Today's 7.5 Mile Run - 61:56mins

I now have about 17 days until the Half Marathon (13miles) I will be participating in in Chicago. Today, I have begun to step it up from the standard 5 and 10ks I have been doing up until this point. It turned out to be a beautiful evening here in Milwaukee so I was outside. Below is the course I rand and the Pace, heart rate, and distance graph from my Garmin.

The Passionman

I want to write a quick post about the Passionman Tri before I move on with my posts. I truly enjoyed this race this year. I didn't quite hit my goals, but that tells me what I already know: I need to keep training. As I put in a previous post, I placed 9th. My goal was certainly to win the race. In most races I will be aiming to win my age group.

Lets start with the pool swim portion. I can officially say that I hate pool swims to start a triathlon. In the case of the Bucknell Tri (mostly due to time of year) it would be impossible to move the swim outdoors. However, the pool swim throws off you rhythm. We were forced to flip backwards and under the rope every other time. The backwards could have been avoided but I wont go into the specifics of how that could be done. The other problem is with people passing or being held up. No matter how hard you try, you wont seed perfectly for the swim. That being said, I still enjoyed it. Pool swims just shouldn't be you first choice, even as a beginner.

The bike course is, without a doubt, one of my favorite courses! (However, this may be because I designed it last year :) I felt I really did well this year on the bike course. I was somewhere around 42min for the 13.4miles. my goal had been 40mins but not to bad. I really enjoy the rolling hills on the course and the back country roads that they are on.

Finally, it was time for the run portion. When I started triathlons, I HATED running. I still hate running, but every once in a blue moon I find some enjoyment out of it. I think the reason I dislike running is it takes me longer to get there and back. As I run faster, running becomes more tolerable. This is nice because as I get better, I enjoy it more, do it more, and get even better faster.

Again, for those interested in the race blog and the results posted there visit http://passionman.wordpress.com/

The Cost of Traveling to Races

I have just returned from my first race of the year. I participated in the Passionman Triathlon at Bucknell University (http://passionman.wordpress.com/). I thought that this race would be the best way for me to start the season as it is a sprint triathlon and a course that I knew well (as I should, I designed part of it). It went very well, but more details to come on that later. One giant take away from the weekend is the cost of traveling as a triathlete.

As you can see, the race fee turned out to be the least of my worries. First, never fly NWA (now Delta) if you are traveling with a bike. I have compared all the airline policies and NWAs calls for a $175 oversize fee. In my case they made a mistake on the way there and I talked my way down on the way back. The only reason I was able to do so was because their policy is even to confusing for them to understand. However, I assure you that it is supposed to be a $175 fee each way. The wonderful part about that is that I weigh about 130lbs more than my bike box when packed and am given a seat in the pressurized cabin, and yet the charged me about $60 more for the bike.......... Next time I should just get my Fuji a seat on the plane!

In the end, I had an excellent weekend back at the fraternity house and an excellent race so I am not disappointed that I went. However, there needs to be serious consideration and a bit more research before I will fly with my bike again.

1 week until my first event

In 6 days, I will have finished my first triathlon of the season. It is amazing to me that I am planning on racing soon, when it has been to cold here in Milwaukee for me to ride outside more than one time. Last year the Bucknell Passionman Triathlon was a very warm spring day and took place in the afternoon. We could not have hoped for better weather. However, this coming Sunday is supposed to be around 60degrees and will be taking place in the morning.

The Bucknell Passionman site: passionman.wordpress.com
- find the course maps and general info here

My final week of preparation will look like most other weeks of training. I will be in the pool Monday - Thursday. I plan to run a 10k today, a 5k tomorrow, and some very light 5ks Wednesday and Thursday. I'm not pushing any of my workouts hard this week. Due to the short length of the Passionman, I don't feel the need to taper into the race. At one point, the bike portion of the race was the least of my concern. However, because of the weather I have been confined to the indoors and not fully tested myself on the bike out on the road. I hope all those spinning classes will carry over well....

