60 Minute Swim, 60 Minute Bike

Note fromThe Geek:  Yikes!  I've been gone a while.  Me and the family were out of town for a few days and then I had a monster few days at work in order to catch up and I just haven't had time for blogging.  That's not to say I didn't work out, I did some modified workouts while out of town, mostly CrossFit stuff, but probably not as much as I should have.  The good news is, I didn't gain any weight, the bad news is, I feel like a slacker...


I was back to my old schedule today, up at 4:30am and to the pool.  I spent about an hour swimming doing some ladders for warm up and 500's for my main set and then a cool down.  I swam the 500's on the 7:15, which is an average right around 1:27/500, which I am happy with given my lack of hard swimming practice lately.

My story from the gym today is a similar one that I've told before, but my after talking to my father in law earlier today, he reminded me of a Seinfeld episode that was especially relevant.  Everybody's seen the Yada-yada episode.  In it there is talk of the "Jewish workout" (Seinfeld's term, not mine) where a guy goes to the gym sits in the sauna for 30 minutes and leaves.  The allure is that if you sit in the sauna for a half hour you sweat a bunch and lose 3-5 pounds.

One of those guys was at the gym this morning.  Of course it's all water weight and you could get the same effect by just not drinking anything for a few hours.  Whatever.  There was a guy who got there at 5am and say in the sauna for thrirty minutes and then left.  He literally got up early to sweat out water and then go back to whatever he was going to do this morning.  Weird.  I wonder what would happen if I asked him to jump in the pool with me and do a few laps.

If finished my swim and headed home for a bike ride.  It was hot and humid again, even though it was just a little after 6am.  I rode the course I would be on for my next triathlon which is around Shawnee Mission Park Lake.  The sun was coming up as I was circling the lake, it was beautiful.  It would have been better had I not been sweating like a prostitute in church.

30 Minute Swim & 60 Minute Bike

Ooooh, wood grain laminte lockers...so luxurious.

I haven't been swimming much in the last few weeks, not because I didn't want to (who am I kidding, I've been slacking), but because my health club was renovating and the pool was unavailable.  It's opened back up now and I went in for an early morning (or late night, depending on what time you get up) swim.

I got to the newly renovated club a few minutes before 5am and noticed that everything seemed to have a fresh coat of paint and a few new pictures on the wall, it looks better than it did, but nothing too special.  They re-did the locker room with some wood-grain laminte lockers and refinished the pool deck.  Overall, a nice little renovation.

I hopped in the pool and started doing a little 500 yard ladder warm up.  Almost instantly I noticed that in the renovation process they also must have renovated the chemicals in the pool because the chlorine content was so high it practically made me choke.  Ugh. 

When they renovated the pool deck they either had some chemicals seep into the water or they jumped up the chlorine right after the renovation to make sure the water was clean.  Whatever the reason, it made breathing a bit challenging.  It was kind of like breathing really humid air that burned your lungs a bit.  Wonderful.

At any rate, I got through the workout and did about 1500 yards.  Man, it was hard swimming after not having been in the pool for a while.  I'm sure I'll get my groove back, but today felt like a struggle on every level. 

It was very manatee like, but with less grace.

I finished in the pool, hopped in my car and drove home.  I quickly changed into my cycling clothes and hit the biking trail right as the sun was coming up.  It was pretty cloudy, so I didn't get the full effect of the sunrise ride (which I normally really like) but it was still nice.  A little breeze but probably 60%-70% humidity so i was sweating like crazy.  Otherwise, the ride was pretty uneventful other than I felt pretty slow today.

I got home right at 7am and got to have breakfast with my girls.  Overall, not a bad workout for a Saturday morning.

9 Mile Bike Ride

I didn't get home until 7pm tonight, so I didn't have time for much of a workout. My weakest discipline right now is the bike, so I hopped on for a quick ride.  I got about 9 miles done in 30 minutes, not a bad pace and it was a good confidence builder for this weekend. 

A few quick points about my ride:

• I got passed by two bikers today that were much faster than I am.  I wasn't mad about it, until one of the guys passed me and then rode without hands for a minute or two, still pulling away.  I know I'm slow, but you don't have to rub it in.
• My bike is not very good, and the shifters are showing that on these harder rides; sometimes it shifts for no reason, which is kind of annoying and doesn't give me a lot of confidence for a smooth ride.
• My front tire loosened up a little and came out of true during a ride over some bumps.  That would be terrible during a ride...

