Health Fitness

Tuesday Training Update: Schedule Change

I usually try to give a triathlon training update on Tuesdays, but it’s Wednesday. I will go ahead and complete this update to stay consistent. I couldn’t post last week either, so this is a two week training build.

The last two weeks have been a time change that can often occur in the life of an amateur triathlete when family and work responsibilities conflict with training. We just started school here in North Carolina, which means major changes to my family’s morning routine and therefore my training routine. If I am going to exercise, it has to be before my family wakes up at 6:30 am. This is early, but it’s what I’m used to based on the last few years of training.

The Swim: I’m still working fervently on form. I have decided to split my workouts into two parts during the off-season. I want to do drills and form practices during my training at the beginning of the week. Use exercises such as catch-up, fingertip shuffling, and clenched fists. I also use form exercises specific to full immersion swimming, such as dead man’s float, side kick drills, water balance, and placing my hand in the water. Each of these exercises helps me learn muscle memory for my form. The second half of the week I’m trying to incorporate resistance. I started this last week with a solid 30 minute swim in the pool. This is much easier than trying to count the lapses of which I always lose count. I just swim a set amount of minutes trying to maintain good form and focus. This gets monotonous in a pool, but I think it will help keep my stamina up for the season. I’m tracking 100 on the trail using my TomTom Multisport watch. I also let the watch track my total distance. I’m trying not to stop at all. I discovered this last week that I tend to keep good form at the beginning of the swim, but towards the end my hips started to droop and I tended to have sub-par form. This will have to improve with these endurance swims.

The run: Like the swim, I’m trying to do some shorter interval sets earlier in the week, since I have less time in the mornings. Then I’m trying to do longer endurance runs at the end of the week. My wife just started work, so now I have Fridays to train. It rained a bit last week so I couldn’t do all my runs. I ran Labor Day doing 10 miles at 8:24 pace. That’s a good strong pace for me with a medium effort. I am having some pain in my foot. It seems to be on my bow and on my Achilles. I will have to control this to avoid more serious injuries.

The bike: I’m using my indoor trainer for my shortest, most intense rides. I haven’t been able to go out for a couple of weeks, but I plan to do so this week. I started watching a new TV series on Netflix while training called “Leverage”. Holds my attention. I do 5-minute work with 3-minute rest intervals during my workouts earlier in the week. So I’m trying to go 1 1/2 to 2 hours on an endurance run. I’m having trouble finding a way to measure a force increase since I don’t have a power meter. I wish I could ask a Lemond Trainer to measure power so I could see my improvement in this area. I measure my wrinkles by my heart rate which shows my intensity. It’s hot right now where I’m riding so this could throw off my heart rate without improving my strength. I’ll have to monitor this outside.

Strength: I’m building in some abdominal strength and core strength this offseason. I’m using a 30 day AB challenge in addition to doing half pushup crunches and half oblique crunches. Hopefully this will keep me toned and help me lose the belly fat that has plagued me.

Weight Loss – I ran this year at 180-182. Next year I want to run at 170-172. This means that I need to lose weight from my midsection. I have some “love tires” that need to be turned into “similar rains”. I must reduce in this area. I am changing some elements of the diet to not eat so much sugar.

Everything goes well in the off season. The biggest challenges right now are scheduling and weight loss.

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