Being Flexible

This morning I slept until 7:30, which is much later than intended.  Despite that, I did do about 15 minutes of yoga before work.  I’ll do another 15 minutes later this week- probably Wednesday morning.  My physical flexibility is nearly nonexistent at the moment.  My hamstrings are especially tight, so yoga seems to be just what the doctor ordered.  I really need some new yoga dvds.  I used to have one that I really liked, and I still have the case, but I cannot find the disc anywhere.  I have been using the free videos on demand on exercise tv, but I haven’t found any programs that I really love yet.  Does anyone have any recommendations for DVDs?

When I got home from work this afternoon, I had every intention of going for my run with Tara.  What I didn’t plan on, was the fact that ALL of my workout clothes were in the laundry.  I decided that I would do laundry instead, go grocery shopping for the rest of the week and have a relaxing evening instead.  I played with Tara and did some training with her too (she’s learning to roll over!).

I met my goal of making dinner tonight!  I baked salmon wrapped in foil with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, white wine, salt, pepper, chili powder, lemon juice and fresh basil.  It was delicious!  We had cous cous on the side, and I’m going to use the leftovers to make cous cous salad.  Curtis and I went grocery shopping together today, so we’ve got good stuff for the rest of the week.  We are going to a friend’s house for dinner on Wednesday, so I’m only going to be able to cook at home Monday, Tuesday and Thursday this week, but that’s no biggie.  We actually have a dinner group with some of his coworkers and get together once or twice a month, each time at a different person’s house.  We hosted it first, way back over the summer, and it will be looping back to us in either February or March.  We always have a great time and get to try some new delicious food.  Many of us use it as an opportunity to try a new recipe on a bunch of willing guinea pigs.

Tomorrow is a lifting day, so I’ll be packing a bag to go to the gym directly after work.  Perhaps I will run on the track while I’m there too.

 

Off to a (semi) Good Start

In the past, if I haven’t had time to do an entire planned workout, I’ve just let it go.  In my brain I know that every little bit counts and getting out and moving is the more important than exactly following my schedule.  But when it came down to it, I chose to stay in bed or watch another 15 minutes of TV or or read blogs for another 30 minutes than getting out and running for that 15 or 30 minutes.  No more.  Despite waking up much later than planned yesterday morning, I dragged myself out of bed and determined that I still had time for about 10 minutes of yoga.  I’m not sure how good it did physically, but I think it went a long way to getting me into a better place mentally.

This morning, I managed to jump out of bed a bit earlier and go out for a run with Tara.  We were out for 33 minutes – 2 minutes walking warm-up and then jog for 28 minutes and walk for another 3 to cool down.  It should have been a 3 mile run, but it came in at just about 2.8 miles including the walking portions.  I’m really happy I got out there and ran even though it was still pitch black outside when we left.  Tara lit my path with her little headlamp that she wears.  I’m a little disappointed in the “reflective” leash and collar I bought for her.  They don’t seem to be very reflective at all.  They’re nice for a regular leash and collar, but I’m going to have to try something else.  I’m thinking of getting her a running vest for more visibility.  I wore a white shirt this morning with good reflective strips on the back, but I still need to make it to the running store or sporting goods store to get something more for me to wear.

I did not get to the gym yesterday to lift and I’ve realized that it is completely unrealistic to try on Mondays.  I think I mentioned that I have dog agility classes on Mondays and while yesterday I probably could have made it to the gym, I decided that it would make more sense to move my lifting day to Tuesdays since it is a light running day.  That way I can easily do my run in the morning and lift in the evening, or vice versa.  Also, starting next week my classes start at 6:35 PM (instead of 8:50 PM as they do now), so my Mondays are going to be quite busy.  I think I’ll be doing a lot of crock pot dinners over the next 6 week session!

I’m not sure what to do about lifting on Thursdays yet.  Class on Thursdays doesn’t start until 7:45 PM and I get home from work at about 4:30 PM.  Inspiration just struck-  I can do a morning lifting session on Thursdays and run in the afternoon with Tara before class.  That will work perfectly! I’ll update my training plan matrix later today with my updates.

Things are falling into place!

 

No Rest for the Weary

I want to be a faster runner.  I’ve never really thought that I could run fast, it just never crossed my mind.  My 8K results lit a fire in me, so to speak, and now I want to be faster, and more importantly, I am convinced that I can be.  I have no idea what my goal pace should be for any given distance.  I don’t know how much it is reasonable to expect to improve over X number of days, weeks, months or years.  And I don’t care.  I’m arbitrarily choosing the Charlottesville half-marathon as my first checkpoint.  I want to finish it in under two hours. Is that realistic considering my time last year was 2:25:28?  Maybe not.  I’m going to try anyways.  According to the Race Time Predictor, I should be able to run a 5K in 26:07, which is an 8:24 pace, and run a 10K in 54:21, which is an 8:45 pace.  My only 5K race (not attached to a triathlon) was 29:54, so I just need to shave 4 minutes….I know I can do it.  Not entirely sure when I’ll do it, but I know I can.

