Well I have finally figured out my new job. I am taking a position at AmerisourceBergen where I will be managing the Data Services area (ETL, Data Integration and Business Intelligence). This is a job that I am a good fit for and I am excited to get going. It was a tough decision as I had 3 offers that I had to decided between. They were all pretty good offers, but I feel I made a great choice in the end. AmerisourceBergen is a pretty large company and the IT group there is very well organized and Managed.
My training has taken a hit though with all of the job search stuff. I have so busy with it and the other family obligations that I haven't been able to stick to a good schedule. But I have been getting in some good workouts. I hit the track the other night for a very neat late night track workout. I love running track workouts at night, it feels like you are running faster when it is dark out. I started about 9:30 or so and did a 90 minute workout. It was warm, but the humidity was low. I didn't eat well beforehand, so expected this might be a tough one. But I was able to hammer out 4x1600 with 400 fast job (2:30-3:00 minutes) in between. I was hoping to do about 6:05-6:10 pace (~10 mile pace). But after hitting the first one in 5:57 there was no way I was going back over 6 minute pace. The last one was hammered in 5:49! This was cool, especially as it was my first real track workout of the year. I usually pick up about 10 seconds after the first month on workouts like this. So in one month I will try this again and go for 5:50's.
Biking has been going okay. I did a 100 miler today and had my first real bonk. It sucked as I was 25 miles from home when it happened. I know why it happened too. I ate horribly yesterday and did not carbo loading at all (hotdog, 2 hamburgers and some steak...oh yeah and a couple of beers). It was the holidays and I paid for it. I really need to get back on the wagon with my eating.
I have my first race this weekend...Black Bear 1/2 Ironman. I'm treating this as a B or C priority race. This is a cutback week for me (although I did do 100 miles today), so I will just take it a little easy and hit the race as hard as I can. I don't have any real expectations about the race, although I would love to run ~7's and ride ~220W. For the swim I just want to get through it, although I should be able to do ~1:30 pace.
Dave
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Catching Up!
Okay, just a short post to let you know that I am still around. As a consultant, from time to time I get the chance to "ride the bench", which is just a way of saying my contract/project is done and I need to find another one. Even though you would think this gives me more time to train, it hasn't been the case. After a great weekend 2 weekends ago, I came down with another head cold. I'm sure I just pushed a little too hard. Saturday was a 5:27 bike ride followed by a 45 minute run. Oh yeah, the bike ride had 2285 ft of climbing per lap...I did 3! That is over 6800 ft of climbing. There was a climb near the end of the loop that was over 2 miles long and steep. But I did it and although I was wiped out, my nutrition was still pretty good. Sunday we did 2 hours on the bike and then I did a 10 mile run. This workout was done on the Black Bear 1/2 Ironman course, which I am doing in a couple of weeks.
Well hopefully I can post more later...Have to get to bed.
Dave
Well hopefully I can post more later...Have to get to bed.
Dave
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Bike and Run LT Testing
I did my final testing of the week and I'm not sure how much testing I will do after this. I have a couple of races that I think I will be jumping into and those will replace most of my testing. But yesterday was a double test. Now normally you would never do 2 tests on the same day. You just wouldn't have enough time to recover. But these were lab tests. Lab tests are so much easier than field tests. With a field test you are pretty much going to failure. In the Lab as soon as you body hits a certain point you are done. For LT testing this is done by measuring the lactate in your blood at certain points.
Since I hadn't done much in the way or running hard and have done no field tests in running yet, we decided I would do that one first. Also, this was likely to be the harder effort. I had stated that when I am fit, I "felt" that my LT HR was about 181-183. As a matter of fact I had 183 in my traning peaks setup page as my run LT. This was based mostly off of feel and maybe some other races I had done. Basically the test starts by taking an initial reading to make sure I don't have lactate already in me. My number was good (~1.0). The number we were looking for was 4.0 mmol/L. So I started with 10 minutes of warming up. The test was basically to increase the speed every 3 minutes, taking a drop of blood at the end of the 3 minutes before bumping up the speed. I had to quickly straddle the treadmill and put out my hand. Alcohol wipe, dry, prick, wipe the first drop, put the second drop on the tab, and then jump back on the treadmill. The goal was to do those steps in ~15 seconds. It was no problem, although my fingers are sore today from all of the pin pricks.