60 Minute Bike Ride & Epic Transition Fail

I got back from my swim about 5:45am and got my biking clothes on to try to get a quick early morning ride in before the rest of my family woke up.  I hopped on my bike and started riding.  As an aside...what the hell is up with this weather?  During the week it's 75-80 degrees, sunny, no wind, Saturday or Sunday come along and it's 45 degrees, cloudy and windy.  I'm getting tired of riding in this crap.  OK, rant over...

So the ride was pretty uneventful, until the very end. 

I'm about a week out from my first race, so I decided when I was coming in from my ride to practice doing a transitioin from the bike to the run.  In my head, I saw myself rolling into the transition area on one foot, hopping gracefully from my bike, leaning it against the rack, ripping off my helmet and beginning my run. 

This is not what happend.  At.  All.

So I rolled into my driveway and unclipped my right foot from the pedal and swung my leg over the seat so that all of my weight was on my left foot while coasting at about 5-7 miles per hour.  It was at this point that I would hop off and gracefully jog with my bike to slow it down and start running.  Of course the critical mistake here...I did not unclip my left foot.  When I tried to hop off, my left foot stayed on the pedal and the bike wanted to keep going.  This resulted in me falling sideways/backwards right on my left butt cheek with the bike on top of me.  Ouch! 

Luckily, my left foot popped out and I didn't hurt my ankle.  Unluckily, I feel like I need one of those inflatable donuts to sit on because it feels like I have a golf ball in my back pocket when I sit down. 

The only saving grace about this whole incident is that it happened on my driveway, rather than at a race.  It was about 7:45am so none of my neighbors were oustide to witness my ridiculous fall.  Also, it's good that it wasn't next week at the race where there are spectators and cameras all over the place.  I would hate to immortalize my first race with a picture of an injury to my...well, you understand.

40 Minute Bike Ride

The wind is a fickle mistress. 

On the first half of the ride I was cruising along, easily averaging over 21 or 22 mph (which is fast for me).  Of course, on the way back the 20 mph wind slowed me down something fierce. 

So that sucked.

12 Mile Bike

This was easily the best biking session I've had.

I didn't have much time so I went out for a quick 40 minute ride.  I'd been really starting to worry that my biking was going to be super slow and losing a lot of confidence in how I would do in my upcoming races.  Today I told myself that I was going to go as close to all out as I could for as long as I could to see what would happen.  I think my problem in the past was I didn't know what level of exertion was necesary for a solid bike leg, so I just putzed along and ended with times that were waaaay too slow.

Today I pedaled strong, got out of the saddle, whatever I had to do to keep my cadence and my speed up.  I ended up increasing my average speed by a few miles per hour and while I was more tired, it was still managable.  In other words, today was a great confidence booster on speed.

No, I'm not going to be a front of pack biker in these first few races, probably not even a strong middle of the packer, but I have confidence that I can keep up and work hard enough to continue to improve.  I just wish I'd discovered this "ah-ha" moment a few months ago so I could have been practicing more efficiently.  It's OK, I'm a total novice at this so I'll just roll with it and keep getting better.  I can't wait to get back out on the bike.

TriKC Indoor Triathlon (April)

I did another indoor triathlon today.  I previously did one other indoor triathlon last month with good results.  Today I was back for more.  The full race report should be up tomorrow.

Right now I'll just say that I improved in all three disciplines.  And I wore a wetsuit.  Oh yeah, a wetsuit.

60 Minute Swim - 60 Minute Bike

Cold. Unmotivated.

Those two words pretty clearly describe today's workouts. 

I started at the pool this morning at about 5am.  I was supposed to do about 77 minutes, which should translate into somewhere around 4000 yards or so for me.  Yeah, I ended up doing something like 1500 yards.  The water was colder than usual, I was tired and just couldn't bring myself to push myself during the workout.  I took long breaks, didn't get in full sets, basically just a lazy, unmotivated workout.

