Ten weeks into the 30-week Ironman training plan and feeling great! It goes by quickly! It’s kind of scary actually, knowing that the base phase is over and I am now heading into the build phase. But the next ten weeks is nothing new for me, I know what to expect and I look forward to training well into the summer and enjoying some good weather for a change.
Speaking of the weather, it’s been a typical up and down spring so far. There’s been a lack of rain, but if it’s not rain forcing me indoors it’s a cold day doing it. This week had a couple of good days and I took advantage of them. I had a good run on Friday, swapping out the planned hour long run with Sunday’s 1.5-hour long effort. I’m traveling on Sunday to Nashville, so I made sure I got my long run in.
I joined the local group for a ride out to the Monee Reservoir and surrounding areas on Saturday. It was a little chilly but I warmed up well. I tend to push myself harder in the group rides basically trying to keep up with my idol Charlie, but I will allow getting out of my comfort zone and not follow the plan every once in a while. Charlie is out of the comfort zone every ride and kicks my ass. Maybe I should do that more often.
Off to Nashville to pick up my Vanderbilt kid, Rebecca. She’s 1/4 done with college! It goes by quickly.
I’m a day late with this post thanks to a weekend trip to the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin, that in a matter of three days my wife and I experienced spring, summer, and winter. That time of the year I guess.
This week a coworker of mine, Tom, took the plunge and signed up for his first triathlon – a 70.3 distance event in Indiana in October. I always feel pretty good about inspiring others to join in on the fun I have doing this dumb sport. It took a few years of working there to get someone to give triathlon a try. Actually, my supervisor Micah may have been the first to do a one, but I think he had already participated in one or two before, so I am not sure I can take credit for his misery. With the pride comes a little regret, however, because this sport is going to be a shock to him. He’s a total newbie, and he thinks he’s going to win. Well, that’s a little bit of a stretch. His brother also signed up, and his brother is the one who thinks he will win, and Tom won’t let his little brother win, therefore, Tom thinks he will win. Follow me?
Tom texted me with his exciting news that he had signed up. I asked him if he had thrown up yet. He replied that his heart had started racing and that he’s nervous. I replied with a laughing emoji and that his reaction is pretty normal. I’m not sure if that made him feel any better.
I say I have a little regret about inspiring him to take on a half-iron distance race, and that is mainly due to knowing what he is up against. First of all, he has a bike (that I sold to him) and a pair of Under Armor running shoes. Tom played football, and football players wear Under Armor. At least that covers the bare minimum. He said that he was in shock from the cost of the race, and add to the fact that he is redoing his kitchen right now, he’s really going to be in shock from cost everything else he will and might need: a helmet, a trisuit, cycling shoes, a wetsuit, tires, etc. Plus he is dealing with an upper leg injury that may impact his training.
But don’t fret, Tom. I’ll be there to help you out in anyway that I can. Whatever equipment that I have that will fit your body you can use. Come on over to my house to swim. I’ll gladly give you unqualified advice on how to not drown. And I will answer any other questions that you may have. We’ll do some training together, and I will do my best to help you beat your brother and win the race. Well, I can kind of promise that you’ll finish. And that will be an awesome thing.
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This was a little bit of a pull-back week for me in the plan. The weather forced some of my training indoors and I did some easy treadmill runs and found that the leg injury from last week seems to be okay now. I did aggravate it a little on Saturday when I ran a little too hard. I’m cramping in my calf muscles when I push hard on the bike, so there may be causation there with the running injury. I will dial back the intensity for a while. There are 22 weeks to go, no sense in burning myself out now.
