Heritage Park Triathlon Duathlon - Pre-Race

So I was getting all fired up for tomorrow's triathlon.  Yeah, it was going to be cold, it was probably going to rain, but I was excited and ready to go.  Then today when I went to packet pickup they told us that they canceled the swim and made the triathlon into a duathlon due to the inclement weather.  (For those of you not in Kansas City right now, it's been raining since Wednesday and it's about 50 degrees...but seriously, if I'm swimming I'm already wet...htfu.)

Buzzkill.

I was totally excited about the swim, I was doing this race to get open water experience swimming with a group and to practice transitions.  Now, not so much.  Now I have to run extra, not swim, not use my awesome new wetsuit and miss out on the discipline that I could actually do really well in.  No, I'm not a super speedy swimmer as far as swimmers go, but as far as triathletes go, I might be able to get near the front of the pack.  Arghhh!

OK, enough complaining.

So the duathlon is tomorrow and here's how it works.  2 mile run, 11.5 mile bike, 3 mile run.  So basically you replace the swim with a two mile run.  This will be good because I need to do more running and practicing the bike in a group is much needed too.

So here's the prediction:

2 mile run- start out with an easy pace and come into transition strong - 18 minutes

11.5 mile bike - go hard and see what happens - I'd love to go under 40 minutes, I think 45 is more realistic.  I previewed the course and it's got lots more hills than I thought it would so it could be a challenge.

3 mile run - if my knee is hurting - 33 minutes - if my knee is fine - 27 minutes - not blistering fast, but still pretty hard.

I'm a little worried about full on race pace for a run because my knee has been bothering me, so I'm taking it pretty easy in those predictions.  If it's feeling good, maybe it'll be better.

Back tomorrow to let you know what happens...

Rest

Heritage Park Triathlon in two days.  No workout today, didn't want to risk being sore this weekend.  The anticipation is killing me...

Two Mile Run and Patience Yoga

I went into work this morning super early, like 4 something in the morning early, so I didn't get a workout in.  After I got home I put B & G to bed and Mrs. Gias had a meeting at church, so I took advantage of some alone time. 

I got on the treadmill and pounded out a quick two miles.  It was a good run, not too hard and my knee didn't hurt at all.  That's a good sign.  I have to admit, I've been really tenative on my knee the last few weeks and pretty scared to run hard.  This weekend is a short run, about three miles and I'm excited to really open up and see what happens.

After I finished my run I popped in Tony's Patience "Hummingbird" Yoga to get a nice post run stretch.  It was 35 minutes of quiet, relaxing stretching.  It was a pretty good for a taper workout.

Two days and counting until race day...I'm getting pretty stoked.

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...

Reader Question

I got a reader question from midlife_swimmer the other day and I'd been meaning to answer it because I love reader questions!

midlife_swimmer asks:
"What length tri's are you looking at and what is your previous time on the swims and your goal time. When you swim in a tri does it feel like a warm up or part of the workout to you."

My current "A" race is the Kansas City Triathlon on May 23, which is Olympic distance.  That is, a 1500 meter swim (~.9 miles), a 40km bike (~24.9 miles) and 10km run (~6.2 miles).  I also have another race coming up as kind of a "warm up" for that race.  This weekend I'll be doing the Heritage Park Triathlon which is a 587 yd swim, 11.5 mile bike and 3 mile run. 

Both swims are open water and my guess is...cold.  Our morning temperatures have been in the high 40's low 50's for the past few weeks, so at least I have that to look forward to. At the Heritage Park Triathlon last year the water temperature was 58 degrees for the swim... it was actually warmer than the ambient temperature for the bike and run, which is kind of scary.  Yeah, I feel a little stupid for doing races this early in the season in Kansas, but hey, what could go wrong? (besides hypothermia, drowning, frostbite...aghhh!)

As for my times, when I do distance work at "race pace" I average around a 1:25-1:30/100 yards.  My last time trial was 15 minutes and I did 1050 yards - right at 1:25/100.  If I'm doing repeat 100's for practice, I usually slow that down to 1:40/100 interval work or go about 75%-80% and take 15-20 seconds in between sets depending on the workout I'm doing.

