June went by in a Blur!

The brick workout that I talked about earlier went quite well.  I rode stronger than I ever have and put in a solid 5 min per km run over the 4km course.  I do not expect to be able to hold that over the half marathon distance, but it was nice to feel that strong after a solid bike ride.

Also in June I got a personal best in a 5k track time trial.  I think it was 23:06, about 40 seconds better than my time at about the same point in the season as last year.

Mid month I travelled to Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Canmore for some work and holidays / family visiting.

The highlights were:

• training in Vancouver a week after the worlds - and running in Stanley Green park
• swimming in the ocean without a wetsuit and with a seal - I got a little nervous when it got within 10 feet of me I will admit
• got in some laps in a 50m pool - 100m in one of those pools feels a lot more than 4x25 in a normal pool.  I will be getting in some time at the 50m pool next year over the winter
• learning all about icebreaker clothing and how great it is
• took a mountain bike lesson at the canmore nordic center and not creating any injuries - blood loss was kept to under a quarter of a litre and only 2 complete body over the handle bar falls
• an afternoon of real mountain biking - the low part was realizing that I just don't have room for another sport.  However I will not be worried about biking in the fall with the 'boys' now!
• 5 mountains hiked in 5 days.
• about 3500m of hiking ascent in those 5 days
• swimming in a very cold rocky mountain lake with no wetsuit - just to be sure I didnt lose any swim fitness prior  to the ptbo half ironman

There is a gallery here that you can peruse.  Sorry the font size on the descriptions are so small, I will work on making them larger when I get some time.

So with that exercise, I am pretty sure I didnt lose any fitness, however the Peterborough Half Ironman is looming this coming weekend. 

So here are the usual lists of goals for that race:

Swim in 37 minutes (a bit faster than the last race since now I will have some feet to follow). Bike in 2:59 (about 5 minutes faster than last year) or 30km/hr for 90 kms however I do not want to be going all out as the main goal of the race is to do the run in 2:07 which is a 6 minute kilometer. This will be a huge improvement over the 2:36 that I logged last year (with quite a bit of walking).  

The plan is to then have a good HIM under my belt and be ready to go hard on the bike in Muskoka and post a better run time in September.

Today I raced the Kawartha mile, which is normally a race I do relatively better than most races I do (I seem to be able to suck it up better over a short distance).  However I had some race day confusion and got to the track and only had 7 minutes to warm up.  I logged a 6:28 which is the worst I have ever done it in (well of 2 prior years).  I wasnt timing my splits, but I logged the first one in 1:27 which is a few seconds faster than I expected, but just didnt feel the desire to push.  A little bit of it was not getting injured with that little of a warmup, the other was I havent ran hard in 3 weeks now and only ran 3x when I was out west in total.  I am supposed to take it easy this week, but really feel the need to get a few runs in to get the cobwebs out before the run on sunday. 

Best of luck everyone this coming weekend 

The open water swim went well.  I logged a 37:42 for 2k.  While it was almost 9 minutes faster than the same time last year, it still was short of some of the pool splits I had during the winter.  I am glad that the swim training over the winter has developed into visible results however.

The water was quite warm, it had warmed up quite a bit since Dave and I swam the course thursday (race minus 3 days).  However I still skipped the warmup.  I figured I could use all the energy I had for the race.  I started out on Dave's feet for the first 100 or so meters so that I could always know where he was.  I was not planning on letting him ride my draft for the whole race and outkick me at the end.  I then passed him and then just tried to catch on to the next set of feet in front of me.  However they were too far away to catch and so I just settled in.  Around the middle of the first lap I felt someone touch my feet and then I promptly sped up incase it was Dave!  There seemed to be a huge gap in front of me but whenever i moved around a bouy I could see 4-5 about 25m behind me so I spent the race being chased.  Looking at the splits you would think I slowed down on the second lap, but I did pick it up quite a bit the last 500m to be sure I didnt get passed at the end.  I was happy to have won second place in my age group.

Then I had signed up for the 10k canoe race right after.  I have only canoed 6-7 times in my whole life and all of that was with Renee at a very leisurely pace.  I raced with Rob who has done quite a bit of paddling but no racing.  I didnt have many expectations as my arms and back where shot from the swim, but wanted to see how hard it was.  There were 4 boats lining up to the start for the 10k.  I had plans on just doing 5k and feeling how it was going and decide to pack it in or go on from there.  The course was a 1k loop with a 25ish meter portage after each loop. 

The first boat dropped out after the 3rd lap and another dropped out after 4 I think.  At that point we were still neck and neck with the other boat.   It kind of felt like the second half of a half marathon but instead of my legs feeling it, it was my upper body.  Deciding that it would end up being a great workout I decided to say lets go on.  In laps 5 and 6 we had a portage stop to let some water out of the canoe and I had a re entry difficulty putting us maybe 75m behind at this point. We head the leaders as they did the portage talking something about the last lap and so we thought the last lap was going to be this lap (the 8th lap) so we gave it our all to catch up (after another emptying of the canoe at the portage).  We managed to close the 175m gap to about 20m by the end, but they didnt stop, they kept going.  I was cooked at this point and we decided we needed a recovery lap and we let the lead get back up to 150m for the final lap.  Needless to say that probably wasnt the wisest strategy, but it is what we did.  We once again poured it all out but the gap was too big and we ended up being in second by about 100m I think.  So another silver on the day.  Made for a great day - two silvers in two different sports - and two well earned bottles of wine!

