Triathlon Training

I am feeling recovered from the half marathon, so that means that now I'm officially training for the triathlon! Last week we took it pretty easy, but we'll be more serious starting this week. There are now 10 weeks until the Mission Bay Triathlon on September 30. Our "Tri for Fun" is in 4 weeks- we're going to "train though" it and use it mostly as a practice for Mission Bay.

I did my first ever "real" bike ride last weekend, followed by my first ever transition run! Here are the stats:

Saturday's bike: 16.0 miles/1:03:49/15 MPH average pace

followed immediately by:

1.0 mile/8:28

First of all, that bike ride was tough! My bum was on fire, and every other muscle was working hard too. But mostly, my bum. :D Not saddle-sore (I have proper bike shorts and was really pretty comfy) but muscle-burn. Youch! We kept a good cadence and I only fell behind Zach a couple of times, otherwise I kept a good pace. I wore my Garmin so I have good data on the ride- I don't think we had any mile slower than 14 mph average, and our best mile was over 17 mph! This was really encouraging for our first real ride. Somewhat humbling was the transition run...

We hopped off our bikes and just propped them against the car, took a swig of water, and jogged around the parking lot. Weird!! My legs were tight and a little numb-feeling (not actually numb, just weird-feeling) but running actually felt ok! Zach only jogged a minute or two then decided that was enough for our first excursion, but I ran back and forth for a total of one mile. It was weird. As the tightness/numbness went away, I got a little calf cramp, which luckily didn't stick around. I slowly re-gained feeling and control of my legs, and running felt fine. I did feel like I was a few miles into a run, rather than only a few minutes, so that was odd. It was fun though, and I can see that transition runs will be very valuable for training!

The next day my lower back was a little sore, and my neck too. That bike position takes some getting used to.

So a pretty mild week overall:

TOTAL miles run: 4 (how cute!), biked 25 (sweet!), total yards swam: 1120 (just one day last week- open water).

So that was kind of a warm-up to our real training, which starts this week. I managed to come up with a training schedule that works for both Zach and I - please give me your feed back on this!

Monday: pm: Run 4-6 (speedwork, hills, etc)

Tuesday: am: swim 500-1000 m
pm: bike ride and weight training

Wednesday: pm: Run 6-8 (Group)

Thursday: am: swim 500-1000 m
pm: bike ride and weight training

Friday: am: longer run 8+

Saturday: longer bike ride (15+) with transition run (1-3)

Sunday: longer swim or Open Water Swim


So that is 3x swimming, 3x cycling, and 4x running if you count the brick. I will be doing the swims in the morning by myself (Zach will do his swim Friday evening), and I'll be running solo on Friday mornings too. I know bike is my weakness, and I love to swim and obviously run, so I think I have a good balance of the three. I don't plan on any rest days but will take them as needed. Zach and I will work together to come up with specific workouts each week but this will be the general plan for the next 10 weeks. Should be interesting.

Finally, I have to mention that I did finish the final book in the Harry Potter series this weekend. :) It was very, very good. I want everyone to go read it now so we can discuss. Just kidding, but not really!