I'd love to get my time down to 1:15/100 (or so) which would put me on pace to finish an Olympic tri swim in under 20 minutes.

So...does the swim feel like a warm-up or part of the workout?  When I'm training it defintely feels like part of the workout.  I'm a decent swimmer so improvement comes in small increments these days.  I can shave one second per 100 off by increasing my kick cadence or upping my stroke count from 17-18 per 25 yards...stupid little stuff.  The real improvements for me come from doing lots of laps and trying to keep myself breathless during practice.  So definitely a workout.

During races, the swim is my best discipline so it's not so much part of the workout as the place I want to "try" to shine a bit.  I know I'll get schooled on the bike and the run, but I can at least keep up during the swim.  So is it a warm-up...nope...it's my favorite part of the race!

Thanks for the question midlife_swimmer!  If you haven't checked out her amazing story, you should check out her blog!

Insanity Cardio Power and Resistance - Mash Up

I let Mrs. Gias pick the workout this morning and she decided she wanted to do a little Insanity.  I really like Insanity workouts so I was totally game.  Nothing too eventful, I felt good, didn't take any mid-set breaks and built up a nice sweat.

Mother's Day X

We finished our 90 day round last friday and yesterday I went for a good swim and bike session.  We're still trying to figure out the best way to continue working out and supporting our upcoming races but we haven't settled on a schedule just yet.  The fact we didn't quite know what we wanted to do today coupled with the fact that it's mother's day and Mrs. Gias wanted to get some much deserved extra sleep, we took the day off.

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.

60 Minute Swim

Got up early.  Went to the gym.  Swam a bunch of laps.  Came home to ride my bike before anyone else wakes up.

Pretty standard Saturday.

Round 4: Day 90 - Core Cardio and Balance

This is a lame Day 90 Picture...maybe we'll take some different shots later.

Round 4 Complete!

We finished our 4th 90 day round this morning with a little Insanity Core Cardio and Balance.  It feels good to finish the round, but I can't take too much time to rest as I've got a race next week, and the one after.  We'll see if I decide to have a cheat meal this weekend to celebrate or save that for after my upcoming races.

As for what's next...hopefully we'll have something on that in the next day or two.  It'll probably be some low key maintenence for a few weeks so I can taper appropriately for my races, but we'll see.

Round 4: Day 89 - Core Synergistics

Core Syn again today. I got through the workout but I felt like I was horizontal more than I usually am during this workout...weird.

Round 4: Day 88 - X Stretch

This is called "Camel".  I don't know why.  I did drink a lot of water...

X-Stretch this morning.  It's easily the least demanding of our workouts, which is nice sometimes, but I usually finish the hour of stretching and feel like I haven't worked out.  Because I haven't.  That's fine every once in a while; and it was fine today.

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.

Round 4: Day 87 - Fountain of Youth Yoga

Only 3 days left this round...clearly I'm praying to the P90X Gods to ensure my survival.

Work's been a little hectic lately.  Yesterday I was pretty sure I was going to Ohio today and Wedensday.  Then that got canceled yesterday afternoon.   About two hours after that got canceled I was scheduled to go to Los Angeles for Tuesday through Thursday.  This morning (before my flight, thankfully) that got canceled and it turns out I'm (likely) home all week. 

At any rate, a nice quiet session of yoga was a nice way to start the day.  It's weird though; I know during yoga I'm supposed to let the stress of life slip away and focus on positions and breathing and balance.  However, sometimes you focus on all the stress and other stuff in your life and almost forget that you're sweating bullets and you're not sure how you got into the twisted position you're in. 

Today was one of those days.

Round 4: Day 86 - Core Synergistics

Nothing like a nice full body workout to get your day going.  I'll admit, I was a little fatigued this morning but I still got a good workout.  Apparently my fatigue was a little too apparent to Mrs. Gias.

There's a move called loading docks where you take a weight from the floor on one side of your body to up above your head on the other side (as seen in the photo above).  I used a 10 pound weight today and had a good range of motion, but admittedly it was a little light for me.  Mrs. Gias also used a 10 pound weight today.

And she let me know about it. 

Repeatedly.

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.