I finished my swim, drove home and got on my bike.  I got about a mile from home, and realized I couldn't feel my hands, so I turned around, went back and got some winter gloves.  The temperature has been in the 70's the last few days and was supposed to be beautiful again today.  That was absolutely the case...this afternoon.  This morning it was 44 degrees.  I was freaking cold.  I started the ride really wanting to do a long 30-40 mile ride.  I did about 15.  Ugh.  Again, I was tired, cold and totally unmotivated.

I need something to light a fire under me right now, to refocus on my workouts and to make some progress in my training.  I have another indoor triathlon tomorrow and I think it may be just the motivation I need to refocus the last 45 days or so before my first race.  Let's hope so...race report tomorrow.

12.8 Mile Bike Ride

I had a few extra minutes when I got home from work so I went out for a little hour long bike ride.  It was beautiful weather so I hit the trail and tried to get in a few miles.  I know that my biking is weak right now, I'm only averaging about 15 mph and that needs to get up into at least the 18 mph range.  From what I'm reading the only way to increase speed is time in the saddle. 

So, I'm in the saddle every chance I get.

21.2 Mile Bike Ride

Had a great ride today.  It was about 62 degrees, sunny, but a little windy.  However, I noticed a truism of cycling today. 

I'm not as fast downhill as I am slow uphill.

I need to work on that.

60 Minute Bike Ride (Outside)

I view of the trail I was on at my turnaround point today.  Cloudy and cold, but gorgeous.

Cloudy.  43 degrees.  19 mph wind with gusts up to 26 mph.

That's the craptastic weather I rode in this morning.  I was outside, so I was excited about that.  However, I was outside purely because I am stubborn and had my mind set on an outside ride today.  In hindsight it may not have been the best idea.  I was slow and cold pretty much the whole time.

A few notes about the ride:

• Riding through a puddle and getting your legs wet when it's already 43 degrees with 20mph of wind only makes your legs colder.
• Do not try to take a drink while going downhill.  You will drop your bottle, be forced to stop and walk back up the hill to find said bottle.
• I dropped a chain for the first time on this bike today.  It was off of the front derailer.  Fixing that in the cold with gloves on was not as easy as it should have been.
• I have almost resigned myself to the fact that I will be much slower than I want to be on the bike during my race.  I'm just not that fast.  Yes, it's disappointing, but it gives me something concrete to work on, so I can hopefully do this for a long time and keep getting better all the time.
• Riding outside, even with all the complaining that I did about the weather is infinitely better than riding inside.  Nature is fabulous. 
• The picture below is a blue heron I saw in one of the lakes along the trail.  it was probably 5 yards from me but by the time I got my camera ready it had flown further back into the brush.  It was awesome.

The Heron was so close at one point I could practically touch it.  Awesome.

42 Minute Swim - 65 Minute Bike

All these weights with no one to lift them...kinda creepy.

Zero.

That's the number of people that were at the gym when I walked in this morning at 4:20am.  Usually there's a few people on a treadmill or elliptical, maybe one guy on a weight machine.  And there's usually a guy behind the desk (or within shouting distance of the desk).  Today, there was no one.  Not even the guy that works there (he must've been in the back somewhere).  It was a little creepy.

I got into the locker room, threw my stuff in locker 117 and hit the pool.  I had kind of a weird week because I didn't get in a short swim or short bike this week because I was staying too late at work.  It was OK because it's recovery week and I kept up on my other training, so I wasn't going to lose sleep over missing a 20 minute swim.  Anyway, I thought maybe to push myself a bit today I would try a little race against myself and do an indoor tri, 20 or 25 minutes of swimming, 40 minutes of biking and 20 minutes on the treadmill.  It would be a nice tight little workout and get me home by 7am, when Mrs. Gias requested that I be available so she could go shopping with her mother today (yeah, shopping at 7am, I don't know, I just do what I'm told). 

Ever seen a locker room at 4:30am?  Now you have.

Once I got in the pool I decided that I would do some ladders today because I had been struggling with finding a swim routine other than just 100 yard intervals or 1500's (which get monotonous).  Once I got into it I noticed that I was having a really good swim session so I extended my yardage a bit and went ahead and did a full 42 minutes in the pool and decided I would just do my usual Saturday swim/bike brick workout.

