April Training Notes

This month my totals looked like

	Distance	Time
Swim	38,000 yards	10:50 hours
Bike	149.38 miles	10:15 hours
Run	35.48 miles	5:35 hours

Last Month

	Distance	Time
Swim	34,400 yards	9:50 hours
Bike	155.25 miles	10:30 hours
Run	48.5 miles	7:25 hours
Strength		1:20 hours

April 2012

	Distance	Time
Swim	39,400 yards	11:50 hours
Bike	270 miles	15:30 hours
Run	69 miles	10:20 hours

Overall
Things seem to be going well, it's been a cool spring so far and I think I'm about at my breaking point for indoor workouts. Compared to last year these numbers look tiny, but last year I was training for 70.3 races, not sprints. This year is mostly about speed, and less about endurance, so I'm doing higher intensity, and lower volume.

Swim
I'm having a good time swimming. This year my lane is full of people who are much faster than me, so it's an interesting degree of challenge, because even when the intervals aren't that challenging my lane mates seem to be going much faster than me ... and I like to keep up, so I try.

Bike
All trainer rides but two, here's to hoping we get some decent warmer weather here in a couple of weeks. Plus I want to spend more time on the new bike getting it all set up for my liking.

Run
The current plan I'm on has be basically in maintenance mode for running. So it's mostly shorter runs with short intervals in them. Though this week I was able to string together two 7 minute miles in the middle of a 10k, and that's a new best effort for me.

Coming up
This phase will be over soon, I'm just getting into the planning stage for the next one. I'll be doing my first TNT race in a little bit. And the first triathlon is a little more than a month away. I'm getting antsy...

Near Year - New Gear

This could also be titled "Another Year, New Gear" since I'll never not need new gear. Some year's is less than others, let's hope it slows down a little :)

For the typical triathlete there is probably a never ending list of stuff that they want

• Training food
• Power meter
• Training watch
• Home trainer
• Transition bag
• Wetsuit
• Speed suit
• Tri suit
• Bike shoes
• Bike hydration system
• Racing food
• Helmet
• Bike
• Running shoes
• Running hydration system
• Recovery clothing
• Recovery food

And then just toss "better" on the front of all those and go through it again

Not Going Nuts

The plan this year was to not go nuts. I needed a new helmet, and I needed a once over for my bike due to the accident last year. So that was the plan, and my wife was helping out. She made an appointment, and took my bike in. And then she caught the bike bug. A little more than a week later

New sweet ride

Old hotness (sans clip-on areo bars) (with trainer tire)

Going out for my first ride! Just kidding. There's ice on the roads - I'm still healing from the last fall ;)

As my wife put it "If I don't make this a priority, you'll never get a new bike!" She's right, I'd just ride the old Giant till it couldn't be ridden anymore. I'd think about buying a new bike, and when it came down to it I'd "yeah, but the bike shop is WAY over THERE and I want to ride instead of drive..." She's a keeper :)

Buying With Power

I bought my bike from Gear West bikes, no offense to my really local local-bike-shop, but I wouldn't even take my kid's bikes in to them, let alone buy a bike from them. Plus Gear West contributes a ton to the local community. Also, if you go there you have the chance to rub elbows with some local pros. None other than recently decided pro-triathlete Dan Hedgecock works there, and helped me pick out my bike and fit me on it. He's a good guy, I told him I read his blog, I didn't mention that sort of recently I suggested he earns money using less than traditional means.

@dpalmertri @d_hedgecock who knows what they taught him in FL this winter. Install a stripper pole and see what happen #obvioussolution
— Jeremy Solt (@couchtowhatever) April 8, 2013

After I bought the bike I sent out a tweet that he favorited, hopefully he doesn't put two-and-two together, I don't get a lot of tweets favorited.

Fun day! Worked with pro @d_hedgecock at @gearwestbike to get my first @feltbicycles tri bike. Great guy, great shop, great bike.
— Jeremy Solt (@couchtowhatever) April 13, 2013

Running Joke

There's a sort of running joke in the house and in my family. The joke is that I need tons of ribbing and gentle nudging to get faster. So after I get the bike, my wife said something to the effect of "maybe now you'll podium more often and going to races will be fun for me again." and my sister says (actual quote) "I will be expecting great things (in the form of speedier bike splits) from you."

It's all in good fun. Again this year I'm hoping to do some races with my family. I really do enjoy waiting at the finish line for them.

