Longest ride so far

Got out with my old friends that I have been riding with for 20+ years.  They are still as fast as ever.  We did 92 miles, including a 7 mile uphill gravel section.  Great weather, great route.

Felt like climbing

Profile from yesterday's ride.  7700ft of climbing:

5 months to go

That means only about 20 more long rides!   And, only another 2 months before I start thinking of getting in the pool.  :)

SRAM

Got out on the TT bike a few times this week.  It's been awhile.
I decided to switch out my cockpit to some Zipp Vuka bars I already had because I think they have a better position for climbing, which I seem to end up doing a lot on the TT bike.
And, while I am at it, I am switching my old 9spd Shimano drivetrain to 10spd SRAM.  I already have the parts and I've never used SRAM so what the heck?

John's IMAZ Training Plan

Stumptown Olympic Triathlon (Blue Lake Oregon) .  My first Olympic Distance event.

I was so excited and happy about finishing, I ran past the finish chute and had to turn around and go back to run though it the right way.  Of course the announcer had fun with that.  Something about me enjoying the course so much it looked like I was going to run it a second time.  

Okay, I promised a summary look at what I have for a training plan.  Here it is.  I will keep it updated weekly and make any comments throughout the week on how things are going as far as;

• Meeting the weekly goal
• Roadblocks (life)
• Diet and nutrition
• Breakthroughs
• Anything else that comes to mind

For example, yesterday was a great swim workout; 2,500 yds
200yd warmup
4x250yd -  25 fast/25slow, 50fast/25slow. 100fast/25slow
8x100yd tempo pace
500yd cooldown

My goal for the Challenge Penticton Ironman Relay is a 75 minute swim.  I have some work to do but I think it's doable.  I have the 70.3 Ironman in Lake Stevens in July.  It will be a good open water test benchmark.

Here is my training plan.  My training weeks start on Monday so I am still in week 6.  I am on track for 18 hours total.  Still shy of my planned.  This is where I might have to adjust just due to life and the fact that my planned number of training hours is based solely off of the suggested annual training hours for an Ironman in the "Triathlete's Training Bible" of 600-1200 hours.  Definitely not off of any past experience.   I put myself on a run rate of 700 hours from January 2013 to IM Arizona in November.  With life and the fact it is my first Ironman I might be stretching it a bit.  I have to be careful I don't end up in an over-trained mode but still put in the needed time to complete my first Ironman in a reasonable time.  It's a plan, and plans are meant to not only be followed to the letter, but when necessary, adjusted or fine tuned.  So it's a start.

2013 IMAZ Completed Training Plan

One thing I have learned so far is that there are the three disciplines of Swim, Bike and Run.  Then there is the fourth discipline of Nutrition.  Now I think there is a fifth, the Plan.   It's a lot of work in of itself.  I know it will be worth it come November.  I just hope I planned enough.  We'll see.

Bricks

One thing I haven't been very good at in the past is doing routine brick workouts.  I had convinced myself that they weren't really that important, as I seem to run OK off the bike in sprint and olympic distance races.  But, I'm 0-6 on running well in IM, and probably 0-4 in running well in half-IM.   It's probably a combination of things that cause this, with the biggest one simply being that I'm riding a bit too hard.  But, in every IM I've done I've felt horrible right from the beginning of the run even when I felt fine on the bike.   So this year, I'm making an effort to do a short run after every one of my longish bike rides.  My Sunday rides are up to 60 miles now, and I run 2-3 miles after finishing up.   The runs are hard but not horrible.  I hope it's helping.