Only one scheduled workout for today!
Indoors-Isolated Leg Training
Type: Bike Planned duration: 1:00 Isolated Leg Training (ILT) on indoor trainer.
After warm-up, then alternate 20-60 seconds with 1 leg–other on a chair. Get a total of 7-10 minutes of ILT on each leg in workout. Alternate legs as you feel like it. Comfortably high cadence. Focus on eliminating dead spot at top of stroke by pushing toes forward in shoes at top.
I did this at Lifetime Fitness in Atascocita, Texas.
Day 2 of “official” triathlon training. This morning’s workout:
Strides, 4-5, relax
From the TB (Training Bible):
Warm up well. Then, on grass, dirt, or another soft surface, run for 20 seconds down a very slight decline while concentrating on the fundamental skill most in need of improvement for you (high stride rate, vertical foot movement, short support time, or minimal oscillation)… After each effort, walk back to the starting point.
I was instructed to do the slight variation when returning to the starting point: “Hop 30 times on right leg and then 30 times on left leg (hops are to build foot/leg strength).”
Now this is Humble, and at first I had a hard time finding a suitable spot for this particular exercise. I finally found this one:
It’s reasonable close to the house so I just cycled over there for my warm up. That store on the SW corner of the field is a PetSmart and there were guys offloading a truck on the dock in the back.
I have no idea what they must have thought when they saw some crazy old guy, wearing only shorts and Vibram Five Fingers, sprinting down the slope and hopping back up, first with the right leg and then with the left, all this a little after 5 AM.
Evening Workout – Aerobic ints
I did this at Lifetime Fitness at the intersection of Will Clayton and W. Lake Houston in Atascocita, TX.
Type: Swim Planned duration: 0:45 (You may substitute a masters swim workout.) WU: 100 swim easy, 50 kick easy, 100 swim moderate, 50 kick moderate, 100 swim build speed, 50 kick build speed. MS: For the first set decrease times with each work interval. All aerobic—easy breathing. 4 x 100 (10”) moderate. Rest 2 minutes. Kick 300 steady. 6 x 25 relaxed speed (15”). CD: 200 easy swim. Total: 1500
I was a little late getting started and by the time I finished the instructor for the Master’s swim class was setting things up. I met her (Katie White) and have decided to sign up for lessons for a couple of months. I’ve never had any formal swim training and all I’ve learned recently has come from a Total Immersion DVD that I bought on Amazon. These group master’s swimming lessons are very reasonably priced ($34/month) and I don’t think I’ll need more than maybe two months. Just want to get any problems in technique fixed up.
OK, interesting day. Over the weekend I created an account on The TrainingPeaks Website. I also purchased a training plan from Joe Friel for “Half-Ironman Base Period (Over 50) 0-14 hrs/wk”.
Though the TrainingPeaks web site is a bit buggy, the concept is really cool. If you purchase a training plan you can “apply” it to your schedule on a given starting date. For me, that was today.
I had already purchased and read through Friel’s book The Triathlete’s Training Bible (3rd edition), but had been very confused as how to apply everything. The problem is that this book is clearly written for the athlete who has already been racing in triathlons for at least a couple of years. It keeps making reference to your previous race times for various lengths when planning and pacing. Having never raced before I didn’t have any of that information to go on.
Having a fairly generic plan for someone in my age group seemed like the perfect way to establish a reasonably-organized training approach. I will warn anyone that is considering doing something similar … heavy use of sometimes obscure abbreviations appear everywhere in the workout plans so you MUST reread and review the training bible book.
So today wasn’t too bad. Just one workout. Here is the description from the plan:
AA, 3-4 sets
After warm up do 3-4 sets of AA. Cool down with 5-10 minutes of spinning in easy gear/resistance at high rpm. For details go to HELP (above), WORKOUT DESCRIPTIONS. Or turn to Chapter 13 in The Triathlete’s Training Bible.
The first thing I noticed is that, “For details go to HELP (above),” was totally bogus. No “HELP” above that had anything to do with this workout. So, after a review of Chapter 13, I learned that “AA”, in this context, stands for “Anatomical Adaptation.” The TB (Training Bible) say:
AA is the initial phase of strength training and usually occurs in the late fall or early winter during the Prep period. Its purpose is to prepare the muscles and tendons for the greater loads of the Maximum Strength phase.
