Workout: Bike, Long ride target 2 hours base target HR 120-140

Actual, 3:10 ( approximate since I was late to stop timer) distance 40 miles, Ave HR 140, Max 183

The ride was done along with friends Phil, and Adam. Headed out towards Ridgefield, CT on 35 rode on some hills there ( at least thats the parts I remember :) and rode back. My bike fitness is lame. I was the car guard ( its nicer than saying last) throughout the ride. I am not sure if some of it had to do with the fact that I did my 16 mile run last night? Possibly but I definitely died on the hills.

Workout Planned; 16 mile run, base run target HR between 120-140

Actual: distance 16.1 miles, Time: 2:53, Ave HR 149, Max 182

It was a good run along rte 22 which is pretty quite, My ave HR says 149, however the good news is that during teh mid 6-7 miles I was hittingt he target HR range being around 130 Average. Hr goes up around my home where there are alot of hills.

Workout planned for today:

swim 60-70 minutes, endurance swim

Actual
Swam 73 minutes, and 3000 meters( Finally broke that milestone!)

Workout planned 45-60 minutes base run, with focus on hills ( max HR on hills to be no more than 165)

Actual: Done Indoor on Treadmill with some hill ( increase angle thrown in)

Time : 55:24
Distance 5 Miles
Av HR 146
Max HR 172

I later added 4.1 dog miles* at an Ave HR 154 Max 176 on the hills

Total 9.1 miles

* "Dog miles" is the technical term for added "unplanned" miles run with my dog Simba for her exercise.
** I like the term "Dog miles" so will probably use it as a reference for ANY unplanned miles done from now on. It sounds cool, and really gives off that impression of hard work
*** I like term sooo much that the term "Dog miles"(c) is now copyrighted by me!

Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays to All!

Workout: SWIM on the plan 45-60 minutes speed workot

Actual
10 x 50 sw :15 RI
400 @ T pace @Tpace + :03
4x100 @Tpace
300 @ T pace @Tpace +:03
3x100 @ Tpace
200 @ @ Tpace + :03

C/D 100

Total 2200 Meters

Building base, Good Karma and saving the environment..All in a days work

Grip its

It started out as a simple 14 mile base run. I was joining my friend Adam and his RwP running buddy Dave at the Rockefeller state park preserve( lovingly called the Rockies by locals). The day was dreary, wet and cold. We all met up at the Sleepy Hollow High parking lot at 8AM as usual.

I should have known this was going to be a tough day once I saw Adam and Dave putting on these spiked devices on their shoes( "grip it") for a better grip on the Ice ( dave was supper fly with running shoes with Built in spikes). I of course had not even seen these things before ( how did I miss the memo?). So I saw that these more experiensed runners were expecting some icy conditions. This was going to be interesting. Not having been at the Rockies since the fall I had no idea what the conditions would be.

We started off down the Old croton Aqueduct as usual. The trail was covered with about 2 inches of packed snow, turned to ice in some spots. Fortunately, in the early morning it was still firm enough that we basically, were able to run over this stuff. It was still kind of hard but the snow did give a little so there was not a solid footing, which made this a little more of a workout. Throughout the run I could not keep my HR below 155 even walking.

Anyhow, I had assumed we would take a trail that went by the visitor center mid way as we usually do, but Adam informed me that those trails are probably unusable for running, so instead I brought a water bottle and hid it strategically about 4 miles down the road since this is a path we would come back on. We would fetch it later.

As time went on, the day continued to warm up, and it started to rain. The result being that this hard packed snow started to soften up. Eventually, we found ourselves running on soft slushy snow that gave way every time we tried to push off. It was like running in sand. Although Adam pointed out that In sand you are trying to keep your feet from getting stuck wereas in snow we were struggling to keep our feet from slipping and sinking in thus a different effort. However the fine details were insignificant to me, it just sucked. But Adam IS a running coach. I am sure in a coaches mind this is critical.

By the half way point we were pretty tired but still game to finish, since we had a mission to finish our 14 mile planned workout. My HR was all over the place. The ice was even more slippery now that it was partially melted. Slugging through this stuff was just plain hard.