Today's ladder was 2x25, 2x50, 2x100, 2x200, 2x200, 2x100, 2x50, 2x25 for a total of 1800 yards.  I really liked the workout this way and I think I'll do it again next time.  It makes it easiser to not look at the clock, just go hard, 10 seconds rest and do the next set.

I finished in the pool and went out to do an hour or so on the spin bike before I needed to get home.  By this time there were about 6 people in the gym.  Frizzy McBlonde Hair and Old Navy were back, along with Brownie vonCrop Pants - the whole crew (plus a few people I hadn't seen before).  I think we should start a club and make shirts.

Anyway, I rode with a mid 90's cadence and finished with an average speed just over 21 mph.  Pretty solid ride and my knee started acting up a bit, but not enough to make me stop.  Tomorrow's run outside (hopefully) will be the real test of how my knee holds up.

70 Minute Swim/141 Minute Bike

Yeah, that's 6 inches of snow.  It was sixty degrees 12 hours ago...WTF?

I woke up before my alarm this morning at about 3:50am.  (Note: In college I used to get home on Saturday mornings at 3:50am after a night of debauchery...how life changes...)  I quietly slipped around our bed to the alarm clock by Mrs. Gias's head (she likes it on her side) and clicked it off to make sure that she could sleep until a reasonable hour.  I then pulled on my Speedo and made my way downstairs for a quick bowl of oatmeal before my three and a half hour marathon session at the gym. 

As I was choking down my oatmeal I looked out the front door at the winter wonderalnd outside.  It's March 20th and we got like six inches of snow.  It was 60 degrees yesterday.  I've lived in Kansas my whole life, but I still cannot believe the swings in weather that we get.

I drove slowly on the snow covered roads to the gym.  I probably should have taken Mrs. Gias's 4x4 rather than my little two wheel drive sedan, but since there was no one else on the road, it wasn't too bad.

I got to the gym and there were all of two people there.  I jumped in the pool and started my workout.  I'm still trying to get over this chest congestion so my breathing wasn't ideal today, but it was a good workout overall.  I basically warmed up and then did 100 yard intervals for the remainder of the time on a 1:40 to 2:00 interval (slower as I did more intervals).  Near the end I got a pretty good leg cramp in my left leg so rather than cooling down, I jumped into the whirlpool to workout the cramp before hitting the bike.

I got out to the bike about 5:45am and there were now four people in the gym.  (Our numbers had increased by 100% since 4:30am.)  I started pedaling and watched Knocked Up on my Zune (it's almost exactly two hours and twenty minutes, so it worked perfect for the time I needed to ride).  I noticed after a few minutes that my knee was giving me a little trouble and I really didn't want to injure it any further, so I backed the resistance down to about half of what I ususally do and tried to keep my cadence in the low 80's rather than the mid 90's.  I could definitely still feel some discomfort, but I wanted to push through on the easier setting to see how I would feel at the end of the ride. 

I finished my ride about 8:00am and there were about 10 people in the gym, very light crowd.  The only person I recognized was Frizzy McBlonde hair, who is not frizzy anymore.  She got a haircut, the easiest way to describe it is the "Ellen Degeneres cut".  I was going to say something when she went to get a drink of water by the spin bikes, but I thought she would think it's creepy that I noticed and have never spoken to her before.  Of course, she'd probably think it was more creepy to know that I just dedicated a paragraph on my blog describing her hair for everyone.  Yeah, I'm creepy either way I guess.

The knee bothered me a bit this morning, but it's feeling better now.  I'm starting recovery week tomorrow in both P90X and in my TriTraining schedule, so my run should be short tomorrow.  We'll see how I get through it on my knee.

85 Minute Bike (Outside...FINALLY!)

I wore my bright orange since I was riding close to dusk...

...easier for cars to see me writhing on the ground when I fall for no reason.

I got on my bike with trepediation this afternoon.  This was my first time on this new bike.  This was my first time on any bike in over 15 years.  I had been anticipating the first ride of the season since December so I had plenty of time to worry.  I was worried I wouldn't remember how to ride, or if I would fall, or get a flat tire or get into an accident...Yeah, I was in my head just a little bit about this ride.  

This is where I rode today...the trail is gorgeous.

