi
• Run - 11h 17m  - 80.98 Mi

• As you can see as a total these numbers are not awful but this was my second month of Base Training for Ironman and I fell about 30mi short on the run, 170mi on the bike, and about 18,000 yds on the swim.  The good news is that since I had a November HIM and never took an offseason my base was pretty solid starting Ironman training.  Tomorrow morning I will try and get 3500yds in the pool at Masters swim.  All-in-all this could have been a lot worse and I am thankful to be almost through the woods.

• I am exhausted this morning!  I am exhausted from being a Marathon Spectator - damn that is hard work.  Here is a recap:  Yesterday woke up a 4am and started getting things ready to go.  Was on the road by 5am.  We parked about a mile from the Convention Center and I walked with the girls over to the meeting area.  I had to turn around and walk back a mile after forgetting my Blackberry in the car.  Then it was a 1/2mile walk to the start line which I did with my friend Patrick so we could get starting pictures.  After the race started we walked to mile 7 of the marathon course.  We used one of those race maps that didn't have a legend - it looked like a map from Disney Land.  These types of maps suck.  We estimated the walk to mile 7 was about 1.5 miles.  We were wrong, it was over a 4 mile walk.  After we saw the girls run by we started the over 4 mile walk back to the start line to get in the car and drive to mile 20.  This walk was all done in a downpour.  We then drove to mile 20 and cheered there for about 2 hours taking pics with the SLR camera.  After seeing our runners we headed to the finish line which required us to park about a mile away.  When it was all said and done Patrick and I walked about 14-15 miles and were on our feet for 7 hours straight!  I told Annie next time I was going to run because it is a lot less exhausting - she did not find that comment as humorous as me!

• Even after all this I still got my Sunday run in last night - it was brutal.

• Very Cool Team Trakkers Update #1: If any of you have not signed up yet for the Rev3 race(s) for this season you can save $10 per entry by using this code:  Trakkers15.  You'll be prompted to enter as you register on Active.com.  Here are the races that the code is eligible for - Rev3 Knoxville, Rev3 Quassy, Rev3 Portland, Rev3 Cedar Point, and Rev3 South Carolina.  I am registered for Cedar Point and South Carolina and am trying to work Portland into the schedule too!  To keep up on all things Rev3 please follow on Twitter @Rev3Tri.

• Very Cool Team Trakkers Update #2:  We are pleased to announce that All3Sports.com is again an official sponsor of Team Trakkers.  All3Sports is your one stop shop for all things swim/bike/run and because they are so freaking awesome they have offered a discount to our friends and readers.  So when you are looking to make you next Tri equipment purchase use this code: GOTRAKKERS; and you will save 15% off your entire purchase.  Follow them on Twitter @All3Sportscom.

• Memorial Hermann 70.3 is a mere 68 Days away.  Ironman Texas is only 106 Days away.  This is getting very real very fast!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff

Sick Puppies

This is a picture of me .... really that is me!

Well, if you follow me on Twitter you probably know that I have been under the weather for the last few days. Officially I have now been sick for 7 days and it is awful.  I have bronchitis and an upper sinus respiratory infection.  I started to feel crappy last week after doing 6 miles with the LTF run.  I woke up on Thursday and my throat was pretty much swollen shut.

At this point a normal person would schedule an appointment to see their Doctor.  Well, one thing that has been chronicled time and time again on these here pages of the interwebz is that I am not normal, in fact it could be debated that in this particular instance (and probably many others) I am an idiot.

See I decided to use some antibiotics that I had left over from when I had my wisdom teeth extracted.  According to the label on the antibiotics they had passed the expiration date by 8 months.  I decided that doesn't really mean anything and just took 2x the recommended amount of pills (see where the idiot part is coming in?).  This did nothing at all.

To make things even better I had a Sales Meeting with my company in Miami on Monday and Tuesday.  This meant I had to fly and work back-to-back crazy long days - this should do wonders for my already depleted immune system right?  Well, it did not do wonders, it made me worse.

