First tri of 2009

It wasn't official. More of a practice than anything else but it involved a 30 minute swim, 2 hour bike and 10 minute run. This was the first time the bike's been out. And I LOVE it! What a great ride. So worth the wait!

Irish For a Day 10 Mile

This was an interesting one. A friend sent me email asking if I wanted to have another friends bib. This other friend had already registered for the run but opted out because of an injury. It's been since October since I ran any sort of race so I thought it'd be a good idea. Especially to test to see how my IT band would react.

The run itself was three lake loops: Once around Harriet, once around Calhoun, and back around Harriet again. The route was gorgeous. I haven't run around the lakes in a while so it was nice to get back around them and see the area. And the weather was nice as well. It was floating around the mid 30's and sunny. All in all a very pleasant day for a run.

Sparing the mundane details I finished pretty much at 1:18 putting my days pace at 7:48/mile. This time last year I'd have considered this a disappointing pace. But, it was my first race since my IT band band injury in October and it's the longest I've gone since then as well. All in all I'm pleased with the day. The run was kept at a pretty consistent pace, a lot of my friends showed up as well as some faces I haven't seen in a long time, and most of all no IT band pain. I'd say this was a very successful day.

I did stop at my favorite coffee stop in Linden Hills (Coffee & Tea Ltd.) and treated myself to some well earned caffeine goodness.

Until next time.

2009 Tour de Tonka 75 Mile Route

In case anyone wanted to know. I'm more of a visual kind of guy anyway. Check it out.

2009 City of Lakes Loppet

This was my first ski event and it was a BLAST! The weather couldn't have been nicer, the crowd was amazing, support was spectacular, and the energy of the skiers was brilliant. I'm so glad I did this event. Plus, all finishers got a medal. How cool was that?

Follow the link below for full map and all other statistical information if you'd like to see the route of the REI tour.
Official results are here. Not bad IMHO. The irony is I skied the 10K in about as much time as it takes me to run a 10K. This gives me a whole new point of view on pacing through an event.

Already a busy weekend

This training schedule I have myself on is crazy. So far no walking while I figure out why my right IT band is being stupid. In the mean time I'm getting a LOT of swimming and biking done.

Yesterday was a dedicated swim day. The workout was pretty straightforward but long:

Warm Up

400 Swim - 200 Kick - 200 Pull

Main Set

1200 Swim minimizing strokes per length and keeping it aerobic
60 second rest
800 Swim minimizing strokes per length and keeping it aerobic

Cool Down

4 x 50 slow

That took about an hour to get done. Today's workout was just about as crazy. Today was a bike followed by a run. I skipped the run because of the nagging IT band but definitely got the bike done.

The bike was essentially 30 miles comprised of two sets of 11.2 miles, three sets of isolated leg training, and two 20 minute gearing pyramids.

Needless to say I was spent at the end of that and needed to take a nap.

Anyway, my training is still on track and I'm still hopeful I can pull out a full IronMan by the end of August.

Tuesday Cycle

I'm going to try to be a bit more prudent with my postings. That doesn't really leave me with a lot of time to post lengthy articles but at least I'm getting something up here for all to see.

This past weekend I "downgraded" to a Garmin Forerunner 305 from the newer (and extremely shitty) Forerunner 405 and feel much more happy already. The one disadvantage I find so far is its inability to load into Garmin Connect. We're still using Motionbased. Motionbased isn't bad at all but the problem part is it won't upload a workout unless there's actually GPS data involved. Which means if I'm sitting inside with the GPS off and using it with my cadence monitor on my stationary bike it won't upload the workout. My workaround to that is the below picture. It's a screen shot from Garmin's Training Center program and has the data listed about today's workout.

Not a bad workout all things considered. I also had to do some core workout and some cardio but I'm skipping those in favor of seeing a college buddy of mine who's in town for business. I'm thinking this is a fair trade off.

Keeping Busy

I haven't forgotten about the blog. I'm sure my avid readers (that'd be you) are anxious to know what's been going on. To assuage your curiosity I've been following an IronMan training schedule from trifuel.com that keeps me pretty busy 6 out of 7 days of the week. On top of that I'm keeping up with strength training so that I reduce the possibility of injury this season. I also took back that shitty Garmin Forerunner 405 and replaced it with a 305. Don't get me started on that. Garmin made a huge engineering debacle out of the new Forerunner and there is absolutely no reason to "upgrade" to the 405 unless you think you look like an idiot with a 305.

Also, on my quick synopsis of life events, my bike building friend told me he can get the rest of the stuff I need (wheel set, drop down handlebars, seat and stem) for around $1,100. That just leaves me with having to buy the aerobars, handlebar tape, cables, and the expense of putting the thing together. That aside I'm going to have a rockin' bike when this is all said and done.

Finally, in a bit of unfortunate news, during todays 6 mile trot my right knee just started to bother me a bit. This is horribly disappointing and almost frustrating to the point where I'm going to see a doctor, get x-rays, MRIs, whatever, to figure out EXACTLY what the hell is wrong and fix it once and for all. I'm not giving up hope that there's a cheap and quick way to fix this using massage, foam roller, and ice. But one step at a time.

In any case, next week starts week 5 of the IM training so hopefully things will keep going as they have been.

Here's today's map:


UPDATE: I went skiing at Elm Creek Park Reserve with Drew, my friend from Team in Training. He's a super athlete and really gave me a run for my money. Ironically I skied further today than I ran.

Here's today's ski.