I was giving some thought to how I was training for the race this time around and how I was approaching it. This being my fifth time using the Be Iron Fit training plan I follow, I have followed it a little differently each time. The first time around I followed it to a “T,” doing the prescribed workouts almost exactly as written. Same with the second time three years later, although I started doing less of the written swim workouts and more straight swimming instead. By the third time using the plan, I had it dialed in. I had learned what was working for me and what wasn’t. I was also now starting to tailor the plan for the course I was going to race. Since Ironman Louisville was an easy swim and run I chose to spend a little more effort on the bike. The last time I followed the plan I was now doing the bare minimum for the swim training that I felt would be sufficient and was pushing myself a little more on the “easy” running and biking days.
Since I had previously done Ironman Chattanooga in 2019 I felt pretty confident knowing what I needed to do to be successful at the race this time around – work on the run portion. The run is uphill both ways at Chattanooga.
This winter I had built up a pretty solid run base and when the plan kicked in I didn’t feel like dialing it back. So I figured I would just run whatever pace I felt like doing, sometimes going hard when I wasn’t supposed to, and sometimes just putting in the easy miles. I was doing just that this week, an easy paced 75-minute run on Friday when my right calf just decided to not like running anymore.
About 3 miles into the run I was hobbling. I stopped and stretched it out and that didn’t make it any better. This wasn’t cramp, but more like a muscle strain. I walked a little bit and although it wasn’t feeling great, I could keep moving forward. So I walked for about 10 minutes and decided that I needed to find the most direct route back home. That’s smart thinking, right there.
Not long after that, I began jogging again, and although I was favoring the leg, I was doing okay. I ran up a busy road and wound through a subdivision until I got back to the trail. It was then I decided to be really dumb and run a little more to not cut the workout short. Not so smart thinking, right there.
I made it home and showered up okay, but after that, my leg was really sore. I iced it and massaged it for a while, added some linament creme to it, and then sat and elevated it for the rest of the day.
I was concerned that my ride on Saturday might be difficult, but the ride didn’t bother the leg at all. On Sunday, I opted to walk the 75-minutes instead of running it, and then did another ride with the local group in the afternoon and felt fine. What seemed like an injury that came out of nowhere and would need some serious rest, it looks like I just had some weird pain that hopefully won’t manifest itself into something that would keep me from running for a while.
So I guess my weird leg pain might not be anything serious. But I will be following the plan a little bit closer from here on.
I am fortunate to have supportive family and friends who take an interest in my pursuit of my Ironman goals, but I have one friend in particular that I call my Number 1 Fan – Carl. Carl is the one friend that takes the passing interest to a much higher level. He not only wants to know what workout I did but needs to know the details as well. I’m glad to accommodate him as it allows me to brag about myself for a few minutes, except most of the time I can’t remember.
Carl: What did you do yesterday, Ironman?
Me: umm… a bike ride? Yeah, a bike ride.
Carl: How far did you go?
Me: umm… I rode for an hour.
Carl: How far is that?
Me: umm… let me look it up.
My Number 1 Fan Carl wondering why I can’t remember the details.
I don’t mind providing the details, but it’s interesting to me that once I get the workout done I kind of move on from it. It’s not that I don’t want to remember what I did as I train, but during a 30-week build to a race, it just all blends together somewhat. I certainly make an effort to document it. The workouts all get recorded by my Garmin watch and phone app. And I write a summary each week so that I can look back and spark my memory of the journey I am on. But sometimes it’s just a workout, nothing more and nothing less.
I am working on writing a post about all the races I have participated in since I started running in the 1980s. It’s taking me a while to go through my handwritten running log and find the entries. I am finding with that trip through the past that I can recall details about some of the long-ago races pretty clearly. It must be something about racing that makes you remember, something that creates a stored memory. I can also remember certain runs when something out of the ordinary happens, like a fall, or getting chased by a dog, getting caught in a storm, etc. But when the workout is spinning on a stationary bike for 60 minutes and thumbing through Facebook while doing it for the 200th time, it just simply becomes part of the day without creating anything special about it. Maybe that will have a cumulative effect in that I will remember doing those workouts as a whole rather than the details that went into them.