Save the Bhudha, Save the world

At this point, Adam informed us that we were going up "Bhudha hill" informally named due to a Bhudha statue that is hidden in a crevice along the wall. I had never seen it and did not believe Adam. So as we ran up this hill Adam was taking us up to point out the crevice that the Bhudha calls home. We could not find it. Adam knew it was supposed to be there, but for some reason it was not. So we looked around. Dave continued on up the hill. I stayed to help Adam to look for the Bhudha. I did not know what to look for since I had never seen it. I had thought that maybe it was some form of Rock formation or maybe some horse poop that happened to be shaped to remind you of the Bhudda. I acted like was really looking but really I was just placating Adam...When lo and behold there it was...we found the Bhudha. It was truly a Bhudha statue, about 2 inches in height, a tiny little thing. But not in its rightful place, it was supposed to be in a small crevice and had fallen out somehow and was laying in the snow just to the side of the path, just waiting for a horse or person to come by and crush it, thus possibly ruining peace and harmony for the world forever! ( or at least a day or two)

Realizing how close we came to disaster we immediately put it back in its rightful place. The moment was so powerful that I felt like doing a sign of the cross, but wasn't sure if that would somehow create spiritual havoc in the universe by mixing religious symbols. So I withheld the Cross sign.

Was it the Bhudha who made me question Adam? Forcing him to show me?!

Who knows! I just hope this action resulted in some good Karma for us having saved the Bhudha from sure disaster. As if its not bad enough whats happening in wars, disease and famine already ravaging our world, we certainly did not need this!

The sludge fest

After saving the worlds Karma we continued on our way. The conditions just continued to deteriorate ( or maybe it was us who were deteriorating), anyhow, by mile 9 we were just pushing through, Dave was doing great having developed a stride that was very reminiscent of "Rocky Balboa" from the Rocky movies. I myself had developed sort of a John Wayne-esque like limp/stride as it seemed that my stabilizer muscles in my right leg were starting to give way after 2 hours of pushing through the wet, slushy, crap (as we started to fondly all it). Adam seemed to be no worse for wear ( probably buoyed by the recent Bhudha rescue) though he did seem to slow down a bit.

By mile 11 we were back at the cars, tired weary, and just plain pooped. There was a real temptation to stop the run at this point since we had all already worked much more for these 11 miles than was planned due to the conditions. There was only one problem the water bottle was still out there and we still had another 3 miles to go on our plans.

We simply could not leave this water bottle out there to pollute the earth ( that and also there was a good chance it was my Singapore 70.3 souvenir bottle, yes it was a crappy race for me but WOW what a bottle!) . We just assured ourselves of some pretty darned good Karma, why ruin it now?

So we headed out for the damned water bottle and for the extra 3 miles. We went over the path taken earlier when it was nice a firm. Now it was a sludgy shit fest and we suffered through this like I never before. It was in fact so bad that we simply had to start laughing. Thats the benefit of running with friends, especially those with a real good attitude, it makes doing the hard stuff fun. We were just cracking jokes and laughing at how bad we looked running. I felt like Jerry Lewis in one of his comedies where he is running with his legs going all over the place.

When we finally got to the water bottle it turns out not to be the Singapore water bottle, ( who really pays attention to what water bottle you have? forget what I said before it wasn't THAT special;) . Anyhow we turned around and finally finished this decrepit run. When all was said and done we had gone 15.6 miles*. I was soaked, cold and incredibly sore. But comfy in the knowledge that I finished my planned distance. All in All, a good day.


* Note 15.6 miles is from my foot Pod, Adam and Dave had a GPS units. Adams Unit lost the signal all together near the end of the run so HIS calculations were not accurate, and Dave's said 15.25 BUT Dave did stop and walk for a bit since he had only a 13 mile run to do. Though he claims to not have stopped the device at any point, BUT how can we be sure that he did not lose the satellite at some point just like Adam. In my mind that disqualifies the distance. Making MY pod distance the most accurate of the inaccurate distances!!

Sundays Workout

Planned Run 14 miles Base, The plan was for a long easy run in the Rockies ( Rockefeller Eastates) with some friends.

Actual, 2.55 hour, 15.6 mile slog of death!

by the numbers, Disatnce 15.6*, Av HR 157, Max HR 180!

Total mile for the week 32!! New milestone for me!

Saturdays workout

Planned 2 hours on Bike. A nice cold ride with Friends

Actual: Zip, zero , Nada Thank You 1-800 Mattress for keeping me waiting all day long!