We started at 8.4 mph and went up from there. We hit 4.1 mmol/L at 9.9 mph. Done. Only took 20 minutes of running. Turns out my HR at 4.1 was exactly 183. Cool, I really do know my body pretty well. Of course with me not being in running shape I figured my speed/pace would be pretty slow. Turns out that is not the case. My LT pace is about 6:07 mpm. I was pretty surprised by this given that I have done a total of 2 LT workouts in the past 3-4 months. My guess is that this number goes under 6 by race day. I think I am going to jump into the Broad Street 10 miler. I really want to know what I can do. Of course the other thing is that I'm probably going to need to start pushing a little bit more on my running. My paces have probably been slower than they should be. But for LT workouts I go almost solely by HR anyway. Too many variables when it comes to running outside.
The bike test wasn't as helpful. I think the problem was that I was not quite recovered enough. My lactate level was pretty high even at the start. It then dipped down, but shot back up quickly. So I don't have as much faith in that number. But I do think the LT HR on the bike was good.
Since I hadn't done much in the way or running hard and have done no field tests in running yet, we decided I would do that one first. Also, this was likely to be the harder effort. I had stated that when I am fit, I "felt" that my LT HR was about 181-183. As a matter of fact I had 183 in my traning peaks setup page as my run LT. This was based mostly off of feel and maybe some other races I had done. Basically the test starts by taking an initial reading to make sure I don't have lactate already in me. My number was good (~1.0). The number we were looking for was 4.0 mmol/L. So I started with 10 minutes of warming up. The test was basically to increase the speed every 3 minutes, taking a drop of blood at the end of the 3 minutes before bumping up the speed. I had to quickly straddle the treadmill and put out my hand. Alcohol wipe, dry, prick, wipe the first drop, put the second drop on the tab, and then jump back on the treadmill. The goal was to do those steps in ~15 seconds. It was no problem, although my fingers are sore today from all of the pin pricks.
We started at 8.4 mph and went up from there. We hit 4.1 mmol/L at 9.9 mph. Done. Only took 20 minutes of running. Turns out my HR at 4.1 was exactly 183. Cool, I really do know my body pretty well. Of course with me not being in running shape I figured my speed/pace would be pretty slow. Turns out that is not the case. My LT pace is about 6:07 mpm. I was pretty surprised by this given that I have done a total of 2 LT workouts in the past 3-4 months. My guess is that this number goes under 6 by race day. I think I am going to jump into the Broad Street 10 miler. I really want to know what I can do. Of course the other thing is that I'm probably going to need to start pushing a little bit more on my running. My paces have probably been slower than they should be. But for LT workouts I go almost solely by HR anyway. Too many variables when it comes to running outside.
The bike test wasn't as helpful. I think the problem was that I was not quite recovered enough. My lactate level was pretty high even at the start. It then dipped down, but shot back up quickly. So I don't have as much faith in that number. But I do think the LT HR on the bike was good.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Swim Test Time!
As this is a recovery week and on my last recovery week I did no testing, this week will have somee testing. After this week I will move into my last base block (3 weeks on, 1 week recovery). For the last base block I am going to focus on adding in some more intensity during the break through workouts and less intensity during the non-break through workouts.
I really wanted to have this test be about focus as well. I wanted to push mentally as well as physically. Sometimes it is easy to just go out and hammer, but to try to really focus all the way through the effort can be hard. I wanted to think about a strong smooth stroke on every stroke for the entire 1K.
This was a 1000 yard time trial, which I have done 2 other times. 1st time was way back in December and I hit just under 15 minutes. The second time was a huge jump and I hit 14:30 exactly. This time I did not expect as big a jump. I did a little longer warmup this time. I followed Gordo's plan (from his book Going Long) basically.
Warmup
It seems like every time I do this test I end up with someone in my lane and it usually isn't until after I start. I started a little later this time, hoping that things would clear out. I was wrong again. The good news was that I only had about 200 to go when someone jumped in. The bad news was that this guy is pretty fast and big, so he created a pretty decent current that I could actually feel every time I passed him. It didn't help that right on the other side of the rope from me someone big was also swimming. So I think I might have lost a couple of seconds, but nothing I am going to factor in as this has happened every time. It was good practice for focusing when I was tired. I really tried to make sure I came off the wall strong as well and stayed as needle like as possible.