I can remember many of the details of running on the Green Bay Trail in the 1990s: where I began and ended my runs, the street crossings, the portion through Ravinia. But if I looked at my log and saw that I ran 8 miles in 60 minutes that day, I will have to take my word for it. I don’t remember it.
I have logged many miles on the Old Plank Trail, so many in fact that I sometimes say that I know every little dip, bump, and distinctive trait of the trail. I know which houses have a dog that barks at me. I know when to move to the left to avoid the divot in the trail as I head north up the path and over the bridge. Those memories are solid, and I rely on them quite a bit. But I guess our brains can’t store every single detail about each workout. I mean, how much of the mundane can you remember? Do you remember what you had for lunch yesterday? Probably not. Do you remember your 21st birthday? More than likely, because turning 21 is a memorable milestone. But do you remember your 22nd birthday? I don’t.
Am I supposed to make each run, bike or swim a memorable one? I’m not sure if that is even possible. Frankly, I think trying to concentrate and remember every detail would most likely wear me out mentally. But I am glad to have pretty clear memories of those workouts that do have something memorable happen.
I guess that I am lucky to have my Number 1 Fan pry those little details from me. Maybe I will remember more of them thanks to Carl. But I can promise you this – although I may not remember every little detail a day, a week or a years later, I will always remember my Number 1 Fan asking me about my workouts. Thanks, Carl.
Last week I talked about needing some motivation to get through some biking and running workouts. This week I had the motivation, but when it came to doing the Saturday long ride what I lacked was the desire.
My family had planned a trip to Nashville for the Easter weekend to visit our freshman daughter Rebecca, who attends Vanderbilt University, and some family who lives in the area. I have always been of the mindset that if you are going to miss some workouts, it’s probably best to at least try to get the long weekend training stuff done. At this stage of training, a long ride isn’t all that long; the plan called for an hour and 45-minutes. So I moved the ride to Thursday and April Fool’s played an unappreciated trick on me – it was cold. When I got home midday my car was telling me it was 32°F. The wind wasn’t too bad, and I had the motivation to do the ride, now I lacked the desire!
After taking the dog for a quick walk, I decided to toughen up and act like an Ironman and just go do it. I put on some extra layers and wore a set of gloves under a pair of large mittens and got my bike ready to roll. While in the garage I decided to put on a couple of plastic newspaper bags over my socks before putting on my cycling shoes. I’m glad I did because my very cold ride last week ended with some very numb toes.
Normally I would put them under my layered socks, but I was too lazy to do that now.
As I headed south I realized that this ride was not going to be fun. My rides always head south and return because where I live it is urban to the immediate north and rural to the immediate south. I count my blessings with that. The wind was pushing me along and I was easily riding in the upper teens and 20 mph speeds. I got to the point where I could choose to head either east or west and I chose east because I thought I would take advantage of the heavily wooded trail to head home on and keep the wind from being too much of a burden.
As soon as I turned to head back north I could feel that this ride was going to be a struggle. I stopped at a spot where I will sometimes take a nature break and ate a gel. I was sweating and starting to feel the cold, and knowing when I got back on the bike I would be suffering even more.
I started to ride again and my eyes were watering and I was getting a headache from the cold wind blowing on my wet head. I crossed Monee/Manhattan Road and started looking for something I could use to help me out, and there was an empty plastic shopping bag stuck to some brush just blowing in the wind. I got off my bike and looked it over to make sure it wasn’t dirty and then I took off my helmet and cap and put the bag on my head and covered it back up. I hopped on the bike and within a hundred feet or so I saw a popped mylar ballon laying in the ditch. I stopped and inspected that and then shoved that under my cycling jersey. As I started riding again it was almost like instant relief. My headache went away and I started getting comfortable riding in the wind again.
The ride took me almost two hours, but it could have been much longer and much more miserable. And in the end, I felt a sense of accomplishment, overcoming the lack of desire to ride on a cold day and being resourceful enough to not having to cash in my chips and call for my kid to come get me.