My goals for the race are as follows:
Swim: 650m 10 mins
Bike: 13.2miles 35 mins
Run: 3.1miles 21 mins

Last year I had to strategize where I would expend my energy. This year it will be all out for the entire course. A course of this distance requires speed and adrenaline, not endurance and strategy this time around. The real question is what to wear and how to transition. Were it to be another warm beautiful day, I would wear only a tri suit and only change shoes (no socks) at the transition area. At 60degrees and partly cloudy, I might want to look into drying off after the pool and a long sleeve jersey... That will have to be a game time decision.

I am looking forward to this race and hope to beat my goals and possibly bring home the gold metal (for non students) ;)

Working out using a Stability Ball

As in all my posts, I don't believe myself to be an expert on any of these topics.  I do feel I have a few workout tips and insights that I have picked up along the way.  Every time I have tried to put together a stability ball workout, I have failed to do so.  The reason being that I am not an expert, and don't have an endless # of ball workouts up my sleeve.  However, I have learned how to turn an every day weight workout into a stability ball workout.

I would say that 75% of exercises can be done by incorporating a stability ball.  Simply put, before beginning your next set, take a moment to think how you can incorporate the ball.  Instead of lying on a bench to do a bench press, use a stability ball.  Rather than sit on a bench to do skull crushers (triceps ext), sit on a stability ball.  Instead of doing a bicep curl, sit on a stability ball and do your bicep curls.  This is one of the easiest ways to begin incorporating the stability ball into your workouts.

When transforming your workouts into stability ball workouts, you need to remember that the goal of the ball is to decrease your stability while doing the exercise.  This decreased stability is what results in the increased use of your core area.  There are a few ways to decrease your stability.  You can start by moving your feet closer together when sitting on the ball, and eventually lifting one foot off of the ball.  Another common way to decrease stability is by doing each exercise one arm at a time (ie when doing a bench press, use only one dumbbell, pressing with your right arm for x reps and then do the same x reps right away with your left arm).

Finally, don't think that you need to look like an expert at the gym when you bring out a stability ball.  Just because you can't name 50 stability ball exercises does not mean that you can figure out a few ways to work the ball into your current workouts.  As a final safety note, the goal is to decrease stability so you will most likely need to decrease weight.  Also, if you don't feel comfortable, then set up a session or two with a personal trainer.  I personally feel that the stability ball is an excellent tool to both work your core and force you to visualize the exercise and what it is meant to work.

Integrating Weight exercises into my Training Program

One piece of training that I am still not sure how to integrate into my workout schedule is weight lifting. Often I feel I should treat the lifting program as a separate program running in parallel with the endurance (swim, bike, run) training that I do. However, no matter how hard I try to do this, I always find myself thinking about the next endurance workout and worrying that my lift will negatively affect it. For example, lifting back and biceps the day before a swim routine would certainly affect the swim. Honestly, I don't know what kind of effect this would have in the long run (no pun intended). The result of my uncertainty has resulted in a decreased number of weight lifting sessions.

My current weights program is not well defined; I will admit that. However, I think I am forming a good idea of what to do going forward. I have decided to do what I will call half body workouts (upper body and lower body). The reason I have split it into these two groups has a few reasons. First, it will allow me to merge the workouts into my training schedule based on what endurance event I am training that particular day. Second, they are both very very wide categories and I can rotate in and out a large number of exercises. I'm hoping this will prevent the urge to work the same muscle groups each time.

The Plan moving forward: Exercise with weights two days per week. If I am planning to run or bike that day than I will lift my upper body. If I am planning to swim that day, I'll do a lower body workout. Finally, I will be doing one of each each week. Again, these are just guidlines I am going to try to follow. I am slowly trying to build into following a set plan, but for now I am sticking with the general guideline approach.

Anyone out there have a good weight program integrated into their Triathlon or endurance training programs??