Race Schedule Taking Shape: All This Stuff Seems Like a Good Idea to Me Now

Here's what is on tap for 2010, thus far. I'll probably pick up a couple more road races and at least two or three more triathlons. We'll see how smart I feel when it's all said and done.

Signed up and paid for:

March 13 - St. Malachi's 5 miler (Cleveland)
April 24 - Hermes 10 Miler (Cleveland)
July 11 - Musselman Half Ironman (Geneva, NY)
August 8 - Greater Cleveland Triathlon, Olympic Distance (Mentor, OH)
September 12 - Rev3 Cedar Point 140.6 Ironman (Sandusky, OH)
October 22-23 - Bourbon Chase Relay, 200 mile 12 man relay (Bourbon County, KY)

Races I'll almost certainly do:

May 16 - Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon, Half Marathon (Cleveland)
July 10- Winking Lizard Shot In The Dark, 4 miler (Cleveland)
July 25 - Fairport Harbor Pirate Triathlon, Sprint (Fairport Harbor, OH)
August 22 - Bellfaire Biathlon, 5k run, 13mi bike (University Heights, OH)

Week of February 8th -14th

I am sick of the winter. This week's totals:

Swim - 5 miles. Maybe a little less. I had to cut one swim a bit short due to work crap.

Bike - 4:10. I am definitely ready to ride outside, but I am not doing it in this weather. My trainer is sucking years off my life.

Run - 15.5 miles. About 5.5mi of tempo and intervals on the treadmill earlier this week and then about ten outside today with the wife. Before this week, I hadn't done any higher heart stuff in quite a while. I was pretty anxious about it, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I repeated a bunch of quarter miles at a six minute mile pace. I repeated some half miles just before that at around a 6:30 pace. All with a heart rate of 170 or below-well, all except for the last one.

Above is a photo of the trail we run on Sundays. It's white and frozen now though.

Gettin' Multitasked

Right after the bar exam, I practically lost my mind. All of the sudden I had more time than I knew what to do with. I went from working all day and then studying for 6-8 hours when I got home to coming home with nothing to do. It sucked. I didn't know what to do with my evenings. My parents got so sick of hearing "I'm bored" from me that they bought me a Playstation. I am a little worried that I'll feel the same way after this race in September.

I have been hitting 10-12 hours of workouts per week pretty regularly. Those hours will be double that at the peak of the summer, but I have been picking up a bunch of other time commitments too. There has been a little legal work on the side for some friends. I just got elected to the board of directors of a community development corporation. Campaigning tied up a bunch of evenings. Thank goodness that's over. I've also been helping out with some family issues. Don't get me wrong, I like being busy. If there isn't a ton of stuff on my plate, I can be lazy. The amount of work we have to do always seems to expand to fill our hours.

Workout summaries from the past three weeks:

January 18-24

Swam 5 miles
Biked 3:50
Ran 16+ miles

January 25-31

Swam 5 miles
Biked 3:40
Ran 12 miles
We went skiing in N.Y. over the weekend, so that wiped out some of my running over the course of the week. 7 hours of skiing.

February 1-7

Swam 5 miles
Biked 5:30
Ran about 21 miles

This week will be a little lighter, but there is a bit more intensity. Tomorrow is my first day off in two weeks. I probably won't know what to do with myself.

Runnin' Slow

This year I decided to get a bit more scientific with all this triathlon training crap. Last year was the first year that I actually planned some workouts in advance and kept what you might even consider to be a workout journal. Now I have a real plan. It's from the Internet, so it's awesome.

Part of this training plan involves a lot more heart rate based training. I've had a heart rate monitor for a while and I had been wearing it. Problem is, up until now, I just kinda stared at the thing. It was a novelty--something to take my mind off the whistling noise my lungs make when I am gassed. Actually using the thing properly has been rough, and for the first month or so, I nearly stopped using it. I am teaching my body to do the same amount of work without letting my heart rate go through the roof. We're about half way through February and six weeks into my training plan, and I am finally starting to see some results. I have no idea whether this will mean jack during a race, but I am able to do a bit more with a lower heart rate than I could earlier. And that is what I think about when I am running like a chump to keep my hr down. At 60-65% of my maximum heart rate, I can bang out some screaming twelve minute miles. At 70%, I run world class nine to ten minute miles. I understand all that jive about training your body to use more fat than the sugars in your blood stream, but I am pretty sure I can eat a bowl of soup while running that freaking slow. At 75%, which is where I spend most of my time right now, I am finally getting my pace into the low eights. That's better, but I want at least another minute off of that. We'll see if that happens.