This past week was a kind of a week that lacked motivation for me. I’m not sure if the oft-changing rainy and windy spring weather had something to do with it, but I just wasn’t motivated to put in the effort.
In addition to what I felt was a worthless 30-minute bike ride that I barely broke a sweat with, I was dreading an easy-paced 30-minute run for some reason. I had been watching the weather and I was anticipating the rain to start right when I usually begin my workout. I am lucky to have access to a treadmill at work and also at home, but I loathe running on them so much that I only do it when I can’t run outside. But the rain hadn’t started yet, so I told myself to get out there. This run didn’t start out so well. First, I wasn’t in the mood to run, but I decided to run from my office to the local trail, which seemed like an uphill climb. My heart rate climbed to the point that I felt like it was reminding me how out of shape I am and how much work there is yet to do. But as I got to the flat trail I settled into a slow rhythm and found a suitable pace.
About a mile into the run I passed three walkers heading in the opposite direction from me, what appeared to be an older couple walking with their adult daughter having a lively conversation, but what she was wearing on her head instantly caught my eye – an Ironman finisher hat. Knowing what it takes to earn a hat like that was enough to make me forget about the self-loathing that had been in my head. I have four of those hats myself, and I am looking for a fifth. They aren’t easy to earn. But earn them I did. And earning them sometimes means doing a workout when you aren’t really wanting to.
I picked up my pace a little, ran with a little more strut, and added a short weightlifting workout after the run that I had no desire to do beforehand.
Sometimes something simple can be a great motivator.
Week 3 went by pretty quickly and was mostly unremarkable really. The few things I thought about maybe discussing here have long evaporated from my mind, and after a beautiful weekend, I was thinking more about having some great weather for a change, rather than some triathlon or running topic to opine about.
I swapped my Saturday ride with Sunday’s run so that I could join the local running group for an early morning group run. I’m glad that I did. Normally group outings for me usually mean that I will find myself running or riding by myself, but this time I fell in with Pat, who also did the 2018 Boston Marathon when I did it, and another guy named Bill, who is married to someone who also works for the same employer that I do. It was nice to have some conversations with others for a change, instead of me talking to myself. It was a nice 8-mile run.
Sunday’s bike was a bit of a challenge heading south due to the wind, but it was nice to have a great tailwind pushing me along back home. There was a group ride scheduled for later in the afternoon, but those guys have been doing some serious indoor riding all winter and there’s no way I would last with them. Plus, I chose to follow my planned hour and 45-minute ride. Stick with my plan, and forget what the others are doing.
My friend Susan commented about how I had started my training already, as she has not yet begun hers. Her plan is shorter in duration apparently, and I think that I could also get by with a 20 or 25-week plan, but the 30-week plan I follow has been reliable for me and has consistently proven itself to prepare me well. The thing about waiting to start the plan because you feel that you have a pretty good fitness base already doesn’t make much sense to me. It just tells me that you are training, just not following a specific workout. I have a pretty good base built up as well, but I’m following a plan instead of just winging it before starting. In the end, I guess it’s a wash. This is why I’m not a coach. There are so many ways to personalize training.
Occasionally at work, we will get treated to a lunch and on Wednesday we were told there would be pizza. Yay, pizza! I work until 11 am, so I did my bike spin/treadmill run brick workout (that’s a mouthful) in the weight room at work and then headed upstairs to enjoy some pizza. I barely had loaded my plate and sat down when I heard my genuinely shocked coworker say “YOU EAT JUNK?!?!”
I shook my head and chuckled at his comment because I have heard this question before, once from another coworker who I was currently sitting next to, and others too. For some reason, my coworker thinks that by virtue of doing stupid-long distance swim/bike/run events that I am somehow forced to eat like a rabbit. Well, this might come as a shock to everyone that thinks that being a triathlete also means that we are also nutritionally sound, unfortunately, that just isn’t the case for most of us. Look at the below picture – Ironman Chattanooga is literally sponsored by LITTLE DEBBIE!
