Its Been a While

A few months ago my training came to a fairly abrupt stop and with it this blog. I'm not going to go into great detail as to the reason I stopped training but rather a quick synopsis and an assurance that I am again starting to train again.

The major blow to my 2009 Iron Man plan came when GE gave me the approval to go to China for a three week training course. This coupled with some personal traveling threw a Major wrench into the Iron Man Season and my training plan. Without the motivation of my big event, my training began to suffer.

The second blow came when I purchased a condo that required a lot of attention and re-work during the months leading up to my China trip.

And Finally, I have just moved to Salt Lake City, and moving is always difficult.

HOWEVER, This week I have been doing some baseline tests to see how far I have fallen and create a foundation for my upcoming workouts. I am also happy that I live in SLC in close proximity to my friend Justin who will be training with me. This will no longer be an individual endeavor.

I have some back posts that I will be putting up of an event or two that I haven't talked about or uploaded my Garmin data for. Look for those this evening and look forward to a winter of great training!

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) ;)

I know its been a while

Its definitely been 2 :) long since my last blog post and I promise to wrap up a few things in a moment. However, I just ran one of the best 5k runs of my life so I am going to use this post to throw up the garmin stats.


As a result of this run, I am upping my goal in the Passionman at Bucknell to running the 3.1 miles in 20mins. The difference between the run I did today and the Bucknell course is a few hills and I will have already swam and biked. However, a 22min 5k today makes me think I can get there.


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Crash Workout Weeks, Pushing Intensity and Endurance

Very seldom do you find an endurance athlete who hasn’t had to, at one time or another, fight off the desire to push themselves into and anaerobic phase in every workout. We are competitive people, and want to work hard; harder than our competition, harder than we did the time before, and often end up working harder than we should. Overtraining occurs on two main fronts, intensity and volume. In other words pushing to hard (high heart rates and burning legs) or pushing for to long. Either one of these is usually a bad thing.

A Crash week is where you allow yourself to give into these desires. The key to a successful week of crashing is planning. You must plan three major facets. First, you need to plan you recovery week. Second, you need to choose whether you want to focus on speed, strength, form, endurance, or mental toughness (you should not choose ‘all of the above’ but rather one or two of these objectives. Finally, you need to plan you workouts during the CRASH week.

The benefits of a well-planned crash week are huge, especially for amateur athletes like myself. Pro athletes might find less value in crashing for a week, especially because their volume is already relatively high. However, the overall timing of a crash week is also very important. DO NOT crash close to a race. Many athletes fall into the trap of trying to get one final boost a few weeks before a race. In fact Googling crash workout weeks will bring up blogs for many of these people. But let me repeat that, DO NOT crash within a few weeks of a race.

Everyone is different and everyone’s workout plan for the week will be different. Average recovery time from a crash week is a week, but the gains might not be realized for another three or four weeks after that. I am in the midst of a crash week right now. I had a bit of a recovery week last week and below is the plan for the crash week and my recovery week.

Foot OverPronation

In order to fully demonstrate what I am talking about when I discuss my running form, here are some screenshots from the video analysis I took of myself running yesterday.

Good (Midfoot Strike and little pronation):

Bad (Over Pronation):  You can see how the ankle and foot cave inward.

Video Clip (Some Good and Some Bad):

One thing that jumps off the video to me is that my feet appear to be running down the center line of the treadmill.  In my next session I am going to try to focus on landing them on the sides of that imaginary line rather than directly on it.  I think this could be a big reason for the pronation.

Why do an IronMan?

I think that one consistent piece of every triathletes training and race day is that he or she knows why they are competing.  However, this motivating factor is not always easy to put into words.  Just as I believe it is important to have tangible written goals, I think it is important to examine one's reason for training for and competing in an IronMan event.

That being said, I can not seem to put my reason for competing into words.  I think I grew up on athletic competition, especially in Lacrosse, and miss the pure exhilaration I got from competing and also from winning.  Throughout college I tried every sport ranging from skiing to surfing to skydiving.  However, I have come back to the basic acts of swim, bike, and run, and found a way to push myself mentally and physically to be a more driven individual.