Workout planned: 60 minute swim focus on Endurance

Actual workout 1 hour, 2600 meters

WU 2X200 ( 50 sw, 100 K, 50 sw)
Mainset 400, 300, 200, 100 SW Mod pace :20 RI
300, 200, 100 N/S :25 RI
200 Fast :30 RI
100 Fast :30 RI
200 K
100 cooldown

Workout: Run Planned 60 minutes with lots of hills

Ran in Heritage hills with a focus on the hill sections

Time 59:19
Distance 5.8 mi
Ave HR 150
Max HR 176

Finally! A swim workout

It was not much of one, but I had 45-60 minute workout on schedule.

Today I happen to be in an office in White plains, so knowing this I brought my swim gear and during lunch hopped on over to the NYSC in White plains which has a 25 meter pool. Since its lunch I can only do 45 minutes of actual swimming when you add in a 10 minute walk each way and a quick shower after its going a little past the hour available.

So I went in and did the following:

Its a speed workout from the

300 Sw warm up
100 Kick
25 x 12

Then 2 X
300 Sw mod pace
2 x 75 Fast

then 200 Kick

cool down : 100 yards swim

Total 1900 meters

Not really as much as I would like to get in but at least I got some yardage in. I was feeling real bummed that I have been missing the swim workouts, which is key in my base phase.

One thing, there was a guy there for NYSC who was the acting life guard, he said he was a swimming coach and had in the past trained triathletes in swimming. He saw my little "Swim workouts for Triathletes" book by Berhardt and Hansen, he commented its neat and he never saw that before. ..... Huh?....
Now it might be my own prejudice but how the heck could you be a swim coach for triathletes and NOT know about this book?! I mean its a neat little book that fits nicely in the gym bag, has lots of great swim workouts and best yet, the pages are waterproof so you can take it to the pool and have it right there! Brilliant!!

I mean just about everyone I know that has been in the sport long enough knows about the book! I can understand an age grouper not knowing, but a coach? I wouldn't trust a coach unless they knew of this book.

Tough times for training

Yes I was suppossed to spend an hour swimming yesterday but had to put it off due to being late at work. Thought I could get it in today. Work thought different. Whats up with that?!

Todays Workout: RUN

Planned 60 minutes, Base training

Time 01:03:15
Distance 5.77 mi
Max HR 174, Av 149

Calories 670

Conditions Icy and wet, slow going due to slippery conditions.

Todays Workout Cycling

Base training Target HR 120-140

1 Hour on Indoor Trainer, Max HR 139, Ave HR 124
Calories 462

Back home

Well finally back home from Cali, Nice to be home but the flight sucked. Now because I travel for business I am able to fly business/first class. The price is about 5 times the price of coach and what do you get? I believe its an extra 2 inches in inclination of your seat, an extra foot for leg room and yes a meal as opposed to the peanuts they throw at the people in steerage ...errrr...I mean coach. Thats what you get for an extra 1200 bucks. Is it really possible to get a good night sleep on a chair that barely reclines? Not for me.

SO I got home pretty beat.

Anyhow, today I finally setup the bike on my trainer. Put it in the basement ( THE IM Wisconsin training center of Somers ;) Did my workout.

The good news is that its looking like I may be able to forgo any further travel until February, that gives me 6 weeks of solid training and home time.

About Base training

The following is right from my coaches Blog( Johnhirsh.org) it is regarding the need to stick with Base training during the base phase.

"A lot of the athletes I coach have jumped into 5k and 10ks recently, not taking my not so subtle hints of telling them not too. Amazingly, they all seem to be hitting near or on their personal records despite the fact that they all have been training less than a few months since their breaks.

When athletes and I first talk, and we plan their run training, I get to spend some time talking them out of all the fancy run training. One thing that I think the majority of training programs have wrong is the need for speed work. I get why people want to do it. Its fun, the workout are dynamic. You think it's gonna make you fast, after all its called “speed” work, the proof is right there in the name! But the reality is that a huge majority, in fact almost everyone I have coached never properly build their run base. So the biggest gains come from more volume. One of my athletes for example did his first 40 mile week. [god bless you dude, as you had to do most of it on the treadmill even if the gym was full of eye candy]. He is running faster than ever, even though it's only his 2-3rd month of training, all base work.