Round 4: Day 85 - Insanity Core Cardio and Balance

We're into the home stretch on this 90 day round and we just started our last recovery week.  Core Cardio and Balance is a good recovery week workout because it's not too challenging, but it gets a bit of sweat going to let you know you're working out.  However, at the end, it kind of kicks you in the butt with a bunch of burnout moves, first on your hip-flexors and then in your shoulders.  It's a bit uncomfortable and I really can't figure out what good it's doing me fitness-wise, but we do the moves anyway.

During the shoulder burnout Mrs. Gias's arms and mine got a little bit close.  It should be known that Mrs. Gias does not like...let me restate...hates...being touched, even brushed lightly, while working out.  Well, I have long arms and apparently they got a bit close to Mrs. Gias.  It was early so her english wasn't quite top notch, but she said pretty clearly,

"I don't even want that near me not even a little bit at all."

Well, at least that was clear.

60 Minute Swim

I had a session with my swim coach today.  It was a good session, she really didn't have any critiques of my technique that were negative, which is pretty cool.  Since my technique and form are going pretty well, we worked on two modifications to my stroke to try to gain more speed.

The first change is to increase the cadence on my kick from my current 4 beat kick to more like a 6-8 beat kick.  Second change was to try a new breathing technique called three-two breathing.  Yeah, I got bored just writing those sentences, sorry. (If you really want to know more about either of these things, leave a comment and I'll let you know...what nobody?  That's a surprise...)

I guess the main point here is that I have used all the coaching sessions that I've paid for and I'm not sure I need anymore.  I got three so that I could have my stroke broken down, fixed and I could get faster.  Now that my stroke seems to be in good shape and my speed is pretty good (although you can always go faster) I think I just need to keep working.  I'll reassess after a few races and see what I really need to work on (newsflash - it's the bike and running).

Round 4: Day 83 - Insanity Max Interval Circuit

I know what you're thinking, "Oooh, Geek, a different Photoshop filter...you're so artsy". 

There's no two ways about it...Max Interval Circuit is hard.  Mrs. Gias and I tried to be playful at the beginning.  That did not last long. 

It's telling that at the end of the workout, everyone in the video literally drops to the floor in a pool of their own sweat.  You seriously wonder for a minute if a few of them might actually be dead.  There's one trainer that has very pale skin who we thought might be a vampire (Mrs. Gias just finished the Twilight books - everyone is a vampire these days...anyway) who collapsed face down on the gym floor; why would you do that unless you couldn't move?  So yeah, great workout.

After the first circuit (there are three, repeated three times) Mrs. Gias went quickly from "playful" to "if you get any closer to me with your hot sweaty body I will smack you in the face." 

Which I probably deserved.

Round 4: Day 82 - Total Body Plus

Note: Ahh!  Almost forgot to post this. Mrs. Gias's laptop went a little haywire yesterday so I spent my evening doing recovery of her files rather than wasting time on the internet posting this. (I backdated it to last night so it would show up on the right day.) 

We did Total Body Plus this morning.  You know I like this workout.  That is all. 

Round 4: Day 81 - Fountain of Youth Yoga

Half Moon.  Just be glad I didn't give you the "full moon" or you'd be blind right now.

My left hip and left wrist were all out of whack today (unrealted, I think).  I couldn't quite torque the right way on my left hip, making my yoga even more wobbly then usual, which is to say, it looked like I was performing yoga during an earthquake.  As for my wrist, I think I may have tweaked it during Diamond Delts on Sunday and stressed it a bit yesterday during our resistance workout.  At any rate, up-dog was not nearly as relaxing as it normally would be.

Overall, not really very loose today, not really very excited about yoga today, it was just a day to get the workout done.  These days happen and in my experience, pushing through the discomfort and the lack of motivation make you more ready for tomorrow.  Here's hoping that's true.

Round 4: Day 80 - Back & Biceps

This angle kind of makes it look like I'm on a TLC show called "Little People, Big Workouts."

'Cause I look short...but I'm working out...yeah, that was pathetic; I need to up my blogging game.

It was unusually cold when we got up this morning.  The thermostat in the house said 63 degrees, which isn't shiver inducing, but it's a little cooler than is preferable for rolling out of a nice, warm, comfy bed.   We snoozed once and then headed downstairs for one of my favorites, Back and Biceps.  It's basically pullups and curls for an hour; and I really like to "bring it" in this workout.  I lifted heavy today and by the last set I could barely pick up my pencil to record my reps and weight.

