Race Week Part 2

It's race week! After 14 weeks of hard training, I certainly feel ready to run my first half marathon of the year. I really expect good things out of myself too. I have a set a difficult, yet achievable, goal of completing the 13.1 miles in under 2 hours and 20 minutes. That would beat my previous PR time, set during the Des Moines half marathon last October, by over 25 minutes.

In general, this week I am focusing on hydration and getting more sleep at night. I also set my training schedule to be loaded early in the week and taper down to just a morning swim on Friday. Come race day, I will trust my training and run my best as those are the only 2 things that will be in my control.

Here we go...

Building Confidence On My Bicycle

Well, it finally happened. I had a great bicycle ride on Saturday. Due to the potential for rain, I had decided that I would complete my long run on Saturday and move my bike ride to Monday, but a text from my brother on Friday night changed those plans.

My brother picked me up a little after 8:00 am and we headed to Madrid to ride on the High Trestle Trail. My original plan was to ride a little over 20 miles this weekend, but with the weather holding out and with how good I was feeling, we kept on going. We ended up making it 18 miles out to Ankeny before turning around, and added a few more at the end of the ride to see the High Trestle Trail bridge over the Des Moines river.

We kept a very comfortable and easy pace the entire way and the ride really felt good. It helped a lot to ride with someone else instead of on my own, and we had a pretty good time together. This ride also made me realize how well my training is coming along. There is no way that I would have been able to complete a ride like this just a few months ago, but yesterday I felt like I could ride all day. 

A big thanks to my brother for asking me to ride with him and for encouraging me along the way!

A Week In Review

Since stepping on the scale last Thursday to see that I had dropped below 250 lbs, everything has been going great. Currently, I am a week and a half from my next race, the Dam to Dam half marathon in Des Moines and I am certainly ready to go.

All of my runs have gone very well, including my 11 miler on Sunday evening. I wasn't expecting much out of it as I had spent all weekend working at the cabin and was probably fairly dehydrated and tired. However, I managed to average an easy pace of 11:00 min/mi which is what I aim for on my long runs.

Last Thursday I managed to break a spoke on my road bike while out training. Luckily, Bike World was able to get it in and out on Monday and was ready for my next training ride yesterday. Last week, I also ordered some clip on aerobars for my bike, not as much for speed as for comfort while riding longer distances. I tried them out last night for the first time and they made a huge difference. For the first time in awhile, neither my upper back or wrists hurt when I finished my ride.

New aerobars installed

Quick picture after finishing a ride in the July-like humidity

I also had some very good swims over the past couple of weeks. I still don't think I'm to a point that I will be able to count the swim portion a strength of mine, but I have progressed from focusing on just surviving it. The past 2 weeks I completed my long swim of 1,250 yards with 100 yard pace under 3 minutes. I've also been focusing on breathing to both sides during my drill swim days (I usually breathe just to my right) and that has been going well too. 

Lastly, I've been thinking about how I want to end my season this year. Last year I added a 5 mile turkey trot (that Erin and I ran in the pouring rain), but this year I'm really thinking about doing a lot of speed work in the fall and running a 5k race to see what these legs can really do. Only time will tell what I decide. 

Weight Loss Milestone

This morning I tipped the scales at 248.2 lbs, putting my total weight loss at 98 lbs and finally breaking the 250 lb mark. This was the sweetest milestone yet because I am officially the lightest that my wife has ever known me. During my senior year at UNI, prior to our wedding, I made it down into the low 250s, but I was not in anywhere near as good of shape as I am now.

Oh yes, I'm also fitting into size XL t-shirts (see picture below) and pants with waist size 38 (these are the smallest clothes that I own, so I guess I will have to do some shopping in the future). One last thing, I bought a new belt in February and have made it through all of the holes and it is now too big.

248.2 lbs on 5/19/2016

To end, I will add my standard disclaimer that even with how far I have come, I still have a long way to go. I am hoping to be down to 240 by my first triathlon on July 10 and 235 by my second triathlon on Labor Day weekend. 

Cycling Is My Weakness

Considering that a triathlon contains 3 events, and one of those events is swimming, I never thought I would say this, but right now, cycling is my weakness. Over the past few weeks I have started to realize exactly how far I have to go in becoming comfortable on my bicycle. From riding a road bike for the first time, to riding longer distances and building confidence to ride on the road when necessary. When deciding to do a triathlon I focused more on my fitness and ability and didn't spend much time thinking of how to build confidence and a comfort level with the different disciplines.