Whoa nelly!

I've mentioned the new training plan a few times recently, it's focused on intensity and not so much volume.

I started last week, and it's been pretty fast, literally. This monday my hamstring started to feel tender. Sort of thankfully there was a visitor at the house Tuesday morning which disrupted the scheduled trainer ride, so I elected to take this time to rest my little muscles.

I opted for additional swimming in place of the Tuesday trainer ride, and the wednesday run. Tomorrow I will resume the normal schedule.

My hamstring is feeling better (actually it was feeling a lot better Tuesday after ice and rest) but now it's normal.

Rest now, fun later. Because the fun is not in the training, it's in the racing! Plus, we all get the same oat bag in the end.

Heart Rate Training

A week or so ago I started a new training segment. Overall it's about 8 weeks long, and is focused on building speed I haven't been able to get before; primarily on the bike and secondarily the run. One of the key aspects of this plan is that it's heart rate based. So I spend some time in zone 4 or zone 5.

Zones

If you go to the gym, or read about working out in really any capacity you've probably at least seen reference to heart rate zones. If you were to know your range, resting rate to max, then you can break it up into zones.

For the most part, the lower zones (1 and 2) are an effort that is pretty easy to maintain for a while, and are good for establishing a basic level of fitness and fat burning. Zone three is medium to medium hard effort, zone four is where many people would be when they are pushing themselves comfortably hard and could possibly hold for a while, and zone five is the start of the red line and really most people can't hold it there for very long.

Running vs. Cycling

Much to my surprise you HR zones are likely different for running vs. cycling. This is primarily due to a difference in fitness between sports. Or to put it another way, most people's threshold (basically the red-line) is lower on the bike than the run due to different muscles being used. Because of that you end up with a different max HR on the bike than the run. Granted this may not be true for everyone, but for most it is. Since the zones are based on that threshold, it's important to be able to figure out where that is. There are different ways to figure out your threshold, you can go get tested, or you can self administer the torture. For sure though, it's torture, as the goal is to find the place where basically your body can no longer be efficiently fueling your efforts, it's not a pleasant place to be for very long.

My Cycling Test

So to figure out my threshold I basically just did some warm up and then a 40 minute time-trial like effort and then took my average HR over that 40 minutes and use that as the basis to figure out my zones. This isn't the most persice, but it at least gave me a starting point.

My Running Test

I didn't really do one, I just used my max HR and applied a known formula. I did try to figure out my max HR though. If you use the old 220 - <fill in age here> that makes my zones all wonky. I can train pretty comfortably in zone four if I do that.

After a week

My bike max might be a little low. Zone three isn't easy, but I wouldn't say it's all that challenging either, it's pretty easy to get into zone four and zone five. Also my zone five is only about 3 beats wide, so I end up outside of it pretty fast. I may fiddle with that number a bit.

My run zones are stupid. I had done a run recently where my heart rate monitor recorded a spike of 213. So I used that, it seems high since most formulas start at 220 or lower. But when I look back at my old data there are at least five efforts with a higher recorded max - surprisingly all on the bike. So I used it. Then yesterday I had some intervals which called for some sustained zone four (six or seven minutes,) and honestly I could not figure out how to get my heart rate that high and still keep moving. So I I'll be adjusting that number too.

March Training Notes

This month my totals looked like

	Distance	Time
Swim	34,400 yards	9:50 hours
Bike	155.25 miles	10:30 hours
Run	48.5 miles	7:25 hours
Strength		1:20 hours

Last Month

	Distance	Time
Swim	34,400 yards	10:25 hours
Bike	153.17 miles	10:35 hours
Run	41.5 miles	7:40 hours
Strength		2:10 hours

March 2012

	Distance	Time
Swim	40,650 yards	12:45 hours
Bike	121 miles	7:45 hours
Run	53 miles	8 hours
Strength		0 hours

Overall
I was super tired heading into the 3rd week, and I was getting ready to start a new training block which I've named "Super Nitro Mega X-Scream" so I took that week pretty easy dialing back to about half.

Swim
Moved yeardage up without moving time. Basically I was standing around too much. It's feeling pretty good, a good degree of challenge now.

Bike
I pulled some longer trainer sessions. I did get my bike out on the roads at once, that was fun. I'm looking forward to more time outside in the warmth. For instance now, I'm writing this instead of going out for a run because with windchill it's is less than twenty.

