July; a month of “I”!

Another low mileage month but with a couple of valid reasons, Injury and Ironman 70.3 Vineman.

I started the month with an injury to my knee; I dug in deep getting it treated and despite seeing my Chiro 7 times in 16 days it really wasn’t until halfway through the week before Vineman that it felt like it was behind me. It’s still not 100% right but now it’s a case of rolling out the scar tissue that built up and getting it stronger again.

Vineman turned out far better that I hoped for on the Swim front and all things considered the Bike went well with just a tough Run that I managed to finish with a fair bit of walking. After the race I took 4 days off and then hit the pool and the bike with training officially starting a full week after.

The focus for August is building back a stronger running base and working “as always” on my form in the pool with one eye to endurance, my swims, right now, have an average of 2500 yards and that’s only going to get longer. I am heading off to Canada for the second week which coincides with a down week but I’ll be taking my bike and hope to spend some time on the IM Canada course as well as meet up with some folks who I have known forever but never met in person! Lots of fun times ahead!

So here are the digits:

• Swim: 9.55miles 16,608 yards
• Bike: 184 miles
• Run: 63.15 miles

IMAZ training Week 1

Well Week 1 of IMAZ training is in the bag, very tidily given my Virgo tendencies it was an exact 10 hours! This is the training times/distances, the rest was made up of foam rolling and stretching…yeah I am actually doing it, yay me! An easy start to a plan and looking a couple of weeks out things soon ramp up. A couple of highlights was the second swim of the week which went really well, here is the Garmin data; there are a few phantom laps which is usually a sign of poor form, although drills can mess with it too.I also had a great mid week long run of 11 miles, which is probably the second longest run this year after the Half Marathon I ran in January and the Half I ran at Vineman! My running has a long way to go but I was pleased with the consistency of my pace.I am thinking about my nutrition planning and trying some new things as the rides and runs get longer; I recently received some free samples of an electrolyte called Hi5 worked really well so I have ordered some of that. For fueling I am going to try Carbo Pro and see how it sits, I have heard a lot of good things about it and now is the time to start trying these things out

Also for the shorter duration runs I am trying to get back onto the local trails for the short term to build up all those little stabilizer muscles that are ignored when running on the road. I hope this will help with my knee long term which is still not quite right.

There’s 16 more weeks to go, but this is a good start.

What’s the plan Stan?

Training for IMAZ started on Monday. That’s not really true, if I was honest I suppose it actually started last November when I plonked down $650, but specifically the past 9 months have led me to this start line and the next 17 weeks will lead me to the start line in Tempe Town Lake. I vacillated, procrastinated and deliberated over what plan to follow, trust me there are a lot to choose from in the end I went for one I feel I can actually execute…the best plan in the world is useless if you can’t follow it! I actually settled on two plans; the Beginner Triatlete (RPE) plan which is 20 weeks long so I am cutting three weeks and from that I am also substituting the swim plan for one found in the Swim Workouts for Triatletes book, which is 13 weeks long so I am repeating four weeks. The volume seem reasonable and with some shuffling I should fit things all in the course of the week also I am adding into the mix proactive stretching and some strength training, these are two areas which are woefully ignored at my own peril. I am still struggling with a knee thing but I am hoping that proactive care, ice, foam rolling and using my Compex will help resolve that and I have managed to have a couple of good runs this week already, this morning’s 90 minutes went by without issue so fingers crossed that continues!

Of course I will be updating weekly, cos’ I know you are dying to know what goes on! In the meantime here is something to whet your whistle!