I was commenting to Mrs. Gias before we started that I really like this workout because it's as hard as you want to make it and totally trashes my upper body. 

Mrs. Gias commented that she hates this video because the assistants Tony works out with are ass-hats. 

Maybe "ass-hat" was my word, it was early, I don't really remember what she called them...

Actually, I think the assistant that annoys her the most is the interior designer "Katie".  She looks like Pam from "The Office" and seems to fall behind the workout and gets a little too dramatic when doing her reps.  She also laughs a disproportional amount at Tony's jokes.  The other two assistants, Tim the former Marine and Bobby Stevenson, are actually both pretty cool.

Round 4: Day 79 - Insanity Cardio Power and Resistance

Tricep dips look a little like a sweet disco move...I assure you it is not.

Whew!  We had a good workout today.  Mrs. Gias and I were sweating significantly more than we have in the past few weeks worth of workouts, so we know we were pushing it today. 

Although, I think I know why we were pushing a little extra hard this morning...they were only a quarter...and who doesn't love some soft serve and cookie dough?  Let's face it, we were obligated to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Blizzard last night.

And we did.

And it was delicious.

Round 4: Day 78 - Diamond Delts

She likes her diamond delts, but unfortunately for me she likes real diamonds better.

Ms. Gias did the Trolley Run this morning (she PR'd - great job sweetie!) so we pushed off Diamond Delts until this evening rather than this morning so she could make it to her race.  It's the last Diamond Delts of this round, so I really pushed it on the weights and went heavy. 

Ouch.

Round 4: Day 76 - Insanity Cardio Recovery

One of the many isometric lunges in today's workout; it looks dumb, but it hurts worse.

Mrs. Gias is running the Trolly Run (the largest 4 mile race in the nation) on Sunday and she has her last taper run this afternoon.  Furthermore, yesterday's Plyo Legs routine has been re-named "Pants of Pain" due to the ungodly soreness in our glutes, hamstrings and quads.  Accordingly, she requested that we take it easy on the cardio and legs today so that she could properly prepare for her race. 

I obliged by offering to switch our workout to Insanity Cardio Recovery.  It's a video that we've never done before, but it's about 35 minutes and it has recovery in the title, so it seemed appropriate. 

This was a tactical mistake on my part.

I will say that the video's title is correct, there is not much cardio in this video at all, I'd be shocked if my heart rate topped 120 the whole time.  However, it did have a lot (read A LOT) of squats, lunges and glute exercises.  Unfortunately, we got about halfway into the workout and realized that this may be the opposite of what Mrs. Gias was looking for. 

Mrs. Gias:  What's this video called again?
Geek: Uh, Cardio Recovery.
Mrs. Gias:  Really!? It's now officially renamed to, "My Ass is on Fire".

45 Minute Swim

I had a great swim workout today.  I mentioned in the last few posts how I was looking for some variety, some motivation and a plan to make sure I was getting in quality workouts.  Well, I finally went to a website that I had heard about on some triathlon message boards, http://www.swimplan.com/.  Swimplan.com is a website where you put in your skill level and then tell it what kind of workout you want and it will give you a detailed workout with a warmup, drills, core workout and cool down.  It's set up specifically with times for your level of swimming and for a duration that you choose. 

I finally signed up today and printed out a workout for this evening.  It was awesome.  Really it wasn't much different that what I usually do; however, I always work out better with a plan.  This is exactly what I needed.  I got quality yards in and it helped pass the time.  I'm definitely using it again.  For all of you swimmers out there, I highly recommend it.

Round 4: Day 75 - Plyo Legs

Mid-point of a "super skater".  Certainly made my ass feel "super".

We haven't done this workout in a while.  If you remember it's a 60 minute mix of plyometric jumps, squats and lunges.  It doesn't really get the heart rate into dangerous territory, but my legs were really feeling it at the end. 

A few quick items:

• This is the first of the One on One series and it shows.  (1) There's no warm up; (2) Tony seems to run out of things to say about half way through, apparently he wasn't ready to fill an hour just talking to himself; (3) There are two camera guys (as opposed to just one in all the other videos) although they attempt (poorly) to hide the fact that the second camera guy is there...weird.
• It's raining so I probably won't get on the bike today, which is not good.
• It's raining so I can probably swim today, which is fine.
• I have a "thing" Saturday morning so I won't get in my usual early morning workout, which is problematic.
• I've been staring at the computer screen for 10 minutes without being able to come up with anything interesting today...yikes.

Round 4: Day 74 Redux - Patience Hummingbird Yoga

I was up until a little after 2am working last night and went into the office at 5am cramming on a project.  Obviously I wasn't able to work in any yoga this morning (although I totally could have used it...the Geek is sore).  I got my project done at work and made it home by about 6:30pm to put my girls to bed and then I convinced Mrs. Gias that we should do a quick yoga session before dinner. 

We've only done Tony's One on One Patience "Hummingbird" Yoga one other time.  It's short, about 30 minutes (which is why we picked it for tonight) and very, very, quiet; especially for Tony.  There are long stretches of the video where Tony doesn't say anything, expecting you to breathe and get through the asanas without any direction.  Last time we did this video I don't think we liked it much because of the lack of direction and the fact that the session moves slowly.  It truely takes patience (as the name implies) to make it through this video.

I must say that I may have previously misjudged this video...today, it was awesome.  I think it worked today for two reasons.  First, it's the end of the day so a nice, slow, relaxing yoga session is a great way to let all the stress of the day just fade away.  Second, at the end of the day your muscles are a bit more loose than when you first wake up, which means I was significantly more flexible than usual.  It was fun to effortlessly grab my feet and stretch out my sore muscles.

Round 4: Day 73 Redux - Just Arms

Forearm curls make me veiny...

I think I pushed a little hard at my indoor tri on Sunday and then doing back to back workouts yesterday pretty much ensured that my whole body would be sore today.  It feels like every major muscle group is bruised and tender.  I realized standing up after doing a set of seated bicep curls today that my quads and calfs may actually hurt more than my arms...which I wasn't even working today. 

Note to self, doing 30:15, Insanity and Just Arms within a 25 hour period may be too much.

Round 4: Day 72 Redux (Evening Workout) - Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit

As I explained in my last post, we moved our workouts back a little.  I didn't want to miss a day so we doubled up today with 30:15 this morning and Plyometric Cardio Circuit this evening. 

Mrs. Gias went to her Monday night bowling league so I put the girls to bed and then went to the basement for a little Insanity by myself.  I am still fairly sore from yesterday, but after warming up I was ready to go.

I got through the workout without too much trouble except for part of the last circuit which are called "Level 1 Drills" which is basically like a set of burpee pushups (on your feet, drop down to plank, 4 pushups, pedal the feet, back up, repeat) followed by jumps while in plank position.  My arms were pretty worn out from 30:15 this morning and this part of the workout sucked big time.

But now I'm back on scheudle and it feels good. 

Round 4: Day 72 Redux - 30:15 Upper Body Massacre

This angle is cool because it looks like I only have one leg.

This is a redux week due to the fact of the totally slacker week we had last week.  Missing three workouts?!  Aghhh!

OK, I know, I know...30:15 was supposed to be yesterday and Insanity was supposed to be today so you're thinking, "Hey, Geek, way to come back strong, you're already behind."  Well, yesterday I had my indoor triathlon (detailed race report to come a little later) in the morning and I thought it would be silly to totally burn out my arms right before I'm trying to do a triathlon at race pace. Thus, we moved 30:15 (intentionally) to this morning and we're doubling up with a little Insanity tonight so we won't miss any workouts AND I got to go into my indoor tri pretty fresh.

This is the last 30:15 of this round and it was HARD.  My whole body aches from pushing hard yesterday at the tri.  24 sets of pushups and pullups is a lot...I am hurting.

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.

Round 4: Day 75 - FOY Yoga

Stretching.  Bending.  Flexing.  Yoga.

Round 4: Day 74 - Total Body Plus

The middle of an O Crunch Pushup...Oh, I crunched it!  I'm sorry, that "joke" was terrible.

Ahh, feels so good to workout again.  It's been three days!  If you'd told me a couple of years ago that a three day hiatus from working out would send my world into a tailspin, I would have thrown my french fries at you (before picking them up and eating them anyway...I used to really like french fries).

Anyway, since this week is pretty much shot as far as staying on schedule, as we've already missed three of six workouts, we've decided to do a little hodge podge for the rest of the week.  We're going to to Total Body Plus today, Yoga tomorrow and a random Insanity Max Interval workout on Friday.  Then, we will restart Week 11 on Sunday with 30:15 and finish out the round.  It seemed silly to try to make up three workouts this week, so we'll just extend this round by a few extra days to make sure we complete our schedule, then we'll do something else.

I hate getting off schedule, but I hate not completing our workouts even more.

Round 4: Day 73 - Plane Ride X

I left my house at 4:30am this morning to catch a 6:30am flight to St. Louis.  I spent the day in a deposition and then hopped on a 6:30pm flight back.  I just got home and had some oatmeal.

I'm considering my workout today Plane Ride X.

Round 4: Day 72 - Blah

OK, I'm having a bit of a week.  Yesterday I didn't work out because Mrs. Gias was out of town and I had my girls to myself...not the best excuse, but that's what happened.  Then, this morning, the alarm was still set for 6am (the time I woke up for church yesterday with my girls) instead of 5am and so we slept...another missed workout. 

Everything will be better tomorrow though, right?

I found out today that I need to be in St. Louis for an 8am meeting, which means I have a 6:30am flight tomorrow morning and I won't be back until late tomorrow night (nothing like a day trip to St. Louis).  Yeah, no workout there either.  I'm starting to feel a bit weirded out by not working out for a few days, I haven't had a stretch like this in more than a year.

Well, I'm going to try to stick to my Tri schedule which isn't messed up this week and I'll do some fill in workouts the rest of the week and repeat this entire week starting next Sunday. 

I just need to take my own advice...miss a workout, do better tomorrow.

Round 4: Day 71 - Rest

Mrs. Gias has been out of town this weekend, so I've been chasing B & G all over the place the past two days.  Don't get me wrong, I love it and I wouldn't change it for the world; I always feel like I've accomplished something when I play the role of the single dad.  However, it also tuckers me out something fierce. 

Anyway, I decided to take the day off today. 

77 Minute Swim

Yeah, that's our oven clock when I left last night this morning.

Today, I had a nice long swim without any noticable injuries, no cramps, no interruptions, it was great.  I hit the pool about 4:30am and just swam.  I did ladders, stroke drills, 50's, 100's, all kinds of different stuff. 

You see, the thing about swimming by yourself is that when you stop, all you hear is the sound of yourself breathing; when you swim, all you hear is yourself splashing.  You basically stare at the black line on the bottom of the pool and have nothing to occupy yourself except for the fatigue in your shoulders, the burning in your lungs and whatever you choose to think about. 

That being said, just mindlessly swimming 100 yard intervals for an hour and fifteen minutes is basically like torture by sensory depravation.  The way you break that up is to switch up what you're doing with drills, strokes and games.  Yeah, "stroke count golf" sounds boring, but it helps to pass the time. 

Today, I used all my tricks and I need to find something new for next week...Suggestions?

Round 4: Day 69 - Plyometric Cardio Circuit

Unfortunately I was in this position far too much during the workout today.

Mrs. Gias and I did a little Insanity this morning to get the blood pumping.  There's a section of this workout which has you in a plank position (think pushup position) doing pushups, jumping your legs in close to your chest, etc.  I was having a particularly difficult time with this section today; I just could not hold the position, my arms were too tired.  I usually don't have any problems with this section, but for some reason today I had a lot of trouble.

Geek: Man, my arms are toast today.
Mrs. Gias: Yeah, you were really struggling.
Geek: I don't know if I was struggling...
Mrs. Gias: Yeah, you were weak.
Geek: Well...I mean...I took more breaks than usual...
Mrs. Gias: Yeah, you didn't do like half the moves.
Geek: I did more than half...
Mrs. Gias: You mean today?
Geek: Uh...I don't know...I think so...
Mrs. Gias: I just call it like I see it.
Geek: Uh, thanks for the support?