I got home late last night and felt like ass.  Took some Nyquil and passed out.  I hit an emergency clinic later in the afternoon today and the Doctor prescribed the antibiotics (Z-Pack) and gave me an extremely painful shot in butt cheek - it is still sore.

One funny thing today:  He took my BP and HR and was concerned with how low my HR was.  He asked if this was normal (52bpm) and I told him that I must be nervous because it was high.  It then led to the discussion about training, triathlon and Ironman.  He told me to take today off, take the antibiotics and if I was feeling better I could start training again tomorrow.  He said it wouldn't do me any harm based on my current fitness level.  So, I will be back at it tomorrow.

I am going to admit that I am freaking out about missing 7 days of training.  This is the last week of the Base Phase of my Training program and I am afraid that the last 7 weeks are all now wasted because of this illness.  I've discussed my concerns with a few of my Tri buddies and they all think I will be fine because of the decent base I accumulated at the end of 2010 but I think they were all just being nice.  In my mind this means I am just going to have to work harder!

In other news my lovely wife Annie has the same damn thing and she has the Houston Marathon on Sunday.  Luckily she is much smarter than me because at the first signs of being sick she immediately went and saw a Doctor.  And luckily she is already feeling the positive effects of the antibiotics and should be fine come race day.

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff


*** Edit -  EVERYONE - We have a friend who is running her very first Marathon on Sunday and is in not good place because of tendinitis in her knee.  Could you lovely, positive souls please drop by her blog and leave an encouraging comment?  She could use a pick-me-up right now!  Thanks, you guys rock:  http://moonmadness13.blogspot.com/  

Black & Gold Sunday

Critique My Swim Stroke

When I decided to do my first Triathlon in May of '09 I was an extremely poor swimmer and really had not even tried to swim a lap since I was a 7-year old kid trying to obtain my Tadpole Badge from the local YMCA.  I was terrified of doing the 500-meter swim so I spent a lot of time in the pool trying to learn how to swim freestyle.  All that time in the pool got me through the swim in my first Tri but the 2:37/100y split was just slow and I knew if I wanted to get faster it was going to take a lot of hard work.

Not being one to back down from a challenge I joined a Master's Class at the LifeTime Fitness and started swimming regularly.  Many of you may remember that from June to November last year I consistently put in 10,000-12,000 yards per week and blogged about seeing some improvements in the pool.  I have a really great coach who makes minor changes from time-to-time and I am feeling very good about my swim. 

Right now I am averaging about 1:35/100 but know I can still get a lot faster.  I "feel" good in the pool right now but being that I am a visual type of learner it makes it easier for me to make corrections if I can "see" my stroke for myself.  So on Tuesday my buddy Dave took a couple videos of me doing a few lengths and I thought you all might enjoy seeing these as well.

These are at 4:45am on a Tuesday morning, be gentile on my scrappy appearance:

Video #1:



Video #2



Many of you readers have awesome swim experience and knowledge and I'd love to hear some critiques.  I am not sensitive and encourage constructive criticism so please don't hold back.  I have already taken a few notes myself so it would be great to compare.

Only regret is I never took a video of my stroke back when I first began.

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

Thanks for Reading (viewing),

Jeff

Video Parodies Make Me Happy ...

With the NFL Conference Championship Games coming up this week and my team - Go Steelers - still playing I have been completely absorbed in all things NFL right now.  Add that to the fact that I am on-my-death-bed-sick (seriously, I am hearing the Clapton version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" playing in the background as I type this).  What this means is Jeff is not training and my time is being spent on YouTube! 

If you abhor Brett Favre and everything Brett Farve related you will enjoy this immensely, enjoy the second Carrot approved hysterical video of the day (NSFW): 



Jeff

PSA: Texting and Walking May Make You (In)Famous

I saw this woman on the local news this morning and she is suing the mall  because she was offended no one came to her aid. 