Nutty Buddies, aka Nutty Bars, are my nemesis. Yay, Nutty Bars!
I really didn’t know whether to feel ashamed or to feel proud of the fact that I do enough exercise to allow me to enjoy a plate full of pizza without guilt. As a triathlete you develop a thick skin pretty quickly and modesty kind of goes out the window. The first time you stuff yourself in a tri suit will definitely either make you quit the sport immediately or just accept the fact that you look like an overstuffed sausage in a bright-colored nylon uniform. And eating what you want is a nice perk. But for Pete’s sake, I’m not even eating as much as you non-exercising coworkers are! I’ve seen you guys eat, and I’m not even in your league!
Me eating pizza shocks you, huh? Do you want to hear some more shocking things triathletes do? Well, I practically fuel my long rides and runs with – brace yourself – gels that are basically just sugar. 100 calories of sugar every 30 minutes! Some athletes will eat a sleeve of gummy-type gel blocks every hour. Imagine the cavities that are building after doing that for 30-weeks. I also bring along these little sugar-pressed waffle things called “stroopwafels” for an added sugar bonus. Yay, sugar!
I buy these things by the box. An additional 150 calories per hour or so on top of the gels I slurp down. Ridiculously good.
Oh, and wait until the later weeks in this training program hits. I will be eating everything that isn’t nailed down, and I will still be losing weight.
I guess I need to step back from my surprise at the shock that others express when they see me scarfing down some pizza, cookies, or the other junk that comes into our office. They see the Ironman banners hanging in my office and must think it takes a monumental amount of self-discipline to do an Ironman. Well, I guess that is a little bit true, but the work generally results in a reward, whether it be getting across the finish line, or not feeling guilty about eating some pizza.
My office Ironman shrine to myself.
I have to wrap this post up for the week. I need fuel for training and I’m having sloppy joe’s for dinner! I earned it, I promise. Yay, sloppy joe’s!
2020 Ironman Louisville got killed by a lethal combination of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as social upheaval going on in Louisville and it was not only enough to postpone the race, but to kill it totally off. Ironman Louisville (aka Kentucky) is no more. I was offered a deferral to a handful of other 2020 races which I felt had no chance of occurring, so I opted for the deferral to 2021 Ironman Chattanooga. A year into a pandemic, and I’m still somewhat pessimistic about whether we will race or not. But 2021 is here, people (including myself) are getting vaccinated, and real in-person events are starting to take shape and look like a possibility of actually happening. The CEO of Ironman came out recently with a video regarding how they expect the racing season to play out, which made most of us scratch our heads. What I get out of the video is that they truly want to race, but if they can’t they will tell us at the last possible second and keep our money anyway. But no matter his message, I’m signed up and will have to train to be ready if it does happen.
After completing Choo in 2019, my buddies and I all kind of agreed that we didn’t care to come back to it. I guess maybe that was the ungodly heat that helped with that mindset, but yes, it seemed to wow us less than Wisconsin, Lake Placid, and Louisville had done in prior years. But when Choo became my only real option, heck I will take it. It’s really not that bad of a course – the swim is almost effortless and the bike is the easiest of the four I have done. The run is the devil at this race, and add the heat like we had in 2019, and well, it was enough for us to say we’d never want to do the race again.
Seeing that I got through about 16 weeks of training for Louisville when it got axed, I have somewhat just drifted through my usual training, knowing that racing in 2020 was a longshot. With the exception of enjoying some brief, mild winter trail running, my desire to sign up for races or even do any significant training has waned. I had lost my mojo. The time to start training is here, but I’m still looking for some motivation.
I was spinning on the stationary bike this week and listening to some shuffled songs on Spotify when I heard Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up. That’s what I kind of need right now, something to pump me up. The weather is getting better, the snow is starting to melt, and soon I will take my training outdoors. Time to pump myself up.