There were tons of tips and how to's by the marathon paddlers there and learned a ton about paddling which will make my life so much easier.  They were all efficiency and speed tips which obviously translate well to recreational paddling.  

Monday ended up being a good recovery day and today was just a 45 min spin on the trainer and then a grueling track workout.  1600m, 1200m, 800m, 400m, 4x200m.  They were done on 1:45, 1:41, 1:35, 1:23, 2 I didnt time and a 39 and a 32 I think Dave said. 

I am looking forward to the first group brick workout of the year to see how much I have improved on the bike.

Some interesting things I found in the last week:

Canadian DMCA

Neat business Cards

Well its been a busy month!

To get you caught up, I passed on the London Marathon.  I managed a 37k run just before the taper weeks were to start and it went according to plan - I think the first long run in a long time that I kept it at a nice slow pace.  Just over 4 hours of running.   The recovery time was quite long.  It took about 2 weeks to feel fresh again on the run.  It was that that clinched it for me.  I know I can do the distance, but adding on more mileage and obviously running it faster would hurt and would likely still not be recovered from it.  So I took the benefits of marathon training without the long recovery (everyone says the first is the toughest) required after it.  I think I will ramp up the run training after the muskoka 70.3 and see if I can run the Ottawa Fall Colours Marathon in mid October.

Might as well continue with the running events.  I started the track workouts on tuesdays and I can tell the difference the extra miles have made.  Yesterday we did a 5k track run and I got a personal best of 23:03 which is 42 seconds faster than my lakefield run last year.  It bodes really well as I could have maintained that pace for 8 or perhaps 10k when you factor in race adrenaline and a taper before the race.  The next race is the beat beethoven 8k race in 2 weeks which should see me getting in a 4:30 per km pace.  Dave thinks I should go for a 4:10 if I can.  I guess we will see how much the race adrenaline gives me over my track pace (4:38ish).

I am still trying to keep my long runs around 22-23k so that when the half ironman comes around that the distance will not be a problem at all.  I think the first half ironman this year is in just over a month - wow its coming up fast.

Cycling is also quite a bit stronger than it has ever been.  All the time on the trainer this winter has paid off.  We went for a 140ish km ride a few weeks ago.  With the people that went on the ride, I would normally be just going all out to stay with the group.  However there were quite a few times where I was far from the struggling guy at the end of the line.  I finished the ride with zip left in the legs and a ton of personal satisfaction.  Perhaps the bike had a bit to do with it, but the 45-60 mins per day 4 or so days a week made a big difference over the winter.  I am still getting in the same miles even now.  Just last week I went on a group ride and for the first time ever it truly felt like a relaxed pace (which is what it was intended to be).

I havent tried any time trials on the bike yet this year and I am anxious to do so.   There is a little 20k return route here that is 10k downhill and then 10k back uphill.  A tempo pace ride is taking me just under 40 minutes which bodes well that my time trial pace is well above the 32k an hour that has been the best I have mustered since I started.

Finally swimming.  Once again I am well beyond any fitness level I have had before.  I have been watching a ton of instructional videos and really looking for what sets the great swimmers apart and where I differ from them in the biggest respects.  Seeing Jeremy in the pool reinforced it about a month ago when I saw him swim a length in 14 strokes where I was doing it in 21-23.  I have been really working on getting my efficiency up and more distance per stroke.  I think I was 'windmilling' it before and now make a concious effort to get in a glide portion.  

About 2 weeks ago we started in the open water (yes it has been chilly) and am quite ready for the open water swim race this weekend.  I am tempted to see what I can do for 4kms, but 2k is my longest race distance this year, so I am going to see what I can do it in.  I hope to get in under 36 minutes which could put me in the top 10 percent in most of the races.    

The extra weight I have put on over the past year and a half is coming off nicely, which only means my times will keep coming down as I will have less weight to lug around!

Now that we are getting close to race season, here are my goals in each discipline:

This year I plan to see a 4:30 per km run pace off the bike. 

This year I plan to see a 34km/hr split time on a 40k bike leg.

This year I plan to see a 1:40 per 100m swim split.

Seeing 155 on the scale as I step to the line in the Muskoka 70.3

If I put all those together in one race, I would be more than happy with my progress. Plus getting revenge on the half ironman course and post a sub 5:45 hour race and follow up with a better time in Muskoka.

Till next time...

What a week it has been - a new bike and logging some serious miles (for me that is). 

Last week was the first week with my new bike.  What a sweet ride.