Professional Triathlete Training Log - Weekly Swim, Bike, and Run Miles For Sept 24 - Sept 30

Getting Gas in Cali - I Could Never Live There

I'm back in Tucson and the first week of training went great.  After lots of racing and the transition to a new environment, I wasn't exactly sure how the body would respond, but my body seemed to be firing on all cylinders despite the tremendous heat and the dusty environment that seems to really trigger the allergies.  The biggest mishap this week was bringing Powerbar Gel Blasts to the pool.  They completely melted on a September day - this would never happen even on the hottest day in Wisconsin and is reminder of how different life can be across different geographical locations.

As for my training, I will say that the time has come where I need to get serious about my run.  For those that have heard me preach, you know that I am not a huge advocate for most triathletes having a heavy focus on running.  It just doesn't make sense in my opinion, and I myself have followed my own advice as I have worked tirelessly on my swim and bike. However, I have reached a point where the lowest hanging fruit is probably going to come from the run.  Yes there are still improvements that can be made with the swim and bike, but I'm going to focus more and more attention on the run and that started this week.  Now, my Achilles is no where back to 100%, but it is much better than say in June-July and I feel comfortable bumping up my mileage as I gear up for running centric races including Ironman Florida and Ironman Arizona.  Given that last 5 years have been focused on swimming and biking it will be interesting to see if I can make a similar transformation to my run.  We shall see.

Here are my weekly swim, bike, and run totals:

Total: 177 Miles / 19 hours 15 minutes

Swim: 22,200 yards / ~13 miles / 6 hours 08 minutes
Bike: 121 miles / 7 hours 31 minutes
Run: 43 miles /  5 hours 33 minutes
Core:  0 sessions / 0 hours 0 minutes

Weight: N/A
Body Fat: N/A

Calories Consumed: N/A
Calories Burned: N/A

Professional Triathlete Training Log - Weekly Swim, Bike, and Run Miles For Sept 17 - Sept 23

My New Wyoming Friend

This is the last week that the training update will be late. Starting this week I will be back to publishing on Sunday night or Monday morning. For the last few weeks I felt like my life has been in constant transition, but now I am finally back in Tucson and I am planning to get back to some actual training once I get settled in.

This past week I packed up all my possessions - minus a few things (mainly my professional clothes) - and headed for Bend Oregon to race Lifetime Fitness' Epic 250 Leadman Triathlon.  As you may have heard, I had a pretty good day at Leadman and finished 3rd.  This was actually the first time I have ever put together a good race in conjunction with a cross-country move.

Normally I would do the 2000 mile drive in two days, but this time around I decided to tackle it in a more reasonable 3 days.  For those counting, the furthest single travel day I have ever done was ironically 1460 miles, exactly 10 times the distance of Ironman.  However, this time around I broke it up and did some training and less traveling per day.  On Wednesday morning I had a great bike/run combo in beautiful Laramie Wyoming.  I also made sure to get settled into my accommodations each night at a reasonable hour and put a heavy focus on stretching and foam rolling to keep the body fresh and loose.

In the end I didn't get in a lot of training this week but here are my weekly swim, bike, and run totals:

Total: 201 Miles / 11 hours 55 minutes

Swim: 8,400 yards / ~5 miles / 2 hours 14 minutes
Bike: 178 miles / 7 hours 42 minutes
Run: 18 miles /  1 hours 58 minutes
Core:  0 sessions / 0 hours 0 minutes

Weight: N/A
Body Fat: N/A

Calories Consumed: N/A
Calories Burned: N/A

Professional Triathlete Training Log - Weekly Swim, Bike, and Run Miles For Sept 10 - Sept 16

Shipping the mountain bike to Tucson

Argh, super late on my weekly update again.  Don't blame me though as I was busy doing my 25th move in the past 12 years, along with driving 2000 miles, across like 7 mountain ranges, and 3 wildfires.  I always forget how difficult and time consuming moving can be, but nonetheless I haven't missed a weekly update since I started and I was reminded by some fellow pros tonight at the Leadman Pro meeting that people actually read this and find it helpful.  Post Ironman weeks are interesting weeks so I will reflect on what exactly I did for recover week.

Monday: Went for a good 3.5 mile walk, physically still ok and mentally very strong.

Tuesday: Always my toughest day following Ironman and the systems felt weak.  Went for a very short easy swim just to flush out waste but I was pretty much dead.

Wednesday:  Easy swim, easy 7 mile run, easy bike.  Felt ok.

Thursday: Easy longer swim ~3.5k, easy bike.  Felt better.

Friday: Easy long swim 6K, 3x8 on the bike with equal rest done below V02 max, transition run with mainset as 4x1 miles continuous descending from 70.3 pace to Olympic pace.  Run was absolutely sick, best run since St. George build.

Saturday: Longer bike with 3x30 intervals done at 70.3 pace but I couldn't even hold 70.3 pace.  Intervals done with 10 minutes rest but I was really hurting on this ride.  Tried a short run afterward but killed it after I decided I didn't want to nuke myself any further.  You have to be able to listen to your body and I feel this is one of my greatest strengths.

Sunday: Hard swim, 10x200.  Hard run with mainset as 2x2 mile at Olympic pace with 2 minute rest in between.

Overall it was a pretty typical Ironman week given that I had to juggle recovery with also trying to keep some fitness for Leadman Bend the following week (now in two days as I write this). Overall my running is way better than it has been as of late and I'm not sure what to attribute this to other than being forced to do some solid running from my last racing block of two half Ironmans and two Ironmans.  But as is triathlon, the increased run performance was offset but a decrease in my bike performance.  Hopefully the bike legs show up on race day at Leadman on this Saturday.

Here are my weekly swim, bike, and run totals:

Total: 133 Miles / 13 hours 12 minutes

Swim: 16,322 yards / ~9 miles / 4 hours 42 minutes
Bike: 103 miles / 5 hours 53 minutes
Run: 21 miles /  2 hours 35 minutes
Core:  0 sessions / 0 hours 0 minutes

Weight: N/A
Body Fat: N/A

Calories Consumed: N/A
Calories Burned: N/A