So on to the test. I always intend to start out slower, but again, I didn't do very good on this. The first 200 I came in at 2:43. So I just tried to stay even. Felt good through the middle. Really started to feel it the last 300. But I felt the effort was pretty even the whole set. Touched the wall at 13:56. I was pretty surprised by this and had to think through weather or not I had skipped a lap. But I did the math and realized that this must have been right. My 100 yd avg was 1:23. This is pretty nice and is about a 3 second improvement for my LT pace and over 30 seconds faster than my last 1000 yard effort. I think a lot of this gain is due to overall fitness and for the last block of base I am really going to focus on form again and cut back on overall yardage (but keeping the workout time volume the same).
So I definetly classify this as a success.
Dave
I really wanted to have this test be about focus as well. I wanted to push mentally as well as physically. Sometimes it is easy to just go out and hammer, but to try to really focus all the way through the effort can be hard. I wanted to think about a strong smooth stroke on every stroke for the entire 1K.
This was a 1000 yard time trial, which I have done 2 other times. 1st time was way back in December and I hit just under 15 minutes. The second time was a huge jump and I hit 14:30 exactly. This time I did not expect as big a jump. I did a little longer warmup this time. I followed Gordo's plan (from his book Going Long) basically.
Warmup
- 10 minutes easy swim
- 5 minues steady swim (T Pace + 4-5 seconds)
- 6x50 with 25 build, 25 easy
- 6x50 with 12.5 sprint rest easy
It seems like every time I do this test I end up with someone in my lane and it usually isn't until after I start. I started a little later this time, hoping that things would clear out. I was wrong again. The good news was that I only had about 200 to go when someone jumped in. The bad news was that this guy is pretty fast and big, so he created a pretty decent current that I could actually feel every time I passed him. It didn't help that right on the other side of the rope from me someone big was also swimming. So I think I might have lost a couple of seconds, but nothing I am going to factor in as this has happened every time. It was good practice for focusing when I was tired. I really tried to make sure I came off the wall strong as well and stayed as needle like as possible.
So on to the test. I always intend to start out slower, but again, I didn't do very good on this. The first 200 I came in at 2:43. So I just tried to stay even. Felt good through the middle. Really started to feel it the last 300. But I felt the effort was pretty even the whole set. Touched the wall at 13:56. I was pretty surprised by this and had to think through weather or not I had skipped a lap. But I did the math and realized that this must have been right. My 100 yd avg was 1:23. This is pretty nice and is about a 3 second improvement for my LT pace and over 30 seconds faster than my last 1000 yard effort. I think a lot of this gain is due to overall fitness and for the last block of base I am really going to focus on form again and cut back on overall yardage (but keeping the workout time volume the same).
So I definetly classify this as a success.
Dave
Monday, April 2, 2007
High Volume Week
Well I hope this high volume training pays off, because that was my highest week yet and I am spent. Surprisingly I don't feel that bad for a Monday morning given that I just did 9.75 hours of training over the weekend. Yep, you read that correctly. I did a 4 hour brick on Saturday and a 1:15 swim Sunday followed by a 4.5 hour bike ride. The brick on Saturday was a fairly hard bike as I did the ride with John K, a local guy who is also doing IMLP. He is a pretty strong cyclist and I was working pretty hard on the bike. Unfortunetly I didn't get the numbers from the SRM. But I spent a good amount of time in upper z2 and z3. But the weather was good and we did a 1 hour hilly run afterwards.
I was worried that I would lose focus on Sunday especially with a long ride. I did the swim pretty early and put in 3600 yards with some decent intervals in there (including 1K straight at T pace + 5 secs). Then I got home and got going on the bike. I was worried as the weather called for rain and I really didn't want to do that amount of time on the trainer. But I decided to take a chance and hoped the weather didn't get too bad. It turned out perfect. There was one 5 minute stretch where I felt some sprinkles, but other than that it was just overcast the entire time. My nutrition was pretty good and I was able to stay in z2 for power and HR most of the time. Now don't get my wrong after all that I had done already this weekend, I definetly had some tough times where I just wanted to get off the bike and lay down. At one point I stopped to get an emergency Red Bull, but they didn't have any, so I got on my bike and just kept on riding. When I got home I was done, cooked, shelled, spent, whatever! I was able to get about 700+ calories in me within about 30-45 minutes, which was good. A long hot shower helped as well. But I cannot lie, there was definetly some lasting affects to this ride. I didn't feel "right" the rest of the day. My mood was definetly a little off as well. I took a lot of effort to get motivated to do almost anything. I just wanted to lay down. Getting Ben ready and into bed seemed like an impossible task, and there were times where I was just staring off into space for a couple of minutes and had to be "snapped" out of it. I have never felt that spent or tired.
