I am making the commitment to myself to blog more often. Whether it’s electronic or handwritten, journaling my training experiences has always been a very valuable tool to me. Logging miles is important. But it’s more important to understand what it took to do those miles. Some are good; some are bad, but all are steps toward my goals.
Goals
As some of you know, this is the year of Me. I have dedicated the last 5 months to working on the mental aspects of my training. I am so happy with the results. Like the physical training, mental training is an ongoing process that will change over time as I continue improving.
The second goal that I have is setting realistic aggressive goals. Y’see, I’ve always had this level of pain that I was afraid to reach for. Sure, I was getting faster. I’ve had PR’s, but it was…..I.was.settling for less.
I wasn’t reaching my potential.
Then, the choice was….what races? What distances do I shoot for? Where do I want the biggest impact?
My choices: Greenland 50k? Ironman? Marathon? Half?
Rather than go for distance, I thought that speed at the mid-distance races would be perfect.
I chose to pour my energy into the Half iron and half marathon distances.
With my sights set on Ironman and the Greenland 50k for 2010, speed work at the half iron and half marathon was a slam dunk.
Races
Now that the goals were set, I had to come up with a race schedule.
My PR races are in Sept 2009 (half iron) and Oct 2009 (Half marathon). I am closing in on the ever coveted sub-6 for the half iron. For the half marathon, well….let’s just see how the half iron goes.
May:
In just over two weeks, I will be running my first half marathon of the year. This is a “C” race in which I will be running for nutrition testing only. Time is not a concern as I’ve changed my nutrition strategy.
June:
Another “C” race, a 65 mile bike race. This race is a “C” because with the winter we’ve had, I’ve not been able to get out on the road and climb hills. I’ve done 100% of my training on the flat trainer. It will give me a good gauge for Sept’s half iron, though.
Half marathon: “C”---completely for the sheer fun of running Half marathon. This race falls the weekend after my bike race.
July-Aug
A local club added (for the 1st time ever) open water ironman distance swims at my res. I’ll be mixing the ironman swims with the shorter Dip n Dash races. The Dip n Dashes are 1500m swims + 5k run. These are low key but will be done as speed workouts.
Sept:
PR at the half iron
Oct:
PR at the Half marathon
In addition to all this cool stuff, I have a master’s swim team that meets a few days a week. I’ll be joining them this summer. I’m still strength training 2 days per week. I spent 5 weeks in the AA stage (low weight, high reps) followed by 5 weeks building Maximal strength. Next week, I start the power endurance phase.
For this upcoming weekend, I have a 5 mile pace run on Saturday, a 11 mile long run Sunday, and a bike time trial (5 miles).
I guess that’s it.
Thanks for reading!