Jeff

USA Fit Half Marathon - Race Report

January 16, 2011 -  Yesterday Annie and I made the 45 mile drive south to Sugar Land for the USA Fit Half Marathon.  Annie has the Houston full marathon coming up in two weeks and I am in the middle of training for Ironman Texas.  We signed up for the race months ago and decided to just use it as our long run day for the week and to not really race.  One of us did well with this plan, give you one guess who did not!

When we left the house the weather forecast called for intermittent showers through out the day.  It wasn't raining at our house so we really didn't pay much concern to the weather.  Well, this was a mistake because by the time we got to Sugarland it was pouring and very windy.  The flags were all blowing straight out.  And the best part was that the temperature was about 10 degrees cooler than it was when we left our house at 4:45am - It would be nice to actually do a race with decent weather, just once!

We stayed warm in the car until about 6:40am and then started to make our way over to the starting corral for the 7am gun.  Well this didn't happen because traffic was still seriously backed up and they made an announcement that the race would start at 7:15.  We went back to the car to warm up.  We were frustrated because they had traffic problems last year when the race was half the size it is now and one would have thought they would have learned something?  This was not a parking issue, but an issue of poor logistical planning. 

A few minutes later we see a few more people coming back our way and they tell us the race is now pushed back to 7:45 - wonderful.  We had both stretched and taken our EFS Liquid Shots and now we had to go to the car, yet again.  I took a 20 minute power nap and by this time both Annie and I had to pee.   We hit the porta-potty around 7:35 and as we were standing in line we heard the starting gun go off and the crowd cheer.  Everyone else in line jumped out and sprinted to the start.  Annie and I took advantage of the empty porta-potties and then made our way over to the start line.  By the time we crossed the timing mat 4.5 minutes had already passed. 

This was a fair sized race with 1240 people starting the half and another 250 competing in the full marathon.  Annie and I started out together as their was nothing but gridlock in front of us.  My goal was to just hold about a 7:30/mi pace and keep my legs fresh for the upcoming training week. I figured a finishing time of 1:45-1:50 would accomplish this goal.  I spent the first two miles just zigging and zagging trying to get towards the front of the race.  The road is pretty narrow for the first couple of miles.  My splits were 7:52 and 7:45 for the first two miles.  I was not at all upset or agitated because I was the one who decided to start at the pack of the back and just slowly weaved my way past the herd to the front.  After about the 2nd mile I was able to find some open space and kick it in a little. 

By mile 3 the rain was really coming down hard.  I was in just a long sleeve compression shirt and shorts.  I was soaked and still a little cold.  I decided to run a little faster just to warm myself up.  By mile 6 I was feeling warmer and my average pace over the 6 miles was right at 7:27/mi - perfect.  At this point I was executing my plan and my legs were feeling fantastic despite the fact I had already put in about 12 hours of training in the previous 5 days.

For some reason I looked down at my garmin and I was holding a 6:45/mi pace and I was feeling very comfortable.  I decided to just keep it there and slow down when my legs told me it was time to slow down.  Well this never happened.  I hit the 10 mile mark and for some reason decided to hammer the last 3.1 miles.  Mile 11 came and went and that split was a 6:12. Similar split for mile 12 and then I could see the finish line and really kicked it in and passed probably 6 or 7 people in the final half mile.  

I crossed the finish line with a time of 1:34:09.   The split for the last 5k was 19:50 and I felt surprisingly fresh?  Good news is that even though I went a lot a little harder than I wanted my legs feel good today.  Annie and I went for a swim in the cool LTF pool after the race and I think that really helped with recovery.

Results:
Overall Time - 1:34:09
Avg Pace - 7:10/mi
Overall - 15 out of 1240
Age Group(30-39) - 5 out of 123


This was a PR for me at the Half Marathon distance by 8 minutes.  The previous PR was in Austin which is considerably more hilly.  I have dropped sub-1:40 times over 13.1 miles during training so I was not at all surprised by this result.  In fact, if I would have started towards the front of the race I am pretty confident I could have picked up a couple more minutes based on the fact I negative split the entire run after mile two.   After this race I am confident I have a sub-1:30 Half in me!

