I've decided that I should put my Ironman Triathlon Training Diary online. I figure this will be a good way to get other people that have already done an Ironman to give me tips, hint hint, or to inspire others that want to start training for an Ironman but don't know how to get started or don't know where to go to get tips on training. This will be a diary of my workouts I do each day in preparation for the Ironman as well as how I'm feeling about the workouts I'm doing whether they are hard, exhausting, causing any pain, generally just my feeling about what I'm going through
Feb 18 (Middle of week “1”) Ironman Triathlon Training Day 1
I’ve decided to start writing this diary so I can remember my experiences of training for my first ironman. For years I’ve wanted to do this and for some reason this past new years when I was watching the Hawaii Ironman on TV I decided that I could wait no longer and it was time to get off my ass and actually do what I said I was going to for years (this was much the same experience when I stated that I was going to get my nipples pierced sophomore year on in college until I finally did it the day before my 24th birthday). In hind sight, after a week of training (only the third day of the training program but I started working out the week before), I wish I would not have waited so long; many of the workouts that I’m struggling through now in high school and even college I would have completed with ease and my goal of just surviving my first 70.3 Ironman (you have to do at least one before you can compete in a full Ironman) would have been to qualify for worlds.
Summary of workouts done so far in week “1”:
Saturday Feb. 14
Sunday Feb. 15 0:45 minutes swim (200 SKIPS, 8x100 EBEH, 200CD)
0:45 minutes run (4.5 miles completed)
Monday Feb. 16 0:55 minutes bike (spinning class, miles ???)
0:30 minutes run (2.5 miles completed)
Tuesday Feb. 17 exhausted from weekend took day off
So Saturday’s workout I felt good I had been doing between an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes on my bike every few days for a few weeks and that felt like a good amount of time I wasn’t exhausted when I was done but I felt like I got a good workout. The hour and forty five minutes however did exhaust me the last 5-10 minutes I felt myself looking at the clock counting the minutes till I would stop. I was shocked at how fast I became tired after I went past my previous times. I thought I was in pretty good shape for the bike but now I realize just how much further I have to go. I was doing a good cadence of 63-65 revolutions per minute but I wasn’t in my top gear yet, understandable for how early on I am in training but with how easily I was finishing the hour and fifteen minute workouts I thought I would be able to just keep that temp and just increase my gear so that I was going at top speed. Guess I was wrong I’ll need to increase my distance by quite a substantial time before I increase my gear and try and keep the same pace.
My swim on Sunday wasn’t too bad the “warm-up” wasn’t quite a warm-up and it was a swim because an easy 200 SKIPS isn’t quite as easy as it used to be. My fiancé came to swim with me right after my 8x100 so my cool down wasn’t so much a cool down as it was swimming back and forth across the pool with her trying to help her become a better swimmer. Going into the run I felt fine, within a few minutes of the start of the run I knew I was in trouble. I had read that preparing for the run, especially in your first ironman, shouldn’t be so much about how fast you can complete it but just the act of completing it in and of itself should be enough. On of the tips I had read said that you should run at a good pace for the first fifteen to twenty minutes walk for two to three minutes then continue back at your pace (this was originally a tip for one of the last workouts you do where you are supposed to run for five to six hours straight six to eight weeks before the actual event to get your body ready for what it would feel like to be running for that long but I thought I could adapt if for some earlier workout) this will help simulate when you are running and hitting the different aid stations, water, gator aid, etc., Well this did help me complete this run I don’t think I will be employing this strategy of running in the early stages I don’t think it really helped me build endurance, I think rather I need to slow down and try and sustain a slower pace for the entire time. When I get to some of the runs that are supposed to be over two hours or over a half marathon then maybe I’ll try this but otherwise I think it will just hinder me in the long run.