Training starts tomorrow.  I’ve posted my training plan on the “Training Plan -2011” page.  I’m going to focus on running again through this winter, just like last year.  This time, though, I am going to place my focus on running fast, rather than running far.  I’m starting with one day of speed work each week and add a second day of speed work in the last 12 weeks or so of training.  I’m going to try to do some interim races to track my progress, or at least do “home” races every few weeks.  I’m also adding two days of weight training back to my training.  Adding muscle can’t hurt and I know that I’ve lost a lot of strength since I stopped lifting in favor of HIM training.  Something new I’m going to try is doing yoga once a week too.  I’m hoping that placing an emphasis on stretching at least once a week will prevent any encounters with IT band issues or any other injuries that can crop up.  As you’ll see in my schedule, I’ll be running significantly more (miles and days) every week than I have in the past, so I want to make sure to stay healthy!  I’m hoping yoga helps in that.  I’m not planning on taking any yoga classes right now, just doing videos or on-demand at home.  I think it would be a bit ambitious for me to actually go somewhere to do yoga right now.  It will be much easier to fit into my schedule if I can do it right here.  My alarm is set to start tomorrow at 6AM, and I’ve already chosen a program from the on-demand menu.  I need to pick up some yoga DVDs to try.  I have one, but it has gone missing, and I’m afraid I may have let someone borrow it and will never see it again.

My planned training for this week is:

Monday – Yoga AM, NROLW Stage 1 A1 PM

Tuesday  - Run 3 miles

Wednesday – Run 5 x 400 m @ 5K pace

Thursday – Run 3 miles AM, NROLW Stage 1 A2 PM

Friday – Rest

Saturday – Run 3 miles

Sunday – Run 5 miles

Monday and Thursday may be tough to get everything done because I have dog agility training classes both evenings, but I’m going to do my best to do the lifting.  If I have to miss one of the days, I will do the second day on Saturday.

By the way, if you reading from an RSS reader, I did some work updating the look of my blog today.  I’m not 100% it is going to stay like this.  I’m not in love with the new layout/theme yet.  I did change the main title of my blog- “Triathlon Training Blog” was just too boring.  This is my journey of becoming stronger and faster and going longer.  It’s only taken me a year and a half to be a little more interesting, but better late than never!  Let me know what you think of the new look!

The Great Larabar Experiment

I’ve been feeling a little bleh yesterday and today, so I decided to make today a rest day.  I picked out an On Demand yoga program to do as my active rest.  It was ok, but not really what I was looking for, there was a lot of pilates-type moves for core strength.  I wanted some more stretching type moves to do, but oh well.  It only took 20 minutes, which was nice.  I don’t think I’d do it again, though.

After I was done, I decided to attempt to make some homemade Larabars.  I even took pictures to post!

First, I took an entire (well actually a little less because I’d already eaten several) 10 oz container of Sunsweet pitted dates and checked them to make sure they were actually pitted.  Once I had removed the one stray pit I found, I microwaved the dates for about 30 seconds since I thought it would be easier to work with them if they were slightly heated.

I dumped the whole container of dates into the food processor and turned it on.

It didn’t take long for it to become a paste-like consistency.

I added 1/2 cup of almonds (1/4 cup at a time).

And 1/8 cup of cocoa powder.  The food processor turned it into a very sticky ball of dough.

I spread it into a small baking dish and put it into the refrigerator to harden.  After an hour or so I moved it to the freezer to be faster.

After they were sufficiently hard, I cut them up into 16 squares to store.

This one only made it as far as my mouth! It was tasty!

Here’s the nutritional info:

Serving size -2 squares (1/8 of whole)

Calories – 148

Fat – 4 grams (rounded up)

Carbohydrates – 30 grams

Protein – 2.5 grams

I think that next time I’ll add a bit of chocolate protein powder, but I’m pretty pleased for my first attempt.  I’m excited about getting some more dates and trying some different combinations of flavors.  The pecan pie Larabars are especially interesting to me.  Yum, I’m salivating just thinking about it!

BRICK & LTHR Test

This afternoon, I did NOT want to go for my bike ride.  For some reason, I really just felt like running, but I decided to suck it up and go anyways, especially since it was only supposed to be an hour and a half ride.  While I was getting my bike ready (more on this in a later post), I had the brilliant idea to follow Joe Friel’s exercise for determining lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR), and subsequently training zones for my riding.  As soon as I got on my bike I was so glad I had taken the time to do a little maintenance and give it a little TLC.  Wow, it is riding so much better now! With the exception of my front derailleur, which was acting up late in the ride, but I think I can fix it.