One of the cool things about starting at the very end of the herd was that I literally passed 99% of the field.  This was awesome because I cannot even count the number of encouraging words passed between other runners and myself.  Despite the fact it was cold, rainy, and windy I had a smile on my face the entire race because of the other runners.

Annie did very well.  She finished in 2:04:xx and passed a bunch of runners coming down the finisher's shoot.  This was about 9 minutes off of her best 1/2 but since she is in taper for the marathon she was just trying to keep her legs fresh. 

One more side note:  If any of you question the technique of doing the vast majority of your training runs in your aerobic zone go look at my BT.com logs.  For the last 2 months the only time I have run below an 8min/mi pace (my Zone 2 is 8:15-8:45) in training was during my very limited fartlek and speed interval workouts.  Running slow to run fast maybe boring but it really works.

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff

The Anatomy of a Bad (Trainer) Movie

With this being the chilly season us endurance peeps have all been spending a lot of time on our indoor bike trainers and thus watching a ton of movies.  Selecting the perfect movie can sometimes be a difficult decision.  You do not want something that is too engaging because you'll become engrossed in the film and your workout will suffer.  You also do not want something that is boring because it can have the same effect and your focus will go right out the window.  Hard choices, right?  I tackle the difficult issues over here at the Carrot folks!

So Jeff, what type of movies do you want to watch while on the trainer?

Very simple:  THE BAD ONES.

Hear me out.  Certain movies are so bad that you can sit back and watch them and just laugh at the awfulness.  These movies have scenes that are so poorly acted and directed that you actually think to yourself "did that really just happen?"  You find yourself in such awe of the lack of any type of plot and/or screenplay that you sit on your saddle just pedaling away as the minutes seem to fly right by.  At some point in these movies you actually get angry that millions of dollars were spent to produce this shit-fest and the next thing you know you are in the middle of a spontaneous interval session.  And the best part is if you are doing an hour session and it is a two hour movie you can just turn it off when done and not feel compelled to watch the rest of it.  This movie sucks so you do not need to even waste the extra time to finish it - what is more perfect and efficient than that?

Now in recent years a ton of bad movies have been made. I'd say pretty much 7 out of 10 movies released suck ass.  But not every bad movie falls into the bad "trainer" movie category.  These particular movies all have a little something special and luckily for you I went ahead and made a checklist so you can pre-qualify the craptastic flick you will view during your next sufferfest.

 The Bad "Trainer" Movie Checklist:

- Usually a Colossal Box Office Failure - cost more to make than it earned.
- Has some Hollywood Stars in the cast. Can be current stars but usually are washed up has beens.
- You can tell from the first scene these "Stars" are mailing the performance in - Stars have mortgages too!
- The feel of the film is that it takes itself extremely serious - this eliminates most B-movies. (Sorry Sharktopus!)
- Bonus points if it falls under the Science Fiction category.
- Shitty special effects.
- Lack of a compelling story - this is key.  If the story is just dumb it leads to enhanced emotionally driven music and over-the-top speeches that try (but fail) to add some type of connection to the characters.  These poorly executed attempts lead to more anger intervals.
- It is so bad that you find humor in it thus making it re-watchable.  Some movies are just unwatchable. They do not fall into our category.  These movies are usually reserved for my wife and her friends and I refer to them as chick flicks.

Okay, now that I have gone over the categories you probably have a few movies in mind and have already started filling up your Netflix queue.   This is good and you next seasons bike splits can thank me later.  However, I have went ahead and found the perfect movie that takes the prize in the Bad "Trainer" Movie category. 

And the winner is ...