MSE Triathlon Camp Day 3

The camp is now over, and just in time to head back to work tomorrow :(.  The final day really pulled everything together for me.  Our schedule was simple:

7-8 Breakfast

8:30-9:45 Swim Drills (more doing today and less learning) + 5 50s on 1min15

9:45-10:30 Open Water swimming

11-12:15 Spinning with Nathan

Lunch, Q&A, Closing

So while it was a simple day, I was really able to get a lot out of the swim.  First, I go a half decent swim workout in.  Second, Dwight was able to work with me a little bit on getting mroe power out of my stroke.  By turning my hip more and stretching out my pull hand, I'll better be able to use my core to snap back and get a more effective pull.  I look forward to working on that in my next few pool workouts.

Spinning was great because it felt terrible.  I have been an All Star on the spin bikes at the gym, but there isn't any substitute for your bike on a trainer.  It was without a doubt more difficult if only because I think it forces you to use slightly different muscles.

That was that.  I dont think I will be enlisting any of the coaches for training plans.  I feel that I was able to get good enough high level advice on training plans that I can work out my own.  Monday and Tuesday will be rest days this coming week and I'm going to be using that time to build the year long plan.  So far three races on the horizon (Passionman Tri Bucknell, High Cliff 1/2 Iron WI, and FL Ironman 140.6).

MSE Winter Tri Camp, Day 2

I'm going to break this post down into a few sections because of the immense amount of things I learned and experienced today. I will warn you now its a long post.

First, I want to comment on the overall skill level of those attending. My initial assumptions were totally off. I assumed that the people who would attend a tri training camp would be experienced. Yes, its billed as an all levels event. But, that was my assumption none the less. This is not the case. The average skill level is low. I had expected to be one of the least in shape and experienced athletes and find myself closer to the top. This in itself would not be a bad thing, however, there hasn't been any group work based on skill level. I don't want to sound snobby here because I really do enjoy everyone at the event, but I quickly tired of catching people in the pool after 10 yards. But thats enough of that. Now on to the excellent stuff thats been going on.

The Morning
The coaches mentioned in my last post continue to prove themselves to be excellent mentors and knowlegable athletes. We started the day with some dynamic stretching where I continue to learn little things I do wrong on a regular basis. After breakfast we headed into the pool, where Dwight ran through an extensive amount of swim drills with us. I would dive underwater to watch his demonstrations and his form was awesome to see. The drills I knew, but I got some excellent on site feedback on ways to tweak my personal stroke during various drills. We also had our swim taped from underwater head on, underwater from the side, and above water. I am very pleased to say that when reviewing my stroke, Dwight didn't have much immediate feedback. He wants to work a bit more with me tomorrow on really harnessing the power of my body rotation during the stroke, so look for a report on that tomorrow.

Next up were some running drills aimed at teaching us how are foot should be striking the ground. I can only describe it by saying that you should land on the middle (ball) of your foot using a hamstring pull. I am sorry but Im still wrapping my head around the details deeper than that. We also video taped the run. Now, I have never claimed to be a good runner. In fact, I hate running (although I'm beginning to like it more, shh). I was still unprepared for what I saw on the running video. I do was called extreme pronation. This is only visible in slow motion from behind, and appears to be mostly on my right foot. In order to work on this, I need to focus first on landing on the balls of my feet in that sweeping hamstring pull motion. Next, I need to look at a shoe change (which is depressing because I just bought these shoes).

Im losing focus on this post so I'll stop it here. We also did some cycling and nutrition which I will try to remember to post about tomorrow, but probably not. Also, on a gear note, I really want the Garmin 405 (might have to settle for the 305 ;), and I still want the Equinox TTX 9.9 SSL. Our coach Nate has the 2008 version. Awesome.

MSE Triathlon Camp, Day 1

Normally I struggle for what to write about here, but this weekend will definitely be an exception. I am participating in the MSE Winter Tri Camp in Green Bay WI.

So far I am happy with the coaches (Nathan Ennis, Brian McWilliams, and Dwight Sandvold). They all bring very different skills to the table. Dwight has experience. Its as simple as that. He has been around the sport longer than I have been alive and been in over 100 events. Brian is what I picture when I think of a really good trainer. For instance, in his Plyos today, he was able to make minor form tweaks that really improve the effect of the core exercise. In addition he has an endless bag of variations. We have yet to hear from Nathan, but we were told a story about he set a goal of 10 hours for his first Ironman, which is my goal. I definitely want to hear more about how he trained for that goal.

