February 17, 2010

Hi, I'm back. Sorry, got busy with training and podcasting and work.

Also, I've been blogging behind your back, I'm a "blogging two-timer" so to speak. My buddy Quadrathon asked me to guest-write on his extremely famous blog (he gets hundreds, if not 1000's of hits every day) whereas my blog get sabout 25-30 (and most of them are accidents lol).

Anyway here's the link to my guest spot Quadrathon's Blog Topic: "So you want to be a triathlete!" Go leave a nice comment so Stuart doesn't think it was a bad idea to ask me. ;)

Training Update:

After my Garmin fiasco last Thursday, I had a rest day on Friday.

Saturday I was back at it with my first run after a 2 1/2 week lay off. I felt a bit tight but ok.

	38m 55s 5.00 kms 07m 47s/KM	Avg HR: 145 Max HR: 160
11:00 AM

I decided to go without the orthotics and see how I felt. Easy run 11:30 WU. 5/1. 6:30-6:55 pace. 5 min cool down.


Later that day, I went on first road ride of the year! In February no less!

	1h 55m 15s 45.25 kms 23.56 KM/hr	Avg HR: 150
2:00 PM
Equipment:	Trek Madone 5.1

First rode ride! Partly cloudy, 9C. Toes got cold. Full gear.

Garmin crapped out on me again. No data in history, nothing will upload. The data was lost on my Garmin but I was finally able to get the upload working. I won't know if it worked or not until my next run though. Garmin has agreed to replace if it it wont' start working reliably.

Sunday was a one hour pool run, hopefully my last of the running lay off.

Monday I was back at the pool to swim.

	1h 15m 2500.00 meters 03m /100 meters
2:00 PM

600 warm up (2x: 200 swim/50 kick/50 drill)
8x50 w/:30 sec rest (descend stroke count 1-4, 5-8)
6x50 kick w/:30sec rest
4x150 pull w/:45 sec rest (3/5/3 breathing pattern by 50)
8x25 @ :50 (descend 1-4, 5-8)
2x125 w/:30 rest (free swim)
100 cool down


Tuesday, I got to run again.W00t, w00t!

	35m 4.60 kms -----
5:00 PM

8 min warmup (1 km) , mostly walking w/ a couple 1 min runs.
Did rest (3.6km) with two 1 min walk breaks.
Run pace was about 6:40km or 10:45 mile (not including walk breaks).
Ran a familiar path - didn't have Garmin.
Felt really good tho.
Stretched before and after. Ice shins/calves after too.

This week

This week is a busy stressful week with parent-teacher interviews today and tomorrow, followed by a busy Professional Day on Friday. After work, Erik and I are heading to Salmon Arm for a weekend away so my training schedule will really be messed up.

Coach gave me today and Thursday as rest days but I got home around 6pm tonight and felt really great. My legs, shins etc felt perfect and I wasn't tired, so I did one rotation of the Core Strength workout before I caved due to hunger. About 25 minutes or the same workout I did about 10 days ago.

I'm supposed to run Friday but I'm going to do it tomorrow instead because my day was shortened with a couple of families moved their interview times. I'm going to do another easy 30 min on a grassy sports field while my son is at guitar lessons tomorrow afternoon.

Friday - I'll have a rest day.

Saturday - I'm going to ask if I can run while I'm away if I'm feeling ok.

Sunday - I have a swim/bike brick. I will have to swim , get dressed, drive home, and then bike so it won't be a true brick. I'll ride outside if the weather cooperates, or on the trainer if it's raining or cold.

So that's about it. You probably won't hear from me again until next week. I'm not going to put out a show this weekend either.

Thanks for reading!

February 11, 2010

Garmin Frustration

Last week my Garmin froze doing a bike workout and I could only upload to Garmin Connect, no where else. I contacted Garmin and they said I'd have to do a hard reset to correct it. I tried it again and it started working so I didn't bother to reset it for my next workout because I didn't want to re-enter all my settings for a third time.

Bad decision.

Today I was doing a hard Zone 4 interval set and when I came to upload, it wouldn't work at all. It is not recognized by Garmin Connect website, Garmin Training Centre or WorkoutLog website. I was actually in tears when I thought I wasn't even going to be able to see my lap data on the device itself but it turned out that once I did started a new workout, the old data showed up so I was able to manually record all 17 laps for Coachprs.