I’ll be following the Competitive Plan from the book Be Iron Fit by Don Fink once again. It has never let me down. I have made some alterations to it in order to make it more personal to my needs, but I stick to it pretty closely.
I swapped out my old saddle for a new ISM PR1.0 split-nose model. I’m hoping that the saddle is more comfortable than the old one. I will have to find another way to mount my bottle cages to it, but there is time for that.
Swimming won’t happen until I get my pool open in May sometime. I have added some light weightlifting workouts for now, but I tend to get bored with that real quickly.
Here’s to training with my Gunner teammates and some of the locals I know who are also doing the race. Ironman Chattanooga, here I come! PUMP IT UP!
It really didn’t take me too long to get over having the race I was training for come to an end. I guess I had been expecting it to end for quite a while, but I just kept moving forward (a tried and true Ironman motto) in my training until the final word was announced. So after having a week to think it over, here’s what I will most likely do going forward.
I will opt to take the automatic transfer to Ironman Chattanooga in 2021. There is really no way the other three Fall 2020 transfer options are going to happen in my mind. Three of us Gunner teammates were already signed up for Louisville, and two and maybe a third had not signed up. So if we decide as a group to head back to Chatty in 2021 all I need to do is make the transfer official and start training next year. If we for some reason want to do a different race then I will have no problem paying the transfer fee and do that race with the group. But Ironman has some pretty specific rules on transferring, so I will have to take that into consideration. We’ll have to talk that over. I remember us talking about not wanting to do Chatty again, but I think that was the dreadful heat of the 2019 race influencing that decision. It was an okay location, we enjoyed ourselves and I would go back. But before I get too confident with all that, I have to realize that this is all conjecture. There’s talk that this Covid-19 crap may stick around into 2021 and screw everybody’s race season up again. So there’s that…
I will keep training, that really isn’t a big surprise. I actually enjoy the weekly stuff, the long Saturday ride, and running is just part of who I am. I can’t imagine not running. Swimming on the other hand… well, let’s just say that I do enjoy a cannonball splashdown after a long run or ride. But I doubt I will do much swim training for the rest of the year. The training won’t be anything too overwhelming, but enough to keep me fit and doing what I love. I may join some local group rides now that it won’t interfere with me following my training plan. I may also text a local friend to see if he wants to do some riding again. We stopped riding together when my training became too specific and he just wanted to ride.
I was kicking around the idea of doing an Ironman of my own making either at home or in Wisconsin at my lakehome and inviting my buddies to do it, but I’m not so hot on the idea now. That would require us to keep training and following the plan and with the weather heating up and the fact we’ve had our bubble burst with Louisville, I don’t think any of us would want to do it. I may, however, do a half-iron distance day of my own just because I already have the fitness to do that and could pull it off pretty easily. I think the training plan has a 70.3 training day built into it coming up in a few weeks, so I may still do that. I need to sleep on that a little.
Lastly, I have one more hope left of having an opportunity to race this year and that race is the Big Hill Bonk Last Runner Standing elimination ultramarathon. This race was supposed to occur in April but got postponed to October. I received an email last week stating that as of right now the race is a go until the race director finds out otherwise. He gave us a drop dead date of September 15th, so we’ll know by then if he has to cancel it. So since that tells me that the race is iffy at best, I’m not going to do any special ultramarathon type distance training and if the race happens I will just go up to Beloit and run 4.166-mile loops every hour until I can’t take it anymore. And that’s all predicated on whether I feel comfortable around other athletes and doing the Covid-19 dance around each other. If I don’t feel safe in that environment or it’s too big of a hassle I will opt out.
So there you have it. I’m going forward with my daily workouts for fun instead of for a specific reason and we’ll see what happens. So long, Ironman Louisville 2020. Hello, Ironman Chattanooga 2021.
an amazing run 