Speed work kills volume. Here is how. First, your speed work is shorter. maybe 4 x 1 mile or 12 x 1/4 or 8 x 1/2 or something. that's only -4 miles or so. While a nice 1 hour base run is normally 7-8, about double that. Beyond that most athletes can’t bounce back from it, so they lose the next day. Now, instead of running 16 miles, 2 x 8 miles, you are running 4 [maybe a little more for a warm up and cool down].
Also, running isn’t easy. There are no junk miles. Junk miles running is called walking. Downhill. When I hike with a heart rate monitor I go above my recovery zone when I go uphill. That how easy you have to go to not be aerobic. So really all you need to go to get much faster at any race all the way down to a stand alone 5k is run more often. If you run more often, you will build volume, fitness and speed. All without speed work. This becomes even more true for longer races, and in a race like an ironman you don’t really need any speed work.

This is what people mean when they say they want to build “economy.” As you run more, you run faster at the same effort. At some point if you want to be wicked fast at a 5k you will need to add speed work, after you fail to get faster with a deep run base. But what ironman training has shown, is that athletes who train fort a long event and build Ironman base, see fast times at short distances.

The truth is people want short cuts, and running has no short cuts."

I have of course been following this advice as close as I can ( that's the benefit of getting a coach, you tend to stick to the plan a bit better) But I do have to say that it feels counter to what we have always been told for just about everything else which is TRAIN HARD. So it is difficult to jog along when I have this pent up energy just bursting to get out. I like the feeling of going out and kicking my own ass, when done you just feel like you did something.

Now I know that this stage is key to the rest of the season. My friend who also is the head running coach for Race with Purpose, Coach Adam, also agrees that base training is important. Although he does believe that after a good base training period its essential to also build on other aspects of your game such as speed and strength. So with such backing for a solid base period you just know its got to have merit. So despite my instinct to sabotage the training by going all out I intend on sticking to the plan.

Maybe I'll just have to think Angry thoughts while jogging to get myself emotionally tired, something like how I feel duped that the season for Heroes seems to be over due to this writers strike.

Portmanteu

I was looking up some information about one of the local towns here in southern Cali, Calexico in Wikipedia and found this:

"Calexico is a city in Imperial County, California, United States. The population was 27,109 at the 2000 census. It is part of the 'El Centro, California Metropolitan Statistical Area'. Calexico is about 122 miles east of San Diego and about 70 miles west of Yuma, Arizona. Its name, a portmanteau ***of California and Mexico, like that of the adjacent town of Mexicali emphasizes its importance as a border city."

What was that? ......Portna ahmina whatsa.... what? That's what I thought when I read that. Fortunately Wikipedia has a link to the definition. In short it means combining two words to come up with a new one.

Now really I dare anyone to tell me when is the next time this word will be used outside of scrabble. Maybe I am just an ignoramus dorkus, but isn't it easier to just say "A combination of two words"?

I don't know maybe this person has an inferiority complex. Who knows, maybe this person needs a date real bad.

Todays workout: run

A 1 hour workout on the treadmill, 5.26 mi, Max HR 168, Ave HR 143 Calories 603

Todays workout: Bike

Indoor stationary Bike 60 minutes Max HR 149, Ave HR 130 Calories 440

As I sat there watching the TV in the workout room, I was thinking that "Law and Order" could probably establish its own dedicated Cable channel. Everywhere I go, there seems to be a "Law and Order" showing, even Dubbed in Spanish in Chile.

12 miles in El Centro

So yesterday was suppossed to be my long/slow run. 12 miles. Unfortunatly I spent most of my day travelling so I did not get a chance to get it done. So I decided that I would get it done today. Now although I have been here maybe 6 times in the past two years, I am still not familiar with the roads between the major avenues. But I really did not want to spend 2 hours on the dreadmill soooo I asked some of the locals. They suggested I go to one of the local High schools where they have brand new tracks. Not really what I was looking for, I was kind of hoping there was a hidden park somewhere. But No. Still a track is better than nothing. So I started out from the Hotel, it was about 65 - 70 degrees. Nice and comfy. I was wearing a tech T and shorts. Figured with the run I would work up enough heat to keep me warm.

I was a bit worried about how to get to the track since the roads seem to be pretty busy. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that El Centro has invested in sidewalks, Allot of them. In fact Just about every place I look there are sidewalks, miles of them. Its funny Westchester NY has close to a million people and its hard to find a sidewalk outside of village centers. Yet here in El Centro "de Nada" there are sidewalks even in front of huge barren plots of land.