I'll repeat my intro to the group here. "My one word to describe myself would be "impulsive." The reason I am starting with that word is because its what got me into the sport in the first place. One summer, about 2 years ago, I was in Boulder CO, walked into a bike store, and left with a $2000 bike. I cycled for a while, but when I recieved an email from my mother about a local 1/2 iron man in 3 weeks, I put together a relay team and we competed about 2 weeks later. The rest is history, but I'm here to continue my transition from impulive to consistancy and get to those big races."

Im looking forward to tomorrow and resting up watching the Tour de California time trial. Lance just took off!

Another whole week past

Rather than doing another boring workout recap, I am going to ramble instead.  Overall, it was an ok week of training.  I received 3 books from Amazon: Triathletes Training Bible, Training Plans for Multi-Sport Athletes, and Going Long.  I have started going through the Training Bible, and it keeps referencing the difference between newbies and seasoned athletes.  One of the major differences is training randomly vs training with a plan.  The pros use a plan that does not change daily.  They have specific goals.  They work towards those goals with and without emotion.  They allow emotion to drive them and to drive their passion.  But professionals do not let emotion drive their workouts.  Emotion can not drive daily, weekly, or season long workout plans.

For the time being, I am going to continue with my "amateur" approach.  However, by the end of the week I intend to have developed a steadfast plan that I can direct my effort into.

Week's Training Log Review

Sunday:  Off Day, Go Steelers!!!!!!

Monday: Spin 4:30-7.  First 30mins warm up on my own.  5-6 Spin Class:  I was able to push myself harder during this hour than on past Monday's which really made the 6-7 spin class with Joanie that much more grueling.  I still asked for 30-45 second pick ups each time, but certainly couldn't feel my legs after about 15 mins.  The thing that Joanie doesn't let you do is slow down.  And when you do take a quick 15 second recovery and lessen the resistance, you immediately start picking it up in RPMs and resistance (at your own pace, but the reminders help).

Tuesday: Run 6 miles in 59.30.  This run felt terrible.  I was cramping the whole time.  In order to get it done in at least 10 min miles, I kept telling myself "Garret if you can't push though this 6 mile run, you wont ever make an iron man."  It proved to be enough motivation to get it done!

Wednesday: Off Day.  I'm seriously debating changing Wed from an off day.  I miss the workout to much.

Thursday:  Swim 2500 yards with drill worked in.  First day working out at the MAC (see previous post).

Friday: 50min Spin with Michelle.  I might have to stop going to this one.  Michelle isn't my kind of instructor.  We had to many rest periods and not enough push from her to work harder.  Her class just isn't my style, although I think she is a good spin instructor.  We'll have to see if I go back next week.

Saturday:  Was supposed to run, but ended up sleeping and resting all day.  I'm not very happy with myself on this one.  Especially because it was nice enough to run outside.

The Milwaukee Athletic Club

I will start out by admitting that I am a bit of a gym whore.  I have been constantly switching gyms since I moved to Milwaukee.  I started out at the YMCA, and that only lasted a month before I realized that there were to many people and not enough pool, bike, or treadmill space for my liking.  Next I moved to the Wisconsin Athletic Club.  The have multiple locations too, less people (higher dues), and excellent spin/yoga/core/other class schedules and instructors.  This is why, despite my recent acceptance and move to the Milwaukee Athletic Club, I will be keeping the WAC membership as well.

Now, the MAC serves two major purposes.  First and foremost it is a networking club.  It provides multiple social networking opportunities for its members.  But, it does have excellent athletic facilities.  The pool is the highlight for me.  As long as I can remember I have been sharing lanes with multiple people in small pools.  And while your own lane might not simulate open water tri conditions, it is still pretty nice.  Anyway, today was my first workout there and I went for a 2500 yard swim (in a 6 foot wide lane, by myself).  First impression was excellent and I'll update you on further happenings as I continue to go there.

Also, stay tuned for my season schedule.  Im still working out dates and funding!

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