BATTLEFIELD EARTH

Battlefield Earth is a 2000 American science fiction film adapted from the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard. It was directed by Roger Christian, and stars John Travolta, Forest Whitaker and Barry Pepper. The film depicts an Earth that has been under the rule of the alien Psychlos for 1,000 years and tells the story of the rebellion that develops when the Psychlos attempt to use the surviving humans as gold miners

This shitfest of a movie that was released in 2000 absolutely nails everyone of the about listed checklist points.  And it receives bonus points because it was recently voted the worst movie of the last decade - it is just awful but for some reason extremely rewatchable?  L. Ron Hubbard is the founder of Scientology so this adds to the humorous suckitude of the film.  If you haven't seen this movie consider yourself lucky.  If you have a 3hr sufferfest planned for Saturday morning go swing by Wal-Mart and pick this up in the $3.99 DVD bin.

Honorable Mentions:

1. Waterworld (1995) - This spectacular failure of a film starring Kevin Costner was at the time one of the most expensive films ever made. And, conversely, one of the largest Box Office failures ever. It is a post apocalyptic thriller in which all the ice caps melt and the world is underwater (hence the title) and Kevin Costner has gills.  Yep, I just typed that.

2. The Postman (1997) -  Kevin Costner is two-for-two in the honorable mention category.  This time he is once again in post apocalyptic America and he rallies what is left of the country by assembling refugees to deliver the mail.  I shit you not - this is the story.  This maybe my favorite re-watchable bad trainer movie.

3. Reign of Fire (2002) - This is once again a tale in a world that has gone to hell.  This time at the fury of fire breathing dragons.  The best part is that somehow both Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey read this script and thought it was a good idea to make this movie?  It once again hits all the major checkpoints - except special effects, they aren't too bad.  This one really makes you mash the pedals when you see Puff the Magic Dragon bearing down on our stars!

I am feeling a little embarrassed right now because I just typed out the three descriptions of the movies above from memory - wow.

Alright, there you have it. The sure fire solutions to finding the perfect bad trainer movies.  I highly recommend printing this checklist out, lamenting it, and taking it to the Red Box with you.

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff

P.s. - Yes, I watched Battlefield Earth on Showtime last night.  I am not proud of this occurrence but I did get in one heck of a workout!



The Beauty of a Rest Day

My training plan for Ironman TX is pretty straight forward.  Every week I do four workouts each (12 total) of swim, bike, run.  These are done Tuesday - Sunday with a rest day on each Monday.  See, easy peasy!

That means today was my rest day.  Normally I am antsy and sometimes sneak in an easy spin on the trainer or a short run but not today.  Complete rest!  I even had a 3-hour conference call for work so I was forced to sit in my office chair all afternoon and do nothing - except think - and that is when things get complicated.

It gets complicated because I begin to think about schedules, training plan tweaks, races, nutrition ...yada, yada, yada ....


Some of the things (s/b/r related) I found myself pondering today:

-  I am running a Half Marathon on Sunday.  Totally forgot about this race and never planned for it in my training schedule.  Means I will have to switch around my long ride and long run this weekend. Not a big deal. Then the question is how hard should I run the race?  Push the pace and race a 1:35ish or hold back and do a 1:45-1:50 run?  If I go hard will the longer recovery needed hurt next week's training?  Whatever happened to the days when I just went and raced and didn't care about all this other crap? 

-  Also realized I am doing a 70.3 in a mere 89 days.  All the questions listed above are sure to resurface in about 85 days.

-  Found out on Friday I have a work event that will have me traveling five weeks before Ironman.  It is a convention so this means I will be standing on my feet all day long the entire week.  These conventions are utterly exhausting and in the past my feet have been destroyed at the end.  It is in San Antonio so I can drive and am considering bringing the bike and trainer and stinking up a Marriott room.  This weekend is supposed to be a 6 hour ride too. I cannot miss a 6-hour ride.  Luckily, I will be back on Saturday night so I can get the ride in on Sunday morning but that means the scheduled 3-hour run is going to have been done in Downtown San Antonio extremely early on Saturday morning.  Good times!

- I've never been one to obsess over minor details and really just have always rolled with the punches but for some reason this little 140.6 race has me obsessing over the smallest things?  Is this normal or have I developed OCD?

