Sore Left Knee

For some reason my left knee is pretty sore. It started mid-day yesterday and got pretty bad last night. I woke up this morning pain free, but as of an hour ago it started to hurt a bit again. I swam a very strong 1500 meter swim at lunch yesterday at 24 min 30 seconds. Even splits on the 500 meters of 8 min 3 seconds 8:15 and 8:03. That felt great. Since my knee hurts, I am going to go swim a long 4000 meter (2.5 mile) swim today after work. If we have no rain tomorrow, I plan to bike with my coach. If it rains, I'll be banished to the garage for another exhilarating 3 hour training session going nowhere. Pray for dry weather.

A great couple of training days

I feel really good right now because I have been sticking to my plan. Tuesday I swam a hard 1500 meter swim. I finished in 24min 50 sec with very even splits per 500 meter. That felt great. Last night I got home and did a hard 35 minute run (about 4.5 miles) right at dusk with some very ominuous looking clouds approaching. No rain though. This morning I got up and rode Doug's Handcycle ( something like the photos to the right) to his house and then went for a run. He just had new gearing added to his bike and it works great. I kinda wish I had one of these to work out on as they give you a great upper body workout. The run this morning was probably about 3 miles. It was a pretty easy pace. I am going to try to get in a swim at lunch today. We will see. We had some really long meetings this morning at work that are going to eat into my day.

Pray for a dry weekend so that I can get in some good riding.

Rest Day

I did it. I spent yesterday as a true recovery day. I swapped out my run this morning for a swim that I am going to do at lunch because my legs are still kinda sore. I'll go swim 2500-3000 meters in a bit. Hopefully it will rain while I am swimming. I love doing swim workouts in the rain.

Sunday Long Run

My legs hurt! There you have it. It is Monday morning and my legs feel super heavy. It's not the kind of pain you get when you go back to the gym and do a heavy workout, it's more like an achy dense pain that is deep in the muscles. I got up yesterday morning and ran 11 or so miles. About 4-5 miles of this run course is a sustained uphill grade and yesterday added a 15-20 mph headwind for about half of that. But, when I turned the corner for the last mile of downhill run to my house and picked up a tailwind man did I feel great. I was running a low 5 minute mile pace at the end of a long run and that really swelled my ego. It was a great weekend of training and today I am doing what my coach says is the most important day- rest. This may sound strange, but that is actually pretty tough to do. I'd love to go do a light run, or a light swim- but I need to let my body repair itself. So today I will relax.

Up to speed

So much has happened since my last post. Here is the recap. Last Friday I bought a new house, which meant I had to sell the 2 I have currently. And with the tremendous amount of stress it put me under, my training started to go to crap. Last Saturday I got in a 50 minute training session on the bike trainer which should have been a 3 hour ride at minimum. Sunday, I was supposed to run, but instead I was painting and laying tile at my house in Alta Loma. Monday I blew off for no good reason and by Tuesday I decided that I needed to get back to working out, if for no other reason than as a stress outlet. So Tuesday and Thursday I got 1 hour spin sessions on the bike trainer. Then came the phone call. Thursday afternoon Dan Christensen called me. Dan is the guy who owns Foothill Cyclery, where I buy all of my bike stuff. He raced the California 1/2 Ironman last Saturday and had a respectable race time. In fact, he bettered his previous best time and was a bit faster than my best time. Dan loves to instigate rivalry and he and I go back and forth a lot. We are pretty darned equal on the bike. He is a better swimmer and I have a better 1/2 marathon time than him. I am pretty sure I can beat him in a head-to-head race and he feels that he can beat me. To say the least, when we do race, we will both end up in a lot of pain. We will find out July 30th in Sonoma at the Vineman 1/2 Ironman race.
Yesterday I put in an awesome ( and I think Dan would even say so) 1500 meter swim and a short 30 minute run. Tomorrow I plan a 2 hour run and today my friend Joe and I put in an epic ride.
Maybe next time I'll read the course description before I head out on the ride. Yesterday Joe Vasquez suggested we do the Rotary ride at the Tour of Redlands. Having done the Tour of the Canyons in the past, I thougth I knew what was in store for me and when he said it was only 60 miles, I thought to myself, wow, I even get 12 miles less than years past. Was I in for a surpise. The course t-shirt said "Savage" about the course ( I saw that 30 miles into the ride) and the description says 5'000 feet of climbing with grades up to 22%. In short, this ride goes down as one of the best courses I've ridden and I had a blast. Many times on many stretches of this course I found my front tire lifting off the ground while my legs begged me to get off the bike and walk.

Feeling Better

So far today, I am feeling 100% better than yesterday. I have a busy night scheduled but the plan is to get on the bike trainer for at least 45 minutes tonight. That'll probably take place at around midnight with everything I have going on tonight. Tomorrow morning, I am going to meet Ron at Citrus College to get my swim critiqued. That should be a really good thing.

Sick Day

At least once a training cycle, IT happens. What is IT, you ask? IT is the cold or flu that my kids give me just as my training is starting to get into a rhythm. I mean, how many times can you wipe a runny nose, and avoid getting the cold yourself? And IT happened last night on the way to dinner at Islands. It started with some pain in the ears, then a tingling in the throat- and as of right now, that is where it has stopped- and hopefully will not progress any further. I took the day off from work, slept in and have been returning phone calls and emails from bed. I blew off my swim training this morning and hope to get to some light spinning or running tomorrow. We will see.

Spinning in the Garage

Chris' Triathlon Training Ramblings
I got up this morning and did 45 minutes on my bike trainer in the garage. I watched Jackie Chan's "Around the World in 80 Days" to help with the incredible boredom of sitting in the garage at 5:30 in the morning on a bike trainer. The thing about riding on a trainer is, and especially in the morning, you spend the whole time talking yourself out of getting off and going back to bed. The more you can do to distract yourself through either friends or movies, the better. It does pay off though when you hit the road.
Tomorrow morning I am meeting a friend of mine named Ron so that he can fine tune my swimming. That means a 5 am wake up call for a 1 hour drive each way to spend 30 minutes in the pool. I hope it pays off. I'll let you know.

Training Day

Here is my first foray into keeping a blog. We'll see how it goes. I am hoping to be able to spend a few minutes in here daily to keep those of you who read my newsletter up to date on my training as I get ready for at least 3 Half-Iron distance races. I'll try to keep these posts short, while at the same time give you some insight into how I am feeling both physically and mentally.
Coach Tony, my coach, would call today a training day, even though I did nothing, because it was a scheduled recovery day. Saturday, Doug, Joe and I did a 3-hour Spinerval session on bike trainers in the garage that was brutal and I am still recovering. Yesterday I was supposed to run, but the weather was crummy outside and I was tired from Saturday, so I chased the kids around the house all day instead. Tomorrow's plan calls for 1 hour on the bike trainer. Now that I have to answer to this blog, I'll have to get my butt out of bed at 5:30 and actually do it. I'll let you know how it goes.