I went on my usual route, which I was hoping would not be too problematic with waiting at various lights and road crossings.  I managed to get through the worst of them during my 10 minute warm-up period, thankfully.  After 10 minutes, I pushed it and built up to riding as fast as I could and sustain for 30 minutes.  After 10 minutes of the test, I reset my HRM for the remaining 20 minutes.  What a great ride out it was!  After I finished the test, I stopped to drink some water and turn around and head back toward home.  I also checked my computer and saw that my average speed was 16.1 mph!  I was really pleased, it showed that I definitely was riding faster than my normal plodding along pace.  I did not worry about speed at all on the way back, I wanted to save some strength in my legs for a run, but I still finished with an overall average speed of 14.5 mph.  Not too shabby!  Stats for the ride:

Duration of ride time: 1:24:29

Distance: 20.45 miles

Average speed: 14.5 mph

Max speed: 30.6 mph

When I got back to the house, I took a quick bathroom break, changed shorts and had a quick snack of 3 small dates.  It was much longer than a normal transition, but my legs still felt like jelly when I started running.  After about 8 minutes I got my rhythm back.  Although it was about 90 F, the run wasn’t too bad because there was a nice cool breeze flowing.  A few minutes after I got my legs back I got a side stitch.  It wasn’t too bad, but it was bad enough to make me want to stop and make it go away.  I’d like to say that I continued to run through the pain, but I can’t.  At 16 minutes I stopped and walked for about 20 seconds before I motivated myself to start running again.  I ran the rest of the workout (42 minutes) and then walked to cool down for about 16 minutes or so.

I spent some time really stretching out well when I got home.  My muscles have felt really tight lately, especially in my lower back and shoulders, so I wanted to loosen up a bit while they were still warm.  I really would like to figure out a time to work some yoga into my training plan, I think that’s the one thing I’m missing!

My heart rate stats are broken up into 4 segments of today’s workout.  The first three are on the bike and the fourth is the run and cool-down.

Stats #1: Bike warm-up and first 10 minutes of LTHR test

Duration: 20:03

Average heart rate: 155

Max heart rate: 176

Calories: 188

Stats #2: Second 20 minutes of LTHR test (the part that counts!)

Duration: 20:01

Average heart rate: 177

Max heart rate: 187

Calories: 239

Stats #4: Remaining bike ride

Duration: 49:35

Average heart rate: 162

Max heart rate: 182

Calories: 505

Stats #5: Run and cool-down walk

Duration: 58:00

Average heart rate: 160

Max heart rate: 184

Calories: 587

Which means…drum roll, please!  That my LTHR for cycling is estimated to be 177 beats per minute.  This means that my workout zones (following from the Triathlete’s Training Bible) are as follows:

Zone 1 (Recovery): 116-145

Zone 2 (Extensive Endurance): 146-158

Zone 3 (Intensive Endurance): 159-165

Zone 4 (Subthreshold): 166-176

Zone 5A (Superthreshold): 177-180

Zone 5B (Anaerobic capacity): 181-186

Zone 5C (Power): 187-193

What does this all mean to me?  I’m not really sure yet.  I’ve tried to use some vague notion of zones in my training in the past, but never had a concrete number to follow.  I think this could really make me more disciplined over the long run, but for this next race I’m afraid it may be too late to start trying to incorporate this knowledge into my plan.  I’m not sure I have time right now to do more research and planning.  Unless I do it tonight, right now and figure everything out for the next few weeks.  I’ve been known to do things of that nature.  Guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Good night!

Windy Tuesday

Today brought yet another windy April day.  Unlike Saturday, it was about 20 degrees colder today!  I almost caved and went to the gym, but ended up braving the 41 degree weather and 17 mph gusts of wind to take an “easy” bike ride.  Yeah right!  Riding out was ok, if a bit cold.  Coming back into the wind was brutal.  There are a couple serious little hills on the way back from this particular ride, and they were seriously tough today.  I ended up coming back a bit early, I was supposed to do a one hour ride at a cadence of 90+, but I only did 50 minutes and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t at 90+ the whole time.

When I got back, I did a 25 minute DVD yoga session to stretch out.  The DVD I have is Rodney Yee’s Power Yoga and it has two different routines: strength and flexibility.  I usually do the strength one, but I tried the flexibility today, and I didn’t like it nearly as much as strength.  No doubt, it was relaxing, but it just didn’t feel as good as the strength session.  I’ve decided to try and work some yoga into my routine when I have time.  I’m not very good about stretching all the time, so I’m hoping the yoga will help with my flexibility and injury prevention.

It looks like we’re definitely going to the lake this weekend, so I’m really excited about taking my bike for a spin around the race course.  All I remember is that the hills were incredibly hard and there were a lot of them.  I’m hoping that my memory has exaggerated the course a bit.  I guess I’ll find out this weekend!