The good news is that I felt pretty good in the morning, after 8+ hours of sleep. I did a shorter, easier swim this morning and I don't feel like I'm completely over the edge. So this weekend was definetly reaching, but I feel confident that I didn't overdo it. I am glad though that I only have a couple more weekends that are this packed. I'm sure I was not much help at home, especially on Sunday.
This is a cut back week and I am getting both run LT and bike LT testing done on Friday. Interested to see how that goes. Otherwise I won't do too much testing this week. It will be nice to have a fairly relaxed week. There is a lot going on at work and I would like to spend some more time at home with the little ones as well.
Dave
I was worried that I would lose focus on Sunday especially with a long ride. I did the swim pretty early and put in 3600 yards with some decent intervals in there (including 1K straight at T pace + 5 secs). Then I got home and got going on the bike. I was worried as the weather called for rain and I really didn't want to do that amount of time on the trainer. But I decided to take a chance and hoped the weather didn't get too bad. It turned out perfect. There was one 5 minute stretch where I felt some sprinkles, but other than that it was just overcast the entire time. My nutrition was pretty good and I was able to stay in z2 for power and HR most of the time. Now don't get my wrong after all that I had done already this weekend, I definetly had some tough times where I just wanted to get off the bike and lay down. At one point I stopped to get an emergency Red Bull, but they didn't have any, so I got on my bike and just kept on riding. When I got home I was done, cooked, shelled, spent, whatever! I was able to get about 700+ calories in me within about 30-45 minutes, which was good. A long hot shower helped as well. But I cannot lie, there was definetly some lasting affects to this ride. I didn't feel "right" the rest of the day. My mood was definetly a little off as well. I took a lot of effort to get motivated to do almost anything. I just wanted to lay down. Getting Ben ready and into bed seemed like an impossible task, and there were times where I was just staring off into space for a couple of minutes and had to be "snapped" out of it. I have never felt that spent or tired.
The good news is that I felt pretty good in the morning, after 8+ hours of sleep. I did a shorter, easier swim this morning and I don't feel like I'm completely over the edge. So this weekend was definetly reaching, but I feel confident that I didn't overdo it. I am glad though that I only have a couple more weekends that are this packed. I'm sure I was not much help at home, especially on Sunday.
This is a cut back week and I am getting both run LT and bike LT testing done on Friday. Interested to see how that goes. Otherwise I won't do too much testing this week. It will be nice to have a fairly relaxed week. There is a lot going on at work and I would like to spend some more time at home with the little ones as well.
Dave
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Hello running legs...Nice to see you again
Well the base is winding down. Pretty pshyced that even though I had several colds this winter (2 year old, newborn and life in general are the culprits) I feel like I have a really good base. I have already knocked out my main goals for base.
I'm still up in the air about jumping into the broad street 10 mile the first week in May. It would be a great test of my LT pace, but I just don't want to push too hard on an effort that isn't specific to my end goals. I will have to ponder this one further.
later,
Dave
- Get to 275 Watts. I'm at 280 now
- Get under 173. I'm at 167 with 11% bodyfat
- Squat 275. Done that and more...without any real injuries.
- Get body weight under 165 and 10% bodyfat
- Get Power to weight ratio up to 3.9. Would love to see 4.0, but I think this is a little out of reach. I will need to watch out for weight getting to low and leading to a drop in power
- Really focus on the diet. Paleo has been going okay, but I can do better.
- LT run pace down to 6:05. Again, so close to that magical 6 minutes number, but I just think it would be too much of a sport specific stretch that is not needed for Ironman.