I started out slow and figured I would just ride down to a bike/running trail that is by our house and try to figure out what I was doing on there.  After I got going for about thirty or forty minutes I started to relax and really start enjoying the ride.  I hadn't been more than about 4 miles down the trail before (I've only run on it) so going another 10 miles or so was really cool.  The trail is beautiful, has a nice mix of rolling hills and curves, just a really great ride; I'm looking forward to riding it again.

A few quick notes:

• I need to get bike shorts with a pad - there was a bit of chafing today.  (Too much information?  Sorry.)
• I need to fix my bike computer (clicked off about 2 minutes into the ride), it's annoying to not know how fast or how far you're going.
• STI shifting (on your brake levers instead of on the frame) makes riding 1 million percent easier than I remember - I just need to get better at it.
• Coasting kicks ass - you stop pedaling and keep going...you totally can't do that running or swimming.
• Biking scares me more than swimming.
• My neck hurts twice as much as it did before I started riding.
• I'm certain that I will have an accident involving toe clips...it will look hilarious to bystanders...it will hurt me severely.

117 Minute Bike/58 Minute Swim

117 Minute Bike (Stationary)
~20 mph
~40 miles

58 Minute Swim
Coaching Session

I got to the gym at about 5:30am this morning and hit the bike first.  I cruised pretty well the entire time, although I have to say, two hours on a spin bike is pretty monotonous.  I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which helped pass the time (that movie is hilarious, by the by).  Senora Gray Boots and Old Navy were both there; nothing too exciting to note during the session though.

Then I went to the pool and warmed up a bit before my session with my coach at 8:00am.  I was definietly fatigued and probably couldn't have done a 1500 straight, I was just so tired.  It is good that I got to do a trainer session today, it's harder mentally, but easier on your body because there aren't as many yards.  We also ended up talking quite a bit about general triathlon information, which was increadibly healpful.  A few things from today:

• Long sleeve wetsuit over short sleeve wetsuit for bouancy and speed.
• Tri-shorts and shirt over tri-suit unless the tri-suit is tight.
• Never wear a tri-suit in a long distace race, it's impossible to go to the bathroom without taking the whole thing off.
• Black or dark gray are the only acceptable colors for shorts, there are just too many things that can be exposed with other colors (see picture for explanation-Yikes).

35 Minute Swim and 70 Minute Bike

35 Minute Swim
Stroke Drills, 100 intervals

70 Minute Bike
60 Minute Actual
21.25 miles

Short post tonight because I'm tired!

I got to the gym today for my short swim and short bike for the week and went in without a great "plan" as to what I wanted to swim.  This is NOT the best way to go into a workout, I should have had a plan so I could benchmark what I was doing.  Instead I ended up doing stroke drills and 100 yd repeats.  It was a good workout, just not enough planning to make it a great workout.

I finished the swim and jumped on a spin bike (still under 40 degrees today, no outside ride yet!) and actually had a GREAT bike session. I went for 60 minutes and my cadence was in the 100s for the entire hour.  I pushed hard and got through it a sweaty, dripping mess.

Ugh, I'm so tired I can't even think of anything pithy to say.

35 Minute Swim & 60 Minute Bike (Stationary)

Not my girls, they were terrified of skating.

So it's my last Tri workouts for this recovery week, thus, I kept them pretty easy (considering it was a Saturday double workout).  Nothing too interesting to note at the gym, unfortunately (none of the regulars were there except for Old Navy - it was actually slower than usual).

I hit the pool about 4:30am, did some stroke work and then hit the bike for an hour.  I took it easy  and averaged about 19 mph for right about 20 miles.  Again, nothing special, just an easy workout thinking about recovering and hitting it really hard next week.

As I was driving home, however, it hit me kind of strangely.  I just finished a 2000 yard swim and a 20 mile bike ride before 7am on a Saturday morning and I was thinking about how "easy" I was taking it today.  WTF?  Never in a million years would I ever have thought I would be the guy thinking to himself that an hour and a half of cardio before the sun comes up was taking it "easy".  My oh my, how perspective can change in a year.