Anyhow, the run to the track was about 2 miles. There were some "questionable" areas where the doors seemed to be barred. Or shall I say there were bars with a little door behind them if you get my drift. Also they seem to like to leave their dogs out front, which a couple of times caused me to nearly Cr$p in my pants when I would suddenly find myself with a Sudden barking right next to me. Mostly though they were either tied out or behind fences.

Anyhow finally I got to the track and it was pretty nice. It was pretty active too. There was a tennis court next to it that was being used by local teens ( maybe the HS team?) and a little league soccer game going on in an adjoining field.

I spent the next hour and a half running loops on the track. Nice alternative to the treadmill. One thing though. In the time since I had left it got freaking cold ! I mean probably it dropped 15 degrees in the 2 hours since I left, by the time I was back at the hotel my fingers were numb from the cold.

Anyhow I managed to get my run in, so I felt great!

My stats were the following:

distance 12.05 Miles
Time 2:09:44
Max HR 158
Ave HR 135
calories 1172

Back on the road

Blogging from Lovely El Centro California. More info to come

Offseason Weight

Well its back! The offseason weight that I was so happy to have shed has returned. I am back to 165 lbs. I guess I can't say I am surprised. I have been eating like no how ( don't ask me what "like no how" means, i just heard someone say that). In my peak shape right before Tupper Lake last year I weighed 158 which was the lowest I have weiged in possibly 15 years. However, for my frame ( 5' 6") I believe the recommended weight is 140, so I was still overweight.

However, for some reason I just feel 140 would be scrawney for me. So really my goal is more like 150. That should help me get rid of the belly too. And most importantly...My power to weight ratio !! Better hill climbing! At some point I'll work on some nutrition plan. But for now I believe acknowledging the problem took more out of me than I expected. Better go have a bagel ;)

Endurance swim today

Total 65 minutes

W/U 200 SW
400,300,200,100 Mod pace with :20RI
300,200,100 Neg Split with :25 RI
200 Fast :30 RI
100 Fast :30 RI
4x150 Pull :20 RI

Total yards 2700

This workout came out of the "Swim Workouts for Triathletes" which I like because its a little book that all the pages are waterproof. So I have all the workouts right there without having to deal with soggy paper and baggies etc. The last time I did that I had F' ed up the paper so bad by half way through I could not read it anymore. I HATE that! Grrr

Today Two fer workout day. I traded the swim from today to tommorow and did the hills run today

Workout 1 -

45 minutes on the indoor cycle in NYSC ave HR 127


Workout 2 -

Run 1:08:25
7.3 miles
Ave HR 151

hills for today

Simba's pet peeve

Had a planned 60 minute run today.

The plan was 60 minutes HR between 12-150

Today I met the goal completly. Ran almost exactly 60 minutes.

Actual numbers:

Run time 1:00:39
Distance 6.4 miles
Ave Pace 9.28 min/mile
Ave HR 147

All in all a good run. But COLD!!! It was hard getting up but after realizing the amount of work I need to do I came to the conclusion that its time to buckle down. SO I got up at 5AM and ran in the dark. I have to guess it was something like 25 degrees. Freezing! But I did warm up eventually. I discovered that Simba, my dog has a real issue with those decorative reindeer that are lit up and move their head slowly. We ran past two of them and she was ready to destroy them. Not digging the moving head reindeer. Not at all.

Swim T-time

Well back from Chile, and amongst the first workouts back is to establish my T time in the pool. This is done with 3 x 300 with a small rest period in between. The get the average of each of the 100's done. The idea is to come up with a pace that is fairly consistent. In other words the last 300 should be within 15 seconds of the first 300. Also manage to do this while doing them as hard as you can.

Well I did my first test today, and don't really know if I did them correct. I was pretty consistent 1st 300 was 365 second, 366 seconds and last 300 was 375 seconds. The average was 122.8 seconds per 100 or 2:02. Which I believe is pretty slow. In fact if I look at the chart for T1 times in "Workouts in a binder" it is literally slower than the last sample in the chart which was 2:00 per 100. YES folks I have my work cutout for me!

Workout: Swimming - T1 test 100 warm up 3X300 total 1000 meters