Fast track, a broken bike, and an icy kick board…
by Charles Seegel @ The long road to IronmanThe week in review... Wednesday was our coached track workout which I must say was both "interesting and engaging". After warming up, doing drills, and some easy laps, they paired us up basically fastest with the slowest, next fastest with the next slowest, etc. Needless to say I was paired with a rabbit (Dana) who just qualified for Boston. The workout was for one of us to stay and do squats, crunches, and pushups until the other runner returned from their lap and we would switch. We would do this for 4 laps. This sounds like a great thing for me right... Dana is so fast that I will barely make one set of each workout before she would get back from her run. The problem is the guilt factor. I felt bad leaving her there for my normal 2:45 laps and pushed my pace to about 2:10 (blazing fast for me) and then slowed a bit on the last one down to about 2:30. We then had to run a mile together. Ideally, we would slow to my pace but again, my ego got the better of me and we did a 10:15 mile (my 2nd fastest ever). In my mind, we would now do a little cool down and be ready to call it a night... after doing a 2 mile time trial. Ouch! Really regretting all of that speed I wasted earlier. I hung back for the first mile to see how I felt and then pushed the pace up slowly as I finished in a time of 21:45!!! Better then an 11 minute pace after all of the other running we had already done!!
On Saturday, the north bay team came down for a spinerval at the same track. This is the point where I realize that the minor bike problems that I suffered with on the previous evening where actually caused by my bike missing a chain pulley on my rear derailer. No bike for me :-( I figured that I would just keep running while everyone else ran and then I would join them on the track repeats. That seemed reasonable until I had been running for almost an hour and 45 minutes (about 35 minutes longer then my longest run in the last 3 months) that I realized that my body was turning against me. I walked a bit until the team started its last track set and finished with them. Not a bad workout but it was cold and my legs never really felt good.
On Sunday, we met the north bay team at a pool up in Pleasanton. It was about 27 degrees outside so getting in the heated pool was actually a much desired activity that morning. We warmed up for a bit and then started grabbing for the kickboards on the side of the pool for some kick drills... only my board was frozen... as in a film of ice had formed on my kickboard. After drilling for a while, we did a 5x100 set to get going and then we were asked to do a 500. I have never done a 500 but was not terribly surprised. i finished the first 400, then took a break before the last 100. Then Dan said, now do the next 500 faster... what!?!? The first part that sank in was the "next" 500, as in we are doing more then 1 500? Then I realized that he had said faster. What?!!? As mentioned before, I am not a strong swimmer and my arms were starting to fatigue at this point, but this is how we get stronger so I pushed through. I broke the 500 up into 200s to get through and then we did some smaller sets before cooling down. We then did a spin workout on my newly repaired and functional bike (Yeah!!!) and then got the snot kicked out of us by a "quick and easy" core work out that basically made me want to crawl to my car and die (I may not have mentioned that I have no core strength and therefore suffer through most workouts). We then packed up and headed to the cars. As we were heading out for breakfast, Dan mentions to me that they "accidentally" had us do the workout written up for the fast swimmers and that our workout should have been sets of 300. Oops!! Let this be a lesson to you, never skimp on holiday gifts for your coaches because you will pay in the end :-)
On Saturday, the north bay team came down for a spinerval at the same track. This is the point where I realize that the minor bike problems that I suffered with on the previous evening where actually caused by my bike missing a chain pulley on my rear derailer. No bike for me :-( I figured that I would just keep running while everyone else ran and then I would join them on the track repeats. That seemed reasonable until I had been running for almost an hour and 45 minutes (about 35 minutes longer then my longest run in the last 3 months) that I realized that my body was turning against me. I walked a bit until the team started its last track set and finished with them. Not a bad workout but it was cold and my legs never really felt good.
On Sunday, we met the north bay team at a pool up in Pleasanton. It was about 27 degrees outside so getting in the heated pool was actually a much desired activity that morning. We warmed up for a bit and then started grabbing for the kickboards on the side of the pool for some kick drills... only my board was frozen... as in a film of ice had formed on my kickboard. After drilling for a while, we did a 5x100 set to get going and then we were asked to do a 500. I have never done a 500 but was not terribly surprised. i finished the first 400, then took a break before the last 100. Then Dan said, now do the next 500 faster... what!?!? The first part that sank in was the "next" 500, as in we are doing more then 1 500? Then I realized that he had said faster. What?!!? As mentioned before, I am not a strong swimmer and my arms were starting to fatigue at this point, but this is how we get stronger so I pushed through. I broke the 500 up into 200s to get through and then we did some smaller sets before cooling down. We then did a spin workout on my newly repaired and functional bike (Yeah!!!) and then got the snot kicked out of us by a "quick and easy" core work out that basically made me want to crawl to my car and die (I may not have mentioned that I have no core strength and therefore suffer through most workouts). We then packed up and headed to the cars. As we were heading out for breakfast, Dan mentions to me that they "accidentally" had us do the workout written up for the fast swimmers and that our workout should have been sets of 300. Oops!! Let this be a lesson to you, never skimp on holiday gifts for your coaches because you will pay in the end :-)
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Fast track, a broken bike, and an icy kick board…
by Charles @ The long road to Ironman
The week in review... Wednesday was our coached track workout which I must say was both "interesting and engaging". After warming up, doing drills, and some easy laps, they paired us up basically fastest with the slowest, next fastest with the next slowest, etc. Needless to say I was paired with a rabbit (Dana) who just qualified for Boston. The workout was for one of us to stay and do squats, crunches, and pushups until the other runner returned from their lap and we would switch. We would do this for 4 laps. This sounds like a great thing for me right... Dana is so fast that I will barely make one set of each workout before she would get back from her run. The problem is the guilt factor. I felt bad leaving her there for my normal 2:45 laps and pushed my pace to about 2:10 (blazing fast for me) and then slowed a bit on the last one down to about 2:30. We then had to run a mile together. Ideally, we would slow to my pace but again, my ego got the better of me and we did a 10:15 mile (my 2nd fastest ever). In my mind, we would now do a little cool down and be ready to call it a night... after doing a 2 mile time trial. Ouch! Really regretting all of that speed I wasted earlier. I hung back for the first mile to see how I felt and then pushed the pace up slowly as I finished in a time of 21:45!!! Better then an 11 minute pace after all of the other running we had already done!!