Here's the data I transcribed:

Totals

Time: 1:20:06
Dist: 36.45 km
Avg speed: 27.3 kmh
Max speed: 44.5 kmh
Avg Cadence: 91 rpm
Max Cadence: 128 rpm
Avg HR: 150
Max HR: 178

Lap Stats:

Lap	Time	Distance	Speed	Cadence	HR
1 warm up	17:00	7.25	25.6	82	129
2 (3X:30 fast /:30 easy)	3:00	1.62	32.1	95	162
3 Zone 4	4:00	2.07	30.8	93	165
4 Easy	2:00	.893	26.4	92	155
5 Zone 4	8:00	3.98	29.8	92	165
6 Easy	2:00	.816	24.1	93	154
7 Zone 4	12:00	5.81	29	94	161
8 Easy	2:00	.747	22.2	87	155
9 Zone 4	8:00	3.99	29.8	97	161
10 Easy	2:00	.817	24.2	95	156
11 Zone 4	4:00	2.03	30.2	98	162
12 Easy	2:00	.832	24.6	95	155
13 Sprint	:30	.337	38.8	120	163
14 Easy	1:30	.592	23.4	89	161
15 Sprint	:30	.343	40.3	119	163
16 Easy	1:30	.567	22.3	86	160
17 Cool down	9:39	3.73	23.2	92	134

Off to shower, then do a hard reset on the Garmin 310xt....


:(

February 9, 2010

So I had a bike workout planned today and it mentioned staying in certain HR zones. I talked to the coach about which zones I should use (there are different ways to calculate them) and he decided maybe the best thing to do is a Lactate Threshold test on the trainer today to determine my LT and set my zones for my training in the months ahead. Oh joy.

An LT test is a rather challenging and somewhat painful test to do and I was looking forward to it with mixed glee and dread. I love the challenge but I knew it was gonna hurt. I had the house to myself so I got everything set up in the living room - trainer, towel, Garmin, 2 water bottles, ipod, fan....

The workout called for a 10-15 min warmup (medium effort) and then a 25 km hard ride, as hard as I could sustain with a fairly even pace. I figured it would take me 45-50 minutes to do 25 km and it was a bit of a challenge to find a gear and cadence combination that I could maintain fairly steady for that long a time.

I had my ipod loaded with Podrunner 180 bpm techno music fairly loud. 180 bpm allowed me to regulate my cadence around 90 rpm without having to check my Garmin all the time.

So I started pedaling and sweating and pedaling, and an hour and 10 minutes later, I was done. I just LOVE the endorphin rush of a workout like that.....


Here are my stats:

Distance: 25 km (15.5 miles)

Time: 48:13

Avg Speed: 31.1 km/h (19.3 mph)

Avg HR: 170 bpm

Max HR: 182 bpm

Avg Cadence: 92 rpm


With this information, Coach set my HR zones as follows.

1 – Recovery	112 - 141
2 – Extensive Endurance	141 - 152
3 – Intensive Endurance	153 - 160
4 – Sub-Threshold	161 - 170
5a – Threshold	171 - 174
5b – Anerobic Endurance	176 - 180
5c - Power	181 - 187

My Garmin only allows 5 zones so I had to lump 5a-5c into one zone. My old Edge 305 let me create extra HR zones but I can't figure out how to do that on the 310xt. If you know how, please email me!

So now that my bike HR zones have been set, I will have a better idea on how to attack the rest of my trainer workouts this week.

Once I can run again, we will have to do the same thing for my RUN HR Zones. Your HR zones for running as usually higher than for biking. I know I have hit a max HR of 193 when running my fastest 5k (26:16) but my max HR on the bike is only about 185ish.

February 8, 2010

Update:

All that stuff I said I had to do? Well I did it.

Shins are feeling great. Itching to run. Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait....

Shoulder has been a bit achey but seems to be better today. It was achey from swimming lots but then on Thursday I tried to "skin the cat" on the monkey bars at school and apparently I'm heavier than the average 8 year old and found it a bit more difficult to get my legs up on the 5' high bar. Pulled something. Owie. LOL...


Totals last week:

Swam 3:45, 6900m
Pool run 1:30
Bike 66km, 2:30
Strength 0:45

Plan for this week:

Mon: Swim 2400m (today)
Tues: Bike 1:30ish. TT Lactate Threshold test. Sounds painful.
Wed: Swim 2500m
Thurs: Bike 1:10, pool run 1:00
Fri: Off
Sat: Bike 1:30, Pool run 1:10
Sun: pool run 1:20 (gonna see if I can talk him into letting me do a real run instead...)

