Sunday, August 25, 2013

A Long Expected Update

Sorry for not posting in forever. I haven’t really had anything to write about. The triathlon was okay, but not spectacular. I may write a post about it just to keep it archived here. I have started to improve my running a lot, but haven’t spent much time at all on the bike. I just got a Garmin 510 though, so I will be geeking out about that, and likely spending many hours a week riding just so I can look at all the data it gives.

I am actually glad I spent so much time away from the bike. I appreciate riding a lot more than I did at the end of last season. Even though I wasn’t in the greatest shape I still was a bit sick of riding. Luckily I have been active enough to maintain a reasonable level of fitness. The main benefit I have received from this time off is I have been ridden of all of the guilt that I had. It was stupid, but hard to deny. I was having a tough time in engineering (surprise I am no longer doing engineering,) and I would feel guilty every time I would work out. It was a stupid feeling that shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I suppose the root problem was I was unable to man up and tell my parents I didn’t want to do engineering. That conversation was perhaps the most uncomfortable I have ever had. That actually gives me a good idea for a parody post…. Anyway, I am feeling much better about what working out means to me. I am more willing to sacrifice time on the internet or tv for working out instead of work time as well. Having a lot of structure in my life tends to make me much more productive. I just hope I don’t feel too stretched over the next 14 weeks of class. It shouldn’t be that bad, but 3 online classes is a lot of time on the computer.

Now working out feels more like a small part of what I do, even when I am doing a large volume. Over the next several weeks I am going to put some real solid “pre-base” kind of riding in. I don’t really have the time to just push zone 1 or 2, and for the first few weeks here I don’t think that I would be able to keep it that low with the terrain of Colorado. My average HR zone for my first ride with an HR monitor was zone 5. That’s average. For an hour. I feel pretty confident that my pain threshold is quite good. If I use this data to plan my workouts better I should be able to improve a ton. By the way my max heart rate was 198. I was pushing to make it hit 200 on that hill, but I just wasn’t able to go that far. Too bad, as I know that I have hit 200 several times before.

Running has gone from something that I would probably have to stop after a mile to easily running three. If I double that, then I am well on my way to having the run portion of an Olympic triathlon covered. A couple hours of scouring the internet should give me a good idea of how much running I need to do for an Olympic distance. I’ll see how my garmin holds up for collecting running data. If it is incredibly erratic then I may have to cave in and blow some money on a garmin watch several months from now. I have too many cycling expenses on the horizon to worry about at the moment. At least now I have a job where I can work toward paying for those things. It’s odd. I have spent my entire life having next to no money, and now that I have a small amount I have no desire to save a lot of money. In the short term I don’t consider that a bad thing, but long term it does need to change. After I am eventually done with school money should be a much simpler thing.

The elephant in the room is still swimming, but I feel as if I have a pretty good plan at tackling that. That’s not something I have to worry about for a couple of months though, so for now I am good. My plan is to take some time in the middle of winter when I feel it is too cold to ride (I’ll still do like 2 sessions a week on the trainer) and I’ll swim around 4 times a week. That should be enough to get me to be comfortable and build some proper form. Some weeks I’ll probably do more than 4 sessions, but I don’t want to over push swimming. 

Good to see that the blog got a bunch of views in the time that I was away from it. I'll be a lot more regular now. I still don't know exactly what I want to do for documenting training, but I have a few ideas. I don't have any races on the horizon, but next year if my bike fitness is good enough I should be doing several amateur races. Yet again I apologize for not having any content, but this summer has been one of the most trying ones of my life. I have had a great time, but things have changed, and a lot of my spare time is gone. At least I feel motivated now.  


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