You are given a selection of exercises to choose from, so it is pretty flexible. This is what I did:
Warm-Up: Elliptical machine for 10 minutes Alternating Sets: 1. squat: 115 x 30, 30, 30, 30 2. standing bent-arm lat pulldown: 37.5 x 30, 30, 30, 30 Alternating Sets: 3. leg press: 90 x 30, 30, 30, 30 4. (nautilus inner) chest press: 70 x 15, 50 x 22, 15; 40 x 22 Alternating Sets: 5. seated row: 90 x 30; 140 x 15; 110 x 30, 30 6. seated heel raise: 45 x 28; 40 x 27; 35 x 30, 30 7. abdominal w/twist: BW @ #4 x 14; BW @ #2 x 20, 14, 15 Cool-Down: Easy spinning with high RPM for 10 minutes Duration: 01:25 (not including WU and CD)
So that was a pretty long workout. Next time I may just do 3 sets. I really don’t like strength training to last more than about 45 minutes, if I can help it. Maybe an hour, max.
Had a nice ride today on the Fuji Aloha. Road from the house over to Duessen Park, then around the south side of Lake Houston. Continued over to Crosby and north on various farm roads up to Huffman. Crossed Lake Houston on the FM 1960 bridge then cut through various neighborhoods until I got back to the house. Here are the stats:
Duration: 02:53 Distance: 49.04 mi Energy: 3132 kcal Speed: 16.9 mi/hr (avg), 26.9 mi/hr (max) Heart Rate: 121 bpm (avg), 148 bpm (max)
You can view the map and other specs here.
Had a very nice 10 mile run with the Kingwood Fit yellow pacing group. We left a little after 06:00. The weather was pleasant and we didn’t have any rain.
Here are the specs from my Garmin ForeRunner 305.
Summary
Duration: 01:27 Distance: 9.96 mi Energy: 1486 kcal
Splits:
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Split | Distance | Avg Pace | Avg HR | Max HR |
1 | 1 | 09:36 | 131 | 143 |
2 | 1 | 08:54 | 145 | 155 |
3 | 1 | 08:56 | 150 | 155 |
4 | 1 | 08:53 | 152 | 156 |
5 | 1 | 08:51 | 155 | 160 |
6 | 1 | 08:13 | 158 | 162 |
7 | 1 | 08:26 | 162 | 168 |
8 | 1 | 08:22 | 164 | 168 |
9 | 1 | 08:20 | 165 | 169 |
10 | 0.96 | 08:39 | 167 | 172 |
Summary | 9.96 | 08:43 | 154 | 172 |
You can see the course here on Garmin connect.
I was sent this in an email today. I don’t know the origin, so I cannot give credit to the originator.
Today is my sweetie’s birthday!!!!
Kingwood Fit Run
We had a nice run with the Kingwood Fit group today. The weather was wonderful and it definitely has a fall influence.
Here is the track as recorded by the Runkeeper app on my iPhone:
Here are a few pictures from the group that I took this morning:
Running – Treadmill
At lunch I went over to Ballys and ran on a treadmill for 50 minutes at a medium pace (boring!).
I’m still experiencing a lot of pain in my left achilles tendon and also on the lower front side of my left leg… maybe shinsplints?
I think I’m going to not do any running until Saturday and instead spend the time that I would have been running on an elliptical machine instead. If I can’t get this cleared up soon I’m going to have to go see good old Dr. Kerr, the sports medicine guy. Continue reading »
StrengthTraining – NewRulesOfLifting, Hypertrophy 1 – Workout B (# 6)
squat: 170x15,15,15 -> 170 deadlift shrug: 135x15,15,15 -> 140 alternating sets: bulgarian split squat: 25x15ES,15,15 -> 25 step-up: 50x15ES,15,15 -> 50 alternating sets: reverse crunch: BWx15,15,15 standing calf raises: 100x15,15,15
In the evening we all met at Mandy’s house and watched the season finale of True Blood.
Kingwood Fit – 10 mile run
Got up at 04:30 this morning. After some coffee and a bit of breakfast, drove up to the Christ the King Lutheran church in Kingwood. It was raining pretty hard on the drive over. Our group took off at about 06:00. The rain had stopped, but started up again about halfway through the run. Not too hard though so it was pretty pleasant.
I was wearing the Garmin ForeRunner, but it lost the GPS feed at about mile 8 so the last two miles are not recorded. I think it was from the rain.
I read somewhere that a GPS device can usually receive a signal through things like cloth, etc., so long as they are dry, but that even a thin film of water on the device can interfere with the reception.
Partial stats available here.