Tri-ing to stay young!

Week of 06/04 to 06/10

Vulcan was a lesson learned. I had fun! I think that is a part of the reason this week went well. I finally stopped making excuses and did some training. I do not have much of a swimming or biking base so every session seems to show large improvements over the last, usually in terms of faster times and less soreness the next day. I had been looking at my training logs this year and have concluded that I am a binge athlete.  One week – nothing; the next week I’m out 5 or 6 days out of 7.

06/04 Did an 1800 m swim in Lake McKenzie. I had a lot of trouble with my breathing. My time was 28 min out and 29 min back. I am deathly afraid of not making the swim cutoff at Great White North so every training swim is translated into making the cutoff or not. Today I didn’t make it!

06/05 Did 40 km bike ride including Cochrane hill. Time 1h52m Avg. speed: just under 21 km/hr. It was a nice day for a bike ride. Have you started day dreaming when you are off on a ride by yourself? I find that my mind tends to wander if I don’t have a training partner to keep me focused. Well, this morning I was riding at what I thought was a good speed and imagining something quite profound when 3 cyclists went racing past me. Needless to say, I sped up and probably cut five or ten minutes off my return time. There is a lot to be said for training in a group.

06/06 Did 18 km on treadmill. Time: 2h2m. A lot of people ask me why I train on treadmills, especially in summer. I find it much easier on my knees. I have had 4 operations on my right knee and would like to keep running as long as possible. As I mentioned in my opening blog, I love my food and wine and running seems to be the only thing that will keep my weight some-what in check.

06/07 Did 2600m swim in Lake McKenzie. Time 1h11m. (YA HO! Fast enough beat the timer at Great White North) I felt good during the entire swim – first time ever. I listened to Ed (My brother and lake swim training partner) and started off slow. I may have this swimming thing down by Great White North 1/2 Ironman on July 2! My shoulders are usually tired at the end of swim like this. Grant (the coach) doesn’t believe in weight training to add strength. He says that you are only adding weight that you have to carry around the course and that a person will do better with a good conditioning regime. I’m not sure that applies to me. I have been thinking of adding a shoulder and chest program to my training in July to compare the next race results with the Great White North.

06/08 Had my T.I. swim class tonight. Grant (the long suffering coach) had us establishing 50 k times for training purposes. He did this by having us swim a non-stop 500m.  My training pace is 1m30s/50. I’m sure that I can do better but this is still fast enough to beat the timer at Great White North. At our regular nachos and beer apres-swim, Grant mentioned  he had read that every extra pound of body weight adds approx. 9 minutes to the average marathoners time. I’m at 187.  I guess that this explains why my times aren’t as fast as they were at 175. Guess how much time I have lost (or gained, depending on how you look at your 1/2 fu / mty glass) over that past 10 years?

06/09 Did 52 km bike ride this AM including 2 long hills. Time 2h20m. Avg. speed = 22.6 km/hr. Slow but I did felt good at the end of the ride. I hope to do one more 50 – 60 km ride early next week together with 2km in pool. I will then taper for my olympic dist Tri (Arbour Lake in Calgary) this Sunday by running 30 min on treadmill a couple of times during the week. We have a great hill just down the road from where we live. My goal is to start doing both running and biking repeats twice a week.

Talk to you again next week; Bill