Funny Twitter Feed

This was tweeted by my friend, teammate, and fellow podcaster, @stplatt (The Devoted Runner Podcast)



"Today we are having a membership drive for the @kelownagurl team for the Buckeye Challenge."

"Sign up today and get an autographed picture of @kelownagurl on her bike."

Pledge 50 miles for the month, and you will also receive a copy of @kelownagurl's smash hit "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor"

"Pledge 75 Miles for the month, and receive a personalized audio recording utilizing @kelownagurl's stellar french accent."

"But wait, there's more. Pledge 100 miles and receive all this, PLUS @kelownagurl's new hit recording "Long Trail Run Tonight"

Too funny.... :)

February 1, 2010

Day One with Coach Jeff PRS (OK, so I hired a coach, don't think I mentioned that.... ;)

Swimming Master's Style

Yeah, I know, I haven't done a lot of this. I used to print off workouts from SwimPlan.com and take them to do but got out of the habit. The nice thing is - it makes the time go faster when you have sets to work on.

So up until now, my longest swim has been 2000m. I could have swum longer, I just didn't. I think that 2000m swim last year was the day I ended up with a bad calf cramp and had to stop early when I was going for 2500m.

Anyway, fast forward to today. I had a 2300m workout ahead of me so I raced out of school to try to get into the pool before 3pm. The kids swim club starts at 4pm and it's nice to have some space for as long as I can.

Here's what I had to do today

400 warm up
4x100 swim w/:60 rest
8x50 w/:45 rest (kick/swim by 25)
300 pull w/:60 rest
3x100 swim w/:45 rest
200 pull w/:60 rest
2x100 swim w/:30 rest
100 cool down

To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what some of it meant so I had to email him and confirm. I haven't used a pull buoy much and found my right shoulder was a bit sore about 2/3 of the way through, but I kept on going.

One of the things I'm not good at, is taking the rest breaks. I don't like rest breaks. I'd rather just keep on swimming. Even when I do hard intervals on my own, I usually just swim slow for a length or two instead of hang out at the end. This is even more important when I'm sharing the lane with a few people. I like to find a nice rhythm and distance from them and just keep on moving. If I have to wait :30 to rest, sometimes they catch up with me and we can't take off at the same time. Throws me off. I'm anal. I know.

So today - I did some of the rest breaks, especially at the beginning, and then I just started skipping them except when I did the pull buoy and my shoulder was sore. Figured I should probably rest it. Not only that, Erik was coming to pick me up at 4:15 and knew he'd already have to wait a bit.

So I'm wondering what's up with all the rest breaks anyway. Do you think it means I don't swim hard enough and that's why I'm not needing them? Just to be sure, I made sure I swam the sets in the last half, harder than I did in the first half.

I don't know. I guess I'll ask the coach. :)

**************

Last week's training update

I didn't blog much since last Tuesday so thought I'd give a brief update. Not that I think any of you give a rat's ass what I did, but I do find myself going back over my blog to check things out and I'm always annoyed when don't have a recap. ;)

Tues: After my 5.8km run, I ended up having to play volleyball for 90 mins.

Wed: PT and Core and Yoga

First the PT Stuff
3X5 one legged squats on the stairs
3 sets of wall squats with band around knees
side steps with band
3 sets of toe raises

Then strength and core with 3 sets of:
10 pushups
20 crunches
30 sec back bridge
45 sec plank
20 bike crunches

Then Yoga for Runners with additional stretches:
3 sets of 30 sec calf stretches
hip flexors / piriformis / ITB stretch


Thurs: trainer ride as mentioned in prev post - 45 min, zone 2

Fri: Off

Sat: 30 min rowing, 30 min elliptical, and 30 min of the stuff above.

Sun: 30 min swim 1000m and 30 min pool running in deep water with buoyancy belt


What's coming up?

Mon: Swim 2300m (today)

Tues: Pool run :30, bike 1:00 (tight to fit in with volleyball at 6:30 but I can do it)

Wed: Swim 2200m

Thurs: Strength :45

Fri: Off

Sat: Bike 1:30, Pool run 1:00

Sun: Swim 2300m