Starting Over

Here we go again. I have 24 weeks in this year's log and 20 weeks to Ironman, more or less.

Averages per week this year:

• Swim: 334 yards (zero for fully 20 of those weeks, since I never got meds to swim in the indoor pools, and I would get sick without them. Fortunately outdoor pools seem okay so far.)
• Bike: 29.8 miles (better than I had thought!)
• Run: 10.6 miles (fairly average for me).

Hmm. Compared to this time in 2006, when I was preparing for Ironman Florida (which I DNFd halfway through the run), that's about 2975 fewer yards swimming per week, 19.4 fewer bike miles per week, and 4.8 fewer run miles per week. That's not good! But my paces are faster now and my body weight lower, so that's in my favor. And while I'm 3 years older, I've also got 3 more years of base training and triathlon experience.

Now I need to gradually bring up the swim total within a week by about, oh, roughly 10X - 20X, the bike by about 4X-6X, and the run by about 2X. Not in every week, though, the overall weekly averages in the next 24 weeks will be somewhat less since I'll focus more heavily on single disciplines each week.

Bring it on.

Solo training camp

After coming off a very unexpectedly positive experience at Columbia, I'm looking at trying to get in some very quick preparations for Eagleman half Ironman in 3 weeks. It's going to be tricky to balance the training I want to do before then and still get in a good taper to start the race day strong and well-rested. I also want to get in several Long Slow Distance workouts to try to burn off some of the calories that have accumulated on my hips in the last six weeks of measly workouts!

These are my tentative targets for the next 2 weeks of workouts:
175 miles cycling (including 2 sessions of high-intensity intervals in the next 10 days)
34 miles running (including 2 track workouts of high-intensity intervals in the next 10 days)
5000 yards swimming

Let's see how far I can make it towards that. Keep your fingers crossed that I won't have to back off the training to keep my lungs from relapsing into Gunk City. So far I've just managed two slow recovery jogs for a total of 8.0 miles of slow running.

Unfortunately this will probably mean that I'll have to skip the very fun annual Cambridge Multi-Sport practice triathlon, in favor of getting my road mileage done. I'll be sorry to miss it.

Whoops!

I just realized tonight that I've scheduled two half marathons within 7 days: 13.1 planned (a 5K jog after a 10-mile race) tomorrow on Sunday, and than a regular half marathon on the following Saturday.

That was not part of the actual plan. It just happened.

Oh well....

Don't give me that "fail to plan, plan to fail" jive.