Month: October 2007

Funny stuff..

Lee Gruenfeld Ever do an Ironman? Not likely! – IRONMAN.com

and very close to the truth!

Another solid training week:

One of the things I need to work on this season is conquering the fear of pain. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the fear of pain while riding MTB, but I do need to get over the fear of pain during a hard run or race.

Yesterday’s run was going to be the 1st HARD run of the season. My had me scheduled for a 60 min Z2 run with a 5 min Z4 set at the 45 min point. All through the first part of the run I felt tense and hesitant. My body wanted to go, but my head was holding me back. I finally realized that I was feeling fear. I was afraid of the hard effort and discomfort. Once I got through the ‘a-ha’ moment, I was able to focus and hammer the 5 min run. I think I was averaging 7:30ish mile pace for the 5 minutes. I even saw a 6:46 pace flash up on the Garmin. Woah! that never happened before!

I left the “paper tiger” burning behind me.

Last week was a solid training week for me:

Week Totals
Type Distance Duration
Stretch: 01:30
Weights: 01:25
Bike: 109.3 mi 07:07
Run: 20.0 mi 03:11
Swim 4450.0 yd 01:23
Total Duration: 14:36

Went longish on the run on Saturday, and VERY long on the bike on Sunday at the CBBC Covered Bridge Tour. I’m tired, but feeling good for gettin’ er done…

Lessing’s reaction on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Gotta love a skeptic..

Ok campers, here we go… 100% recovered from the flu, and ready to rock. I’m participating in Wil’s Through The Wall Off Season Shape Up so here are the numbers and the before pic:

Weight: 159.0
BF% 11.9%
Muscle Mass 133.0 lbs

Yeah, I know it looks like a mug shot. Gimme a break, I took it at about 7:00am, and I had a hard time balancing the camera on the treadmill.

My goals for this event is to bring my BF% down under 10%, weight down under 155 and increase muscle mass, all by January 1st. I don’t think I have a prayer of winning the contest, because I just don’t have that much to lose, but it will be fun trying, and watching the rest of the virtual team go after their goals.

What’s my plan? Basically getting back to IronFit eating & training

(1) Portion Control
(2) Cutting out “happy hour”
(3) Increase volume of workouts
(4) Hitting weights hard, adding a weekly Pilates class.

Pretty simple eh?

Fever broke late Wednesday night, and I started to feel like a human again on Friday. Saturday I attended the American Heart Walk event at Duke Island Park.
Your’s truly in the middle of the poster
I didn’t do the walk, but felt that I had to appear as I was the ‘feature’ in the “Inspire Change” tent. I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands, and was wiped out at the end of the day. Sunday was spent puttering on the computer, reading and napping.

This morning I was itchin’ to get back to work, so I hit the gym at 5:30 for a light weight workout and then headed to the office. In the evening I went to my 1st Pilate’s class. Now I’m sore from knees to nipples, but feeling 100% better.

Tomorrow I’m off to DC for meetings on Wed. I’ve got some plans to get in my swim and run tomorrow and brick/weights on Wed. I’m still planning on hitting 100% for the week, so let’s see what happens…

My ‘consistent training’ goal goes 1-3. Tuesday, I slept in late, but still managed to get in my run (5 mile, Z2) and my swim (2350 yds). Tuesday evening, I felt like I had some post-nasal drip, and a bit of a sore throat. Very early Wednesday morning, I wake up shivering and covered in sweat. A visit to the Dr. confirmed that I have the flu. I’ll likely be down for about a week.

Great

I’ve got a weekend full of plans that need to be reorganized. Friday night we were supposed to see “Happy Days” at the Playhouse. We are hoping to be able to give these tickets to someone else.

Saturday I was supposed to be helping with the J&J tent at the American Heart Assoc. Heart Walk. The J&J tent is titled “Inspire Change”:

The purpose of our tent is to inspire change in the daily lives of our participants that reduces risk of heart disease and stroke. As a volunteer, your job would be to interact and talk with your fellow community walkers visiting our tent. We are looking for upbeat and motivated individuals who have a passion for health and fitness and would like to share this passion with others. Your time would be spent interactively motivating and encouraging fellow community members to get healthy, perhaps learn from you what has worked, what has kept you motivated and what keeps you forward-focused! Any amount of time you can donation is appreciated.

I’m hoping I’ll feel good enough to participate, because I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time.

Sunday, I was going to flog myself around the 100 mile Carpe Diem bike ride. I’ve already paid the entry fee and donation minimum, so I’m hoping Hootus will ride for me.

Getting sick sucks… Plus, there is nothing on daytime TV. It almost makes me want to go into the office…

I received my 1st new workout schedule from my coach in almost 10 months. I stepped away from scheduled training in mid-winter due to a short financial “blip” and the feeling that since I wasn’t doing IM in 2007, I didn’t need a coach. As the year went buy in a series of no-training weeks, followed by 5-10 days of intense, frustrating self-led training, I knew that I needed some help.

After watching and volunteering at IMUSA, I knew exactly what I wanted to do for 2008. I wanted to go back and run the same events that I ran for the first time in 2005.

All of them.

And set PR’s in all of them

Talking about throwing down the gauntlet.

And now, dear reader, I will share them with you as a form of commitment. You keep reading here, and I’ll keep posting my progress. Come along for the ride, won’t you?

A: Races:
NJ Marathon – sub-4:00. It’s payback time for the bitch-slap I got from NJM in 2007
Eagleman: 5:15. Previous PR: 5:55 – 2005
IMLP: 12:00-12:30. Previous PR: 13:11 – 2005

B: Races
Giralda Farms 10k: sub-:50 Previous PR: 50:56
Joe Klienerman 10k: sub-:50 Previous PR: 50:25
E Murray Todd 1/2 Marathon: 1:45. Previous PR: 1:55ish
FIRMan 1/2 IM 5:15 or PR – Previous PR: 5:22 – 2005 & overall PR for the 1/2

So there you have it. Some real challenges are in store. The biggest is to be consistent in my training. That starts bright & early tomorrow morning.

Yep! Weazer finished the 45 mile option of the MS-150 bike ride. She swears that she even had fun. Pictures below:

Conditions couldn’t have been better. It was a tad windy, but temps were perfect, sunny and cool, never getting beyond the mid-70’s. In the 7 year’s I’ve done this ride, the weather has NEVER been better.

I’m so proud of Fran for working hard to achieve this goal. Next year we’re going to push up to the full 75 mile ride, and maybe even the full-150 two day ride.