On Saturday, the north bay team came down for a spinerval at the same track. This is the point where I realize that the minor bike problems that I suffered with on the previous evening where actually caused by my bike missing a chain pulley on my rear derailer. No bike for me :-( I figured that I would just keep running while everyone else ran and then I would join them on the track repeats. That seemed reasonable until I had been running for almost an hour and 45 minutes (about 35 minutes longer then my longest run in the last 3 months) that I realized that my body was turning against me. I walked a bit until the team started its last track set and finished with them. Not a bad workout but it was cold and my legs never really felt good.
On Sunday, we met the north bay team at a pool up in Pleasanton. It was about 27 degrees outside so getting in the heated pool was actually a much desired activity that morning. We warmed up for a bit and then started grabbing for the kickboards on the side of the pool for some kick drills... only my board was frozen... as in a film of ice had formed on my kickboard. After drilling for a while, we did a 5x100 set to get going and then we were asked to do a 500. I have never done a 500 but was not terribly surprised. i finished the first 400, then took a break before the last 100. Then Dan said, now do the next 500 faster... what!?!? The first part that sank in was the "next" 500, as in we are doing more then 1 500? Then I realized that he had said faster. What?!!? As mentioned before, I am not a strong swimmer and my arms were starting to fatigue at this point, but this is how we get stronger so I pushed through. I broke the 500 up into 200s to get through and then we did some smaller sets before cooling down. We then did a spin workout on my newly repaired and functional bike (Yeah!!!) and then got the snot kicked out of us by a "quick and easy" core work out that basically made me want to crawl to my car and die (I may not have mentioned that I have no core strength and therefore suffer through most workouts). We then packed up and headed to the cars. As we were heading out for breakfast, Dan mentions to me that they "accidentally" had us do the workout written up for the fast swimmers and that our workout should have been sets of 300. Oops!! Let this be a lesson to you, never skimp on holiday gifts for your coaches because you will pay in the end :-)
On Saturday, the north bay team came down for a spinerval at the same track. This is the point where I realize that the minor bike problems that I suffered with on the previous evening where actually caused by my bike missing a chain pulley on my rear derailer. No bike for me :-( I figured that I would just keep running while everyone else ran and then I would join them on the track repeats. That seemed reasonable until I had been running for almost an hour and 45 minutes (about 35 minutes longer then my longest run in the last 3 months) that I realized that my body was turning against me. I walked a bit until the team started its last track set and finished with them. Not a bad workout but it was cold and my legs never really felt good.
On Sunday, we met the north bay team at a pool up in Pleasanton. It was about 27 degrees outside so getting in the heated pool was actually a much desired activity that morning. We warmed up for a bit and then started grabbing for the kickboards on the side of the pool for some kick drills... only my board was frozen... as in a film of ice had formed on my kickboard. After drilling for a while, we did a 5x100 set to get going and then we were asked to do a 500. I have never done a 500 but was not terribly surprised. i finished the first 400, then took a break before the last 100. Then Dan said, now do the next 500 faster... what!?!? The first part that sank in was the "next" 500, as in we are doing more then 1 500? Then I realized that he had said faster. What?!!? As mentioned before, I am not a strong swimmer and my arms were starting to fatigue at this point, but this is how we get stronger so I pushed through. I broke the 500 up into 200s to get through and then we did some smaller sets before cooling down. We then did a spin workout on my newly repaired and functional bike (Yeah!!!) and then got the snot kicked out of us by a "quick and easy" core work out that basically made me want to crawl to my car and die (I may not have mentioned that I have no core strength and therefore suffer through most workouts). We then packed up and headed to the cars. As we were heading out for breakfast, Dan mentions to me that they "accidentally" had us do the workout written up for the fast swimmers and that our workout should have been sets of 300. Oops!! Let this be a lesson to you, never skimp on holiday gifts for your coaches because you will pay in the end :-)