- I CANNOT WAIT for Saturday at 4:30est!!!  Ravens at Steelers III!!!  This is my type of football - violent and fast.  These teams hate each other and this is going to be the game of the year.  Unfortunately, they will probably beat the shit out of one another so bad that whoever wins (Pittsburgh) will be too banged up to beat New England the following week (yes, I pretty much disregarded the Jets right there).

- I watched "The Cape" last night.  The only reason is because really nothing else was on and I was not tired at all.  My expectations for this show were very low.  Even with this preconceived notion I was still disappointed - it was awful.  The acting, story, special effects and the acting (said this twice on purpose) just utterly sucked balls.  It was so bad that I actually felt bad for the NBC people who paid to have this show produced.  They probably all had pink slips waiting for them this morning!

Got a 4am wake up call tomorrow morning for Master's swim.  Back to training and back to not worrying about all the small stuff -  To hell with you Rest Days!

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff

Week 5 IM Training

"We Came. We Saw. We Kicked It's Ass!"
                                                     - Bill Murray, Ghostbusters



That is how I feel about Week 5 of my IM Training!


The Numbers:


S:  3 Trainings -  8100.00 Yd  -  4h 00m
B:  5 Trainings -  133.06 Mi    -  7h 02m 16s
R:  4 Trainings -  22.60 Mi      -  3h 10m 52s
-----------------------------------------------
Totals:  12 Trainings  -  14h 13m

Long Swim - 3000 Yd
Long Bike -  60 Mi
Long Run - 10.03 Mi


Only had one missed workout this week and it was my Master's swim class on Thursday morning.  I woke up at about 2am that night and had a really bad headache.  The alarm then went off at 4am and the bad headache was now brutally painful.  I have never had a migrane before but think that is what happened.  It hurt so bad that I was nausous and felt like throwing up.  The good  news is that I started to feel better around lunchtime and was able to get in my scheduled run after work and then followed that up with some time on the trainer.

In other training related news I began using power for my bike workouts.  I was able to do a Fuctional Threshold Power (FTP) test (this hurt) and then set up FTP Training Zones.  I will then use these zones in conjunction my with my current training plan.  It is very similar to Heart Rate Zones except you are using  watts, which is the amount of power you generate while pedaling.  Watts are a measurable data point that allow you to be exact in zones and force you to work hard to maintain.  I really wish I would have taken a sip of the Training with Power kool-aid a long time ago because it is the way to go.
Thanks for Reading,

Jeff

A Few NEW Things...

I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to the NEW year.  Things have been pretty busy here at the Carrot and some of those things have been Triathlon related and some have not.  I know a lot of you guys like to read about my torture tests of gear and electronics.  If you fall into this category then the next couple of months should be some interesting reading for you.

 The theme of today's post is going to be the word NEW ....

• First, I am typing this on a tiny Samsung Netbook. This is my wife's Netbook and it is NEW to me. The laptop I usually use is a work issued computer and it has been sent to my corporate office to be retired.  I should be getting a NEW one with all my data loaded on the HD by Friday.  The reason I mention this is that it is freaking hard to type on a Netbook with my short, stubby fingers. If you see some typos blame the Netbook.

• Since all of us NEW Trakkers Team Members will be riding sexy Kestrel bikes this season I placed my order for a brand NEW Kestrel 4000 Pro SL - Ultegra.  I am hopeful it will be arriving in the new few weeks and I cannot wait to start banging out the miles on this lean machine.  This thing is smoking hot:

• As many of you know I am a big fan of First Endurance nutrition and have been singing the praises of the Ultragen Recovery Drink and EFS Liquid Shots for a long time.  I love the Liquid Shots because a 5oz Gel Flask contains over 1500mg of Electrolytes.  This amount of electrolytes basically makes it unnecessary to supplement with Salt or Electrolyte tabs.  Which means one less item I have to worry about taking while racing.  With the vast amount of Liquid Shot I consume over a race season I was eagerly awaiting for when First Endurance would release a new flavor other than the current Vanilla.  Well, that time is now because I got to try out the NEW Wild Berry Flavor and it is awesome.  If you like the Vanilla Liquid Shots you'll love the Wild Berry!