I'm still up in the air about jumping into the broad street 10 mile the first week in May. It would be a great test of my LT pace, but I just don't want to push too hard on an effort that isn't specific to my end goals. I will have to ponder this one further.
later,
Dave
Thursday, March 15, 2007
(trying to get) Back to our regularly schedule programming
Well not that things have settled down at all, in fact it got a little more crazy over the last week. Mateo is doing well, although of course he doesn't sleep much. Helen, who normally really values her sleep, is doing really well though. Ben unfortunetly had a pretty bad cold that turned into "Croup" last Saturday. We had spent the morning at the aquirium (Just dad and Ben) and that night he woke up and couldn't breath at all. We had to take him to the ER and they gave him some medicine. Since then he has been getting steadily better. He certainly is making strides in the area of communication. He has very interesting conversations (with himself as well as us) and is learning more and more words and phrases.
My cutback week ended up not having any real tests except one as I was sick. But I did do a final Power test for the Cadence bike class. I was really happy with the numbers. I think I could have done even better if I hadn't been under the weather. My FP is now 279, which checks off one of my objectives to get to 275. I now am going to modify the goal and shoot for 290 (which of course is so close to 300...but we will see). Also this is all happening with my weight coming down slowly, but steadily. My Power/Weight ratio is now 3.45, so I am pretty happy about that.
The other big thing I am tackling this week is my diet. I have decided that I really want to focus on this as I have also done "so-so" in this area. I usually eat realatively healthy, but probably eat too much bad fat. I have also wanted to cut out grains, etc. To this end I am giving the Paleo Diet a 1 month try. I started on 3/14. Basically I have to cut out dairy (not that hard for me...don't do that too much), breads, potatoes, rice, beans, sugar and some other things. Basically good lean meats, and all the fruits and vegtables you want. I am going to follow the Diet with some slight modifications though. The book Paleo Diet for Athletes allows for high GI (Glycemic Index foods) foods (potatoes, rice, etc) after workouts as part of the recovery process. I expect this will be tough for me at first (there is usually a temporary loss of energy), but I plan to stick to it for 1 month. Fortunetly they do play by the 95:5 rule, which says that 5% of your meals can be "cheat" meals (ie whatever you want). I would really like to get to single digits in terms of bodyfat and overall I agree with most of the research behind this diet. I also like that they have modified it for endurance athletes. One of the hard things is simply getting in enough calories. When you eat 2 cups of vegtables, you get full, but there just isn't much in the way of calories. And of course calories is energy.
Hopefully I will get back to some normal training. This week is going okay so far. Both of my swims this week have been less than stellar, but I did a hard weights session on Tuesday and it after skipping weights last week, I'm sore.
Dave
My cutback week ended up not having any real tests except one as I was sick. But I did do a final Power test for the Cadence bike class. I was really happy with the numbers. I think I could have done even better if I hadn't been under the weather. My FP is now 279, which checks off one of my objectives to get to 275. I now am going to modify the goal and shoot for 290 (which of course is so close to 300...but we will see). Also this is all happening with my weight coming down slowly, but steadily. My Power/Weight ratio is now 3.45, so I am pretty happy about that.
The other big thing I am tackling this week is my diet. I have decided that I really want to focus on this as I have also done "so-so" in this area. I usually eat realatively healthy, but probably eat too much bad fat. I have also wanted to cut out grains, etc. To this end I am giving the Paleo Diet a 1 month try. I started on 3/14. Basically I have to cut out dairy (not that hard for me...don't do that too much), breads, potatoes, rice, beans, sugar and some other things. Basically good lean meats, and all the fruits and vegtables you want. I am going to follow the Diet with some slight modifications though. The book Paleo Diet for Athletes allows for high GI (Glycemic Index foods) foods (potatoes, rice, etc) after workouts as part of the recovery process. I expect this will be tough for me at first (there is usually a temporary loss of energy), but I plan to stick to it for 1 month. Fortunetly they do play by the 95:5 rule, which says that 5% of your meals can be "cheat" meals (ie whatever you want). I would really like to get to single digits in terms of bodyfat and overall I agree with most of the research behind this diet. I also like that they have modified it for endurance athletes. One of the hard things is simply getting in enough calories. When you eat 2 cups of vegtables, you get full, but there just isn't much in the way of calories. And of course calories is energy.
Hopefully I will get back to some normal training. This week is going okay so far. Both of my swims this week have been less than stellar, but I did a hard weights session on Tuesday and it after skipping weights last week, I'm sore.
Dave
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