As an aside, I actually did a "winter triathlon" of sorts today.  After my swim and bike I picked up my girls and took them to see Clifford (the big red dog from the cartoon) at the Crown Center Ice Terrace (outdoor skating rink).  I hadn't put on ice skates in over a decade, but I did pretty well.  B was terrified of skating, G wanted nothing more than to run away and live at the Ice Terrace forvever (she's much more daring, obviously) and they both loved meeting Clifford (some dude in a suit on ice skates - how do I get that job, by the way?).  And me, well I considered my "Swim Bike Skate" to be a nice little winter triathlon. 

Nothing quite like going from a swimming pool to an ice skating rink in the matter of a couple hours.

21 Minute Swim & 40 Minute Bike

I went to the gym and had a short swim and bike session today.  I basically just worked on stroke drills in the pool since 20 minutes really isn't enough time to do any distance work.  The swim felt good and i think I'm improving, although some of my drills need work.  It's just about practice, practice, practice.

On the bike I decided to do three minute intervals, 2 minutes 30 seconds at a steady 90-95 cadence and then 30 seconds all out at about a 120-130 cadence.  It was nice becuase I think this kind of speed work will make me faster and it was a nice way to break up the monotony of a spin bike.

117 Minute Bike (Stationary)

No, I did not wear a helmet on the spin bike today.  Even I'm not that Geeky.

(I just really want to get on a real bike - stupid snow.)

117 Minute Bike (Stationary)
41.45 miles
21.3 mph

I finished my swim and hopped on a spin bike (stupid snow...still can't ride outside) for a little less than two hours.  I flipped on the Zune and watched Transformers...a perfectly Geeky movie to watch while spinning; I've seen it a few times, you don't have to pay attention and it helps pass the time.  (Plus, giant robots are awesome!)

Today I was pedaling hard and trying to keep my cadence in the high 90's and I was pretty successful.  I was already pretty tired from the week and my swim session, but I really wanted a good workout on the bike, so I put my head down and tried to push hard the whole time. 

I felt like I was playing a constant game of chicken with the lactic acid in my legs.  The resistance would go down and I would get a short respit before ramping back up like I was going up a hill and the lactic acid would feel like it was trying to burn through my shorts.  I just tried to breathe through it and keep my legs moving.

My heartrate didn't ever get up above the low 140s and stayed in the mid to low 130s most of the time.  I was happy with that because I think I have my conditioning to a point that I can run my heart almost idefinitely at that range.  The only limiting factor today was the soreness in my legs.  I kept my focus and pushed myself pretty significantly and got through the workout feeling great. 

People Watching Update
Frizzy McBlonde Hair and Brownie von CropPants were both there today, again with no Old Navy (that's three weeks in a row!).  The person that was there again was Senora Gray Boots and this week she was early.  She was already on the stair master by the time I came out to start spinning at 5:30am.  She was dressed identically the same, as if she was frozen in time from last week.  The more I think about it, I still think it's super weird, but at the same time, kind of awesome as well.  How may older ladies do you know that probably don't have much background in working out would come to a gym every Saturday, before 6am, to workout and try to get healthier.  This lady seems to be taking her health seriously, and that's pretty awesome.

Of course, she could just be crazy, in which case, less awesome and more "watch out for that psycho".  Whatever.

70 Min Bike (Stationary)

70 Min Bike - 5:10pm
Cadence mid 90s

Boring-tacular. 

That's what describes my bike ride today.  I finished my swim and went to change my clothes and realized I forgot my Zune, which means I was on a spin bike for 70 minutes with just background noise and my own thoughts.  People watching was lame, there are so many people at the gym in the evenings it's hard to focus on any one thing so it's like overload on your brain to see anything interesting.

The other thing that was a bit upsetting was the bike I was on had a computer that seemed to be off.  I started riding and after five minutes it said I had gone three miles, which is like 40 mph, pretty sure that wasn't accurate.  I stopped the computer and reset and then it started going low because I had a higher cadence than usual (mid 90s) and the computer seemed to think I only went 18 miles in my 70 minutes.  I think it should have been more like 23 and change.  Whatever, the riding was fine, I was bored.

The only saving grace is that today it was approaching 50 degrees outside and I almost rode outside except that I need to do a bit of work on my bike before a ride.  If it's nice this weekend, I'm definitely getting outisde.