The good news, I still have time. I have spent quite a bit of time researching training methods and putting together a plan that should have me ready by race day. I've also invested in some gear for my bicycle that will hopefully help to make a few things easier as well.

One big pitfall that I have found is there aren't very many good long distance bike routes that start in Grimes without having to deal with some roads with heavy traffic. This means that most of my training rides have required me to drive to a trail head somewhere which takes additional time that I often don't have. Last night I took a big step and found a good route that starts at home and can hook me up to either the Clive greenbelt trail or the Raccoon River Valley trail (both of which are extremely long trails). The route does require me to cross several busy roads and even travel short distances on some less busy roads, but I managed it without any harm. Hopefully this will help my training going forward.

Running Improvement

This morning I headed out to run 10 miles. With the cool temperatures and high winds, I decided to run the trails along Saylorville Lake as they would keep me out of the wind for the most part. It turned out that the route I ran today was the exact route that I ran back on September 20, 2015 (the week before my first half marathon). Comparing these 2 training runs gave me an opportunity to see how much I have improved over the past 8 months.

Training run from last September:

Training run from today. 

I was able to cut off just under 30 minutes in time which, for me, is great progress from one year to the next. 

Only 3 weeks until my next race!

Facing Illness

Training is a balance of putting in a lot of time and effort as well as a sufficient amount of rest. When facing an illness it is easy to imagine how skipping a couple of training runs or a trip to the pool could derail everything that I have been working towards.

This is the exact scenario that I am facing right now. By the time I headed to the pool over lunch on Monday, I was having quite a headache but I fought through my 1,000 yard swim. Monday is suppose to be my long bike ride of the week but I really wasn't feeling up to it, as the headache had been joined by some sinus pressure, so I decided to skip. Nerves and worry got the best of me so I ended up putting in 20 miles on the stationary bike later that night. I didn't feel too bad afterward but was completely drained, so I headed to bed early. I still felt tired the next morning (but who doesn't at 5:00 am) as I headed out on a 3 mile run. It didn't take the full 3 miles for me to realize that running wasn't the best idea. After returning home I could barely stay standing or keep my eyes open so I opted to stay home and cancel my bike ride (for real this time).

After a day of rest, I was feeling a little better and ready to hit the pool in the morning, or so I thought. I ended up waking up in the middle of the night with a stomach bug and immediately decided to cancel all training for the day. It pains me to skip scheduled training, but I know that this is one of those times where rest is more important then the miles or laps that I am skipping. I have 3 1/2 weeks until my next race, which is plenty of time to recoup anything that I may have lost. I'm happy to say that I am cautiously optimistic after sleeping an extra 6 hours today and I am feeling much better. Hopefully after a good night's sleep, I will be able to get back after it tomorrow!

Registering for More Races and Weekly Update

The week started off with Erin committing to running the Bix 7 as well as her first half marathon at the Quad Cities Marathon in September. I'm very excited to have a training buddy this summer (although we won't be able to train together very often) as well as run her first half marathon with her. It will make for a busy fall with the Des Moines Triathlon, Quad Cities Half Marathon, and Des Moines Marathon Relay in less then 2 months but it will be a lot of fun!

Ever since committing to completing the Olympic distance triathlon a couple of weeks back, I have been searching for a mid-summer opportunity to complete a sprint triathlon. My hope is that it will help to get the jitters of my first tri out of the way as well as help me to adjust and iron out anything that comes up during the race. This weekend I settled on the Accel Triathlon held at George Wyth State Park in Waterloo on Sunday, July 10. The sprint distance will include a 500 meter swim, 15.8 mile bike, and 5 kilometer run.

This was an interesting week for training. It started off with the pool being closed over lunch on Monday and was filled with more rain and wind then I would have liked. I did end up getting a couple of decent bike rides in between rain showers and ran in the morning, before work, on Tuesday and Thursday and really enjoyed that as it ended up freeing up more of my evenings.

This week will be equally as crazy with my sister-in-law getting married next Saturday. Luckily, I should be able to fit in all of my training around the festivities.