Monday was presidents day so we had off from work, good because I needed more time for my body to rest, bad because I slept in and wasn’t able to do the swim in the morning like I had planned. My fiancé and I wanted to do a spin class together and even though biking wasn’t on the agenda for today I felt like I could easily switch my Monday and Tuesday workouts. The class really kicked my ass I haven’t seen my t-shirt that soaked with sweat since playing out door soccer for 90 minutes in 95 degree heat. I felt really out of shape trying to complete the class and at the end I didn’t feel like had gotten all that much benefit out of it. The glass is designed to increase cardio and build some muscle with the use of different ridding postures, sprits, resistances, and simulated hill climbs, right now I’m trying to just get my muscles used to training for long periods of time. I think I need to focus on my distance muscles and not worry so much about how fast I can go right now. That will come in a few months. Tuesday night while My fiancé was tutoring I went back to the gym and did a thirty minute run, it was supposed to be forty five minutes but I had to get home to make dinner (right now my personal life still needs to happen the last couple weeks of training I’m sure this will change but that’s a ways off)
Waking up on Tuesday morning trying to do my first morning work out, historically I have never been an morning person let a lone a person to wake up early and work out I think other then when I was thirteen or fourteen getting up for swim practice at seven this was the earliest I had ever gotten up to work out and it wasn’t even with someone aka a coach tell me I had to, with my legs tired and aching I knew I needed to rest but I now feel like I’m behind because I wasn’t supposed to take yesterday off and because I had planned to mix up my Monday workout with the Tuesday workout so maybe in the end that made it a little easier to get out of bed, it’s kind of good to make yourself feel guilty about missing your own workouts isn’t it? This morning I swam my Monday morning workout (200 SKPS, 1x1000, 200CD). In high school this would have been closer to a warm up but the 1000 really kicked my ass although on a high not I realized about the 450 mark that I wasn’t really going any faster or slower then other laps and was only planning to do a 500 and then put my fins on to complete the rest of the swim (my guide said to swim 1x1500 or 1x1000) I would have swam further but I ran out of time with going to the gym and not brining my cloths for work, I’ll need to correct this mistake in the future. Next week I need to do a much further swim I need to see where that point is like in my biking where all the sudden I start to die, if I’m really going to try and compete and do well in a full iron man that’s going to have to be well past mile three or 5500 yards (on a side note I’ve never swam that far in practice ever let alone straight that’s 270 laps what am I getting my self into)
So tonight I’m left with a few options Wednesday’s workout was supposed to be another swim session with no run or bike, Thursday’s workout is supposed to be a long run with no swim or bike but I’m still behind from not doing my Tuesday workout and I have an indoor soccer game tomorrow night. So I have a few options I can do my long run tonight, instead of tomorrow, wake up early and then do my swim then and finish with the soccer game then I would be completely caught up. I could swim tonight or tomorrow morning do the soccer game and then run on Saturday morning, which is supposed to be rest day or I could just totally blow off one of the workouts but I don’t really see a point in that because I’m doing this for me so why cut myself short.
Feb 19th Ironman Triathlon Training Day 2
So nothing really went as planned last night or this morning. I came home last night to have my fiancé already made dinner so I ate with her. Then of course once I eat I don’t want to work out so I decided to just stay home and go with the other work out plans and not take Saturday off.
This morning wasn’t much better with getting out of bed so I guess this week is just shot as far as getting every workout in. Tonight is soccer and I know I’m going to that we’ll see how good of a work out I get there are a lot of people signed up to play.
Feb 20th Ironman Triathlon Training Day 3
Last night’s game was one of the best our team played and I had a solid performance as well. I continued my streak of getting at least one goal or one assist in each game I’ve played. The down fall of last night’s game was there was so many people there that I only played for about 12-15 minutes of the game. While I did feel like I got a good cardio workout, I knew I wouldn’t play that much because of all the people there so I just sprinted ever second I was on the field, I was still disappointed with the workout I got. When I came home my fiancé was already there with dinner again so of course I was starving and ate and then didn’t work out after to build my endurance.
This morning was a struggle again to get myself out of bed but I did manage to get my self up in time to get a 30 min bike ride in (approx 9 miles) it felt like a good workout but I wish it would have been longer. The only reason I was able to get it in was because I didn’t car pool with Denise, it feels bad to say but sometimes carpooling is already interfering with my workouts. We’ll see how this goes if it gets too bad I might just stop carpooling for a while. Might try and get a swim in tonight if my fiancé is up for it.
Feb 23rd Ironman Triathlon Training Day 6
Weekend rap up. Well it wasn’t what I wanted it to be but I did learn a lot. Friday night I came home and my fiancé didn’t want to go to the gym and I always feel bad about not spending enough time with her so I decided I would just stay home and get in that long run in the morning. So Saturday morning came and we woke up early to get to the gym. I started with the goal of running 7.5 miles in 90 minutes. I figured I would go for as long as I could at a slightly higher pace of 6 miles per hours to start and then would eventually need to slow down for water breaks and that would make up the difference in time vs. distance. Well I started to bump up my speed to 6.5 or even 7 miles per hour a few times and was able to sustain that speed, so after 45 minutes of my 90 minute run I was already at almost 5 miles and decided to set a new goal of 9 miles for myself. In the end I timed it out almost perfectly and finished the nine miles with 1 minute left on my timer. I felt good after the run, tired, but good. I don’t think I would have been able to keep up my pace for another 2 and a half hours to finish a marathon nor do I think I could have kept up that pace for 4.1 miles to finish a half marathon. But this is early in training and I think that was a good first run to build my distance.