• If you sensed that I may have been a little stressed out over the last month you would have been right.  My company was pushing hard for us to close out December with a strong sales month and we had some extremely aggressive goals.  The good news is that we hit our goals and as a reward I will be receiving a NEW iPad!  This means that all of you who follow me on Twitter will soon be subjecedt to even more of my goofy observations and numerous workout updates.  If you are not a follower yet Click Here to join in the fun!

• One of my NEW sponsors, Avia, is sending some NEW racing flats.  They are called the AVI-Bolt II's and have been created with Triathletes in mind.  They are lightweight, have elastic laces, and are made to be worn without socks.  I cannot wait to try these cool looking suckers out and do a thorough review.  It is extremely awesome that companies are beginning to make shoes for Triathletes and not just runners!  Here is what the AVI-Bolt II's look like:

That is all the new-ness that I have for now and as usual if you have any questions about the products above (except the iPad, not really savvy, yet) please feel free to drop me an email (jeffirvin AT gmail.com) and I will do my best to help you out.

I hope everyone has a happy NEW year! (see what I did there *wink*)

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff

Step Back Week (Virtual Woot!) and 2010 Numbers

ahhhhhhhhhhh .............

So I just finished up the 4th week of my IMTX training.  The way the plan works is that it goes hard for three weeks and then scales back the volume in week four to allow for the body to absorb the training and recover. So basically it is three weeks on, one week off for the rest of the 20 weeks.

Usually I am very anxious during these recovery weeks as I feel like I should be doing more volume.  However, with the holidays and the crazy stressful ending to closing out 2010 for my company it was a much appreciate breather!

With that being said today's post is going to be all about the numbers!

Week #4 of IMTX Training:

S:  

7000.00 Yd

3h 15m

B: 

72.60 Mi

4h 05m

R:  

18.82 Mi

2h 41m 28s

Total Volume:   10h 01m


Overall I am pleased with how this week went.  The plan called for 10 hours and I did 10 hours.  The best part of the week for me was some tweaks that were made to my swim stroke.  My normal Master's swim class at 5am on Tues and Thurs was canceled due to the holidays.  This allowed for me to go to the evening Master's classes since my normal evening bike and run workouts were relatively short in duration.  I worked with Kt, the evening Master's coach, and she gave me some good instructions to shore up some deficiencies in my swim stroke at the Thursday evening class.


On Friday after work I went back to the pool and my buddy Dave was there so we did our workouts together.  I was able to put into practice some of the pointers from Kt and had an excellent workout.  For the main set Dave and I did 10x100 at a moderate pace and averaged between 1:33-1:38 for all 10 sets.  Good Week.


More Numbers:


December Training Volume:

Bike:	12h 46m  - 227.9 Mi
Run:	13h 22m 40s  - 87.86 Mi
Swim:	13h 45m  - 29600 Yd

Total Volume:    39h 53m

December was an average month.  My training plan didn't begin until the second week and then I missed a week of swim and bike due to illness.  This really hurt my overall volume but I was able to rest up (and lose 8lbs) and get healthy for the balance of the month.  Actually my run and swim volume were still pretty decent.  The bike volume sucked.

Even More Numbers:

2010 Training Volume Numbers:

Bike:	208h 57m 06s  - 3794.74 Mi
Run:	140h 38m 04s  - 940.78 Mi
Swim:	124h 30m 33s  - 271874.1 Yd (154 Mi)

Total 2010 Volume:     473h 25m

That is my final 2010 wrap up.  It is very cool to go back and look at what you have done over the year.  I cannot believe I spent 473 hours training this year. That is an average of 39.4 hours per month.  What is even more cool to me is that I will probably smash these numbers in 2011.

Moving Forward .... Week 5 of my training plan is asking for 14.5 hours of volume.

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff