As I began preparing my triathlon training program, the one thing that kept popping into my head is "how am I going to survive the swim?" I'm perfectly comfortable in water, but I have never been coached or trained on proper freestyle swim form. I knew I was starting from scratch and that scared me a bit.
Once I began talking to fellow runners about doing a triathlon, I found out that swimming seems to be the leg of a triathlon that keeps most people from doing one. As I started to read on the subject, I found several articles, including one in Runner's World that was entirely dedicated to discussing the difficulty that runners have with swimming when attempting a triathlon. What had I gotten myself into.
I knew that the only way to conquer this fear and doubt was to face it head on. I decided to start swimming as early as possible. I began going to the Urbandale indoor pool 1 day a week over lunch starting the week after Thanksgiving. It was just as horrible as I had feared. I started with 20 minutes but I had to stop and rest at each end of the 25 yard pool to catch my breath. I felt like I was drowning at times. My wife, Erin, tried to convince me to hire a coach, but I am stubborn. I agreed that if I couldn't get it figured out by mid-March, I would try to find a coach.
Moving into the New Year, I started watching some swim training videos on YouTube as well as talking with my wife and co-worker, Megan (both of them have competitive swim experience). I had been trying to focus on my breathing, but I realized that it really was my form that was causing me to be so out of breath. I was relying on my legs way too much and was not exhaling under water. It honestly was that simple. In January I purchased a 1 year unlimited pass to the pool and started going twice a week. Now that my breathing is under control, I have started focusing on my form, specifically body position in the water, hip rotation on my stroke, and keeping my head still. Currently I am swimming for 25 minutes twice a week and am able to swim 650 yards in that time. Although I'm not taking time to learn kick turns (those would prove useless in open water), I only truly stop for a short break 2 - 3 times per swim.
Oh, I forgot to mention, now that I can swim without feeling like I'm going to die, I actually look forward to going to the pool. I am also excited for warmer weather to come around so I can start doing some open water swimming.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Saturday, January 30, 2016
The End of One Year Means the Beginning of Another
As my 2015 running season came to a close, I started to ponder what I should set for goals in 2016. I was certain that I wanted to run a marathon at some point, but things just didn't seem quite right for that yet. Sure, I had successfully trained and ran in 2 half marathons in 2015, but to an extent, I got lucky.
When I started training in April, I weighed in at just over 334 lbs, even though I was below 300 by the end of the year, that is a lot of weight to carry around on over 400 miles of training runs. I was lucky because I managed to not get injured. So at this point, I knew that if I wanted to run a marathon, I couldn't tempt fate again. I decided that I would spend 2016 trying to lose weight to train for my first marathon in 2017.
Of course nothing is that simple. The whole reason that I was losing weight in the first place was running. Now I was saying that I didn't want to overdo the running until I had lost more weight. I knew that I had to begin diversifying my workouts and that I would actually have to pay attention to my diet, not only to decrease the amount I was eating, but to also fuel my body properly for all of the training I would be doing.
Now that I knew what I needed to do, I had to figure out a way to stay motivated. Based on my experience over the past 2 years (see my previous blog post), I knew that signing up for races kept me motivated. So I started to pick various distance races to run throughout the year and my schedule ended up like this:
April: Drake Relays HyVee Road Races 10K
June: Dam to Dam half marathon
July: Bix 7
October: Des Moines Half Marathon OR Marathon Relay
November: Turkey Trot
I also planned to add a couple of more races with friends that includes taking a weekend trip to San Francisco to run with a high school friend and classmate. That certainly was enough to motivate me, but I decided to take it a step further and beginning working towards another dream of mine, to compete in a triathlon. I decided on the Des Moines Triathlon (sprint distance) that is held on Labor Day weekend in September. That would give me plenty of time to figure out how to swim and put plenty of miles on the bike.
No matter how much planning I do, something always seems to come up. As registration opened for the HyVee Road Races, they announced that they eliminated the 10k race this year. After doing some pondering, I decided to stick with my planned training program and run a 10k on my own that weekend instead.
Check back soon for an update on my training progress so far this year.
When I started training in April, I weighed in at just over 334 lbs, even though I was below 300 by the end of the year, that is a lot of weight to carry around on over 400 miles of training runs. I was lucky because I managed to not get injured. So at this point, I knew that if I wanted to run a marathon, I couldn't tempt fate again. I decided that I would spend 2016 trying to lose weight to train for my first marathon in 2017.
Of course nothing is that simple. The whole reason that I was losing weight in the first place was running. Now I was saying that I didn't want to overdo the running until I had lost more weight. I knew that I had to begin diversifying my workouts and that I would actually have to pay attention to my diet, not only to decrease the amount I was eating, but to also fuel my body properly for all of the training I would be doing.
Now that I knew what I needed to do, I had to figure out a way to stay motivated. Based on my experience over the past 2 years (see my previous blog post), I knew that signing up for races kept me motivated. So I started to pick various distance races to run throughout the year and my schedule ended up like this:
April: Drake Relays HyVee Road Races 10K
June: Dam to Dam half marathon
July: Bix 7
October: Des Moines Half Marathon OR Marathon Relay
November: Turkey Trot
I also planned to add a couple of more races with friends that includes taking a weekend trip to San Francisco to run with a high school friend and classmate. That certainly was enough to motivate me, but I decided to take it a step further and beginning working towards another dream of mine, to compete in a triathlon. I decided on the Des Moines Triathlon (sprint distance) that is held on Labor Day weekend in September. That would give me plenty of time to figure out how to swim and put plenty of miles on the bike.
No matter how much planning I do, something always seems to come up. As registration opened for the HyVee Road Races, they announced that they eliminated the 10k race this year. After doing some pondering, I decided to stick with my planned training program and run a 10k on my own that weekend instead.
Check back soon for an update on my training progress so far this year.
From the Beginning
Well, maybe not all the way back to the beginning as I'm certain the entire path that my life has taken contributed to where I am now. However, I will go back to the winter of 2014, but first, let me tell you what this blog is all about.
Chances are, if you are reading this, you already know at least a little bit about me already so I won't bore you with my life story. The purpose of this blog is to share my running and other fitness goals and progress. Things are changing rapidly in my life and I really want to be able to remember back to where I started and everything that happened along the way.
Okay, so now back to the winter of 2014. I was working on an agile development team on a very high profile project at Pioneer. Our team was moved into a former conference room where we sat at very small desks and worked elbow to elbow all day long which kind of forced us all to get cozy with one another. One morning one of those co-workers walked into the office and asked if anyone wanted to do a 5k training program with her. Quite honestly, I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking at the time, but I said that I would. I started from there and never looked back.
The early days of running could barely be called running. I remember my first time out, I made it running 2 blocks and had to walk the rest of the way. With that said, I very rarely missed a training run and over the course of 8 weeks I worked my way up to being able to run the entire distance. I didn't actually have a 5k race planned, but decided to run a 5k on my own on what was a very wet Sunday morning in April.
Chances are, if you are reading this, you already know at least a little bit about me already so I won't bore you with my life story. The purpose of this blog is to share my running and other fitness goals and progress. Things are changing rapidly in my life and I really want to be able to remember back to where I started and everything that happened along the way.
Okay, so now back to the winter of 2014. I was working on an agile development team on a very high profile project at Pioneer. Our team was moved into a former conference room where we sat at very small desks and worked elbow to elbow all day long which kind of forced us all to get cozy with one another. One morning one of those co-workers walked into the office and asked if anyone wanted to do a 5k training program with her. Quite honestly, I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking at the time, but I said that I would. I started from there and never looked back.
The early days of running could barely be called running. I remember my first time out, I made it running 2 blocks and had to walk the rest of the way. With that said, I very rarely missed a training run and over the course of 8 weeks I worked my way up to being able to run the entire distance. I didn't actually have a 5k race planned, but decided to run a 5k on my own on what was a very wet Sunday morning in April.
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| After a very wet 5k Run |
A few weeks later, my 2nd daughter, Bridget was born and life changed a little bit. I wasn't following a training program anymore, but I was still running each week. I wasn't as prepared as I would like to have been, but the last weekend of July I ran the Bix 7 in the Quad Cities. I was able to finish the race and I reached my goal of a 15:00 min/mi average.
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| Post Bix 7 |
I picked up my training a bit after the Bix and decided to run a 5k on my birthday and invited all of my Facebook friends to join me. I called it 5k for Patrick's 30th Birthday. Many friends and family members ran a 5k for me that week and I was joined by my sister-in-law and her future husband on my birthday to run a 5k of my own.
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| Ready to run on my 30th birthday |
My original plan was to try to run my first 1/2 marathon in October at the Des Moines Marathon. I still wasn't very comfortable with my running and I wasn't training as much as I wanted to so I opted to register for the 5k instead. I ended up running a PR 5k time that morning with a 13:25 min/mi average.
As we moved through the holidays, running became an after thought and it stayed that way throughout the winter. In early spring my wife, Erin, started to talk about her desire to run the Bix 7 that year. That is all it took to get me going again. I helped her to design a training program, and set my race schedule as well. I wanted to run the Dam to Dam half marathon on the last weekend of May but had a wedding to attend that day so it didn't work out. My first race ended up being the Grimes Governor's Days 5k and I was lucky enough to run it with my wife.
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| Erin and I post race |
At this point I had 3 months to increase my millage to run my first half marathon at the Quad Cities Marathon the last weekend of September. I also signed up to run my second half marathon 3 weeks later at the Des Moines Marathon. A lot of people said I was crazy, but I knew that I could do it. With the exception of a couple of weeks in June that I was travelling, my training was spot on. I rarely, if ever missed a training run and the miles added up quickly.
On Sunday, September 27 I ran in my first ever half marathon. Although my only true goal was to finish the race, leading up to race day, I figured I might be able to finish in under 3 hours. That is exactly what I did. My official time was 2:56:59 and I could not have been more excited.
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| First mile of the race |
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| 4 miles in |
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| My cheering section |
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| 9 miles in |
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| I did it! |
After a full week of rest I had 2 weeks of training until my next half marathon. I was very surprised at how much faster I was running during those 2 weeks. I actually had to hold myself back several times as I was really worried about injury. On Sunday, October 18th, I completed my second ever half marathon in Des Moines. It was the perfect morning for running! I blew away my time from just 3 weeks earlier and finished with an official time of 2:45:42, over 11 minutes faster then my first half marathon!
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| I did it again! |
I finished up the year with a 5 mile Turkey Trot in Davenport on Thanksgiving Day. I was happy to run it with my wife, especially because it was pouring rain the entire way. My goal was to average under 12:00 min/mi and we did! Even in conditions that were not ideal, we managed to run a 11:38 min/mi pace.
 Wearing matching shirts for the Turkey Trot |
So that is the cliff notes version of the past 2 years. Even more exciting things are going to happen this year, but to hear about it, you will have to check back for future blog posts.
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