Journey to Ironman MD: Week 5

Happy New Year! This is the first week I've taken the bike out of the garage and set it up on the trainer so I can ride indoors. I have it set up so I can watch videos on my computer, and as I've never seen Band of Brothers all the way through, that's my current project. 5 episodes down so far!

A real challenge I am having is fitting in my core workouts, and I know I have to do something about this. For some reason, I have an easier time with the "big three," run/bike/swim – I put them on the schedule, and I get about 90% of them I think that's the problem right there – I am not committing to a regular schedule of core workouts, and so they are slipping. No more! I'll get together with the folks at CORE this weekend and discuss a better strategy – maybe I don't have to do a full 30 minutes to get the benefit? I can absolutely work in 15 minutes a day for core work.

Last week, I discussed my plan for getting back on the bike – I was going to ease back into it. But that's not what happened! My bike workouts have gone 45 – 75 minutes each! I guess I expected to need more time to get back to that level of riding. So, that's a good thing. I haven't run every day like I planned, and that's not a good thing. One thing my coach always did for me was send me a "workout template" for the week, which was exactly what it sounded like – which workouts to do on which days. It made training super easy. As I am trying to do that for myself, I begin to see the value that people are getting from buying a coached program – it sure saves on thinking things through!

Here is my workout log for the week, to give you a sense of where I am, workout wise.

	Saturday, Jan 3	Sunday Jan 4	Monday, Jan 5	Tuesday, Jan 6	Wednesday, Jan 7	Thursday, Jan 8	Friday, Jan 9
RUN			35 minutes		15 minutes		40 minutes
BIKE	45 minutes	60 minutes		60 minutes	45 minutes	75 minutes
SWIM			50 minutes		45 minutes		50 minutes
CORE

 

What is missing, to me, is a long run on Sunday the 4^th. If I had managed to get in a 90 minute run on that day (or really, any other day), I'd call it a pretty darn good week of training. As it is, a solid "B." Next week, I'll add in the scheduled core work, and I'll get a long run in on the weekend – I love running in the cold, so this is a great time of year for me, for that. I've started tracking calories as well, with a goal of getting down to 165 pounds in the next 10 weeks, about ~1.5 / week. Next week, I'll talk a little about how I manage nutrition (spoiler: Badly), and some about how to train through vacations.