Now this is where all the problems started. So after the run when I got home I felt like I was starting to chafe a little bit on my inner groin area. After my shower I was in a lot of pain and found some gold bond to ease my pain. We were headed up to my fiancé’s parents so I new it would give me some time to rest. The rest of the day I was in pain but nothing like the next morning. The chafing on my groin was basically gone but both inner thighs were covered in what looked like bad acne. Pretty much every place a hair was attached to my legs had a pimple and some even had a white head with them. I only now read online that you aren’t supposed to run for long distances with cotton boxers and they cause a lot of friction and can lead to chafing and these bumps.
I went ice fishing with My fiancé’s dad in the morning and thank god you have to take small steps to maintain balance on the ice because I don’t taking a normal stride I could have standed, with all the pain I was in. After ice fishing I switched into my new warm up pants and didn’t wear any underwear to reduce any rubbing I could prevent on my legs. When we got back home I took Advil and put ice on my thighs to stop the burning. My fiancé ran to the store to get me some cream that would help, and it did. Needless to say I didn’t do my long bike ride on Sunday like I had planned.
This morning wasn’t any better, still had the red bumps and even more had formed white heads. I tried to pop some of them which hurt at first but seems to have help. Tonight and tomorrow morning I won’t be able to workout because of my colonoscopy so at least this will give me a medical reason to let my body rest until my thighs are healed.
Feb 24th (week 2) Ironman Triathlon Training Day 7
Well this week has gotten off to a rocky start I had the bad chafing that isn’t going away so I can’t run. I was supposed to have a colonoscopy today supposed to being the key word but that ended up not happening the Dr.’s office canceled luckily right before I started doing my prep. So I tried biking last night and that seemed to have the same effect as trying to run so again I’m out of commission with that for a few more days.
This morning I had my first physical therapy session, I was rear-ended in a car accident on Feb 5th and I had a bad case of whip lash that was getting better but then after a week just went into a holding pattern so my Dr. decided to send me to physical therapy, it didn’t seem like it was doing anything that is until I went to the gym later in the day to swim.
My swim today went really well I was able to do 3000yrds (my set was 7x100 warm up, 4x500, 2x150pull cool down) in an hour. The thing I noticed from my physical therapy was that I was able to breath better to my right side then I had before.
Feb 25th Ironman Triathlon Training Day 8
Well my problems of getting up in the morning have persisted. I feel like my body is just achy and I feel unmotivated in the morning. I wish I could just ask my fiancé to get me up but the hell I would give her and then the subsequent her not speaking to me just doesn’t seem to be worth it at this point. The odd thing is every time I do manage to get up early and start my workout I feel better about myself and am even more motivated and energized throughout work and my workout in the evening I just some how need to remind myself of that well I’m trying to get out of bed.
This evening workout was supposed to be a nice long set swim with my fiancé but unfortunately she hurt her hip and was in a lot of pain so I decided to stay home with her make her dinner and use my bike trainer instead. The chafing seems to be getting better so I thought I would try this out, if it hadn’t worked I probably would have just gone to the gym by myself without her but we’ll never know. I did a 10 minute warm up at 21st gear then did sets of 8minutes at 23rd gear and 2minutes at 21st gear; finally I finished with a 5minute cool down in 21st gear. I tried to keep a consistent pace of 65rpms which should put me somewhere around 15miles in 45minutes. The 8 minutes seemed a bit tougher then it had before and I felt a slight burn in my final set but I still completed the entire 45minutes with what I consider relative ease.
It seems odd that most of what I’ve read seems to say to stick to lower gear workouts of only 45-60minutes for the first few weeks then it gradually increase the time. If I’m already doing the time at a much higher gear and not having trouble finishing the workouts shouldn’t I continue to at the higher gear or would it be best to switch to the lower gear and go for even more time. I’ll have to do some experimenting of the next couple weeks to see which I feel like I get a better workout with?
Tomorrow morning I have another physical therapy appointment so not morning workout but I will have to get up early the appt is at 7 so hopefully this will help in my pursuit of getting up early to workout before work.
No comments:
Post a Comment