Run
Did a couple of longer runs, I could really feel it in my legs. Overall though it seems to be going well.

Coming up
The new training plan has an intensity focus, so reduced time / miles, but higher effort overall (hopfully.) They always say, if you want to be faster, then you need to go faster. So more intervals of various lengths with plenty of time for my body to recover between days.

Drinking water and swimming

A while back a high school friend on Facebook posted something about the 21 most annoying things for swimmers. One of them was this

From: tumblr

So, I've been swimming since I was 7 or something. And now I'm 35, and I can honestly say that water is not part of my swimming routine. And honestly, it's not part of most people's. When I got to my master's swimming workouts there are not many water bottles there.

But still, it got me thinking. I am pretty psychotic about my water. I sweat A LOT!

After every run, and for the sake of saying it I mean any run that is a workout, I drink water immediately after. For any training run when it's more than 90 degrees I take water with me. For any run longer than 40 minutes in hotter than 80 I take water with me. And for any run longer than an hour I take water with me.

For every single bike ride, period. I take water with me.

So I'm not sure why in 28 years of swimming I haven't gotten in the practice of taking water to a swimming workout has got me pondering. To put an end to the pondering, I just took some water to swimming a few times. And, not too surprisingly, it's hard to remember to take a drink. Also let me break down the latest swimming adventure.

400 warm-up
I could have taken a drink after this, but let's be honest, it seems a little silly.

4x100 kick @ 1:55
I'm no kicking stud, so this is really a 400 straight for me. No drinking.

4x100 drill/swim @ 1:40
Good place for water after this. Not before, because the lane mates don't care I suck at kicking.

4x100 choice @ 1:35
Good place to take a drink after this, but I miss it.

7x300 free @ 4:20
It pretty much sucks for me to see 2,100 yards in a single set of 300s, so I get a little psyched out. Though, honestly I should be able to make these right around 4:00 pretty easily. The people in front of me are lane vets (I just moved up) so they plan on coming in around 3:50, too bad for me I fall for it and end up keeping up for the first two, then (thankfully) slowly fade away. The side effect of that is that during my 15 seconds of rest I just pant. The last thing I want to do is put water in my mouth and try to breath through my nose during my rest time. I steal a swig at the start of the fifth one (which I just turned into a 250) in an effort to look more than just lazy, because missing a 50 for water is WAY more acceptable.

100 cool down
"Waters all around!" Except all I can think about is not moving. I'm tired, and it's time to go to work.

So there you have it. If you see me swimming and I have a water bottle that doing more than holding the pool deck in place then I've figured out how to drink water and swim at the same time. Otherwise, I too, do not understand why a swimmer needs water while swimming :)

November - February Training Notes

I debated posting this. On one hand I think it's interesting to see what other's are doing in their training. And I also use these posts as a sort of reference for myself over the months. On the other hand I'm not sure if anyone else thinks its interesting.

My own views won out on this. So I'm rolling up a bunch of months. October was my last full month of training for the season last year.

November

	Distance	Time
Swim	0 yards	0 hours
Bike	0 miles	0 hours
Run	0 miles	0 hours

Ahh, the easy life. I was trying to get fat and lazy. I accomplished the lazy part, but not the fat part. My wife recently told me that the reason I didn't get fat is because when I stopped working out I also stopped eating a ton. That is not something I'm going to spend any additional time thinking about.

December

	Distance	Time
Swim		40 minutes
Bike		30 minutes
Run		3 hours
Strength		6 hours

This was mostly just to get in some time building strength and whatever else I felt like. My running time is noticeably higher than the bike and swimming because running on the treadmill at the gym is more fun than the bike and easier than the lap pool. I didn't record distances because this was still off season :)

January

	Distance	Time
Swim	20,200 yards	7 hours
Bike	11.45 miles	1 hour
Run	17.58 miles	4:10 hours
Strength		2:10 hours

This was mostly just more lazing around, sort of just trying to get back in the swing of things, the structured training started on the 28th, which is why I have even one hour on the bike.

February

	Distance	Time
Swim	34,400 yards	10:25 hours
Bike	153.17 miles	10:35 hours
Run	41.5 miles	7:40 hours
Strength		2:10 hours

And there we have it, the first full month back in the saddle. Most of this was fairly low intensity work, light weights, that sort of stuff.

So there we have it.