Long day of training
by Charles Seegel @ The long road to IronmanI have a strange work schedule where I work nights from 7PM to 7:30AM 3-4 nights a week. It's great because it gives me lots of days off each week to train. The problem is that I work every other Saturday night and every Sunday night. That means that after working a 12.5 hour shift last night, I went straight to a 4 hour workout this morning (anyone who has ever worked nights knows that by 5AM your body really wants to be asleep). I didn't make it home to bed until after 1PM where I was able to sneak in about 4 hours of sleep before having to get up to go back and work another 12.5 hour shift (which I am about to start now).
Enough of my sleep deprived complaining! Training was great today! I was really tired and really didn't want to swim today. The workout started out really badly and it took me a long time to sort of settle into a comfortable flow. The good news is that I did eventually settle in and managed a 2600 yard workout today (longest ever) and was just 2x50 away from completing the entire workout (They always put the pool covers on and shove us towards our bikes before I can finish the workout). I have never been that close and so I see that as a big positive!!! I was also able to complete the prescribed distance of each set without any stopping (if it said 300, I did 300 without a rest). The one weakness I had was that my 20 second rest periods between distances was often closer to 45-60 seconds, but even that is better then before.
Next, we had a 2 hour ride waiting for us. While prepping for the ride, I misplaced my keys and by the time I was able to get going I was a good 5-8 minutes behind the team :-( I mentally prepared to just settle in and ride alone until the turnaround, but the Coach Mike had a different idea. Somehow, Mike convinced me that it would be fun to chase them. I think that we had some favorable traffic lights that helped out some but we did manage to catch up to them fairly quickly and none to soon. I was just starting to fall off of his wheel when we caught up with the back of the pack. This was the first time I have ever tried to chase down anyone ever (any sport) and it was fun. It was also the fastest sustained ride I have ever done that wasn't at the very end of a ride. I had a feeling that this would come back to haunt me later when we got to the hills, but it was worth the satisfaction of catching the team and having people to ride with. The hills were actually not so bad. A lot of steady cuphill but only a few places that were actual climbs. The worst was the climb up Bailey but that is really not as bad as many of the other climbs that we do regularly. In the end, my little chase episode didn't cost me very much at all later in the day ( a sign that I am getting stronger) and I think the fact that I wanted to kill myself during the last 4 miles was more a fact that we had been going consistently for 4 hours (combined swim/bike) and with my lack of sleep, I was just drained.
At the end of the workout, I really felt like this is definitely a workout that I could not have even thought of completing 2 months ago. Real measureable improvement. Maybe this Ironman think can actually happen :-)
Enough of my sleep deprived complaining! Training was great today! I was really tired and really didn't want to swim today. The workout started out really badly and it took me a long time to sort of settle into a comfortable flow. The good news is that I did eventually settle in and managed a 2600 yard workout today (longest ever) and was just 2x50 away from completing the entire workout (They always put the pool covers on and shove us towards our bikes before I can finish the workout). I have never been that close and so I see that as a big positive!!! I was also able to complete the prescribed distance of each set without any stopping (if it said 300, I did 300 without a rest). The one weakness I had was that my 20 second rest periods between distances was often closer to 45-60 seconds, but even that is better then before.
Next, we had a 2 hour ride waiting for us. While prepping for the ride, I misplaced my keys and by the time I was able to get going I was a good 5-8 minutes behind the team :-( I mentally prepared to just settle in and ride alone until the turnaround, but the Coach Mike had a different idea. Somehow, Mike convinced me that it would be fun to chase them. I think that we had some favorable traffic lights that helped out some but we did manage to catch up to them fairly quickly and none to soon. I was just starting to fall off of his wheel when we caught up with the back of the pack. This was the first time I have ever tried to chase down anyone ever (any sport) and it was fun. It was also the fastest sustained ride I have ever done that wasn't at the very end of a ride. I had a feeling that this would come back to haunt me later when we got to the hills, but it was worth the satisfaction of catching the team and having people to ride with. The hills were actually not so bad. A lot of steady cuphill but only a few places that were actual climbs. The worst was the climb up Bailey but that is really not as bad as many of the other climbs that we do regularly. In the end, my little chase episode didn't cost me very much at all later in the day ( a sign that I am getting stronger) and I think the fact that I wanted to kill myself during the last 4 miles was more a fact that we had been going consistently for 4 hours (combined swim/bike) and with my lack of sleep, I was just drained.
At the end of the workout, I really felt like this is definitely a workout that I could not have even thought of completing 2 months ago. Real measureable improvement. Maybe this Ironman think can actually happen :-)
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Long day of training
by Charles @ The long road to Ironman
I have a strange work schedule where I work nights from 7PM to 7:30AM 3-4 nights a week. It's great because it gives me lots of days off each week to train. The problem is that I work every other Saturday night and every Sunday night. That means that after working a 12.5 hour shift last night, I went straight to a 4 hour workout this morning (anyone who has ever worked nights knows that by 5AM your body really wants to be asleep). I didn't make it home to bed until after 1PM where I was able to sneak in about 4 hours of sleep before having to get up to go back and work another 12.5 hour shift (which I am about to start now).
Enough of my sleep deprived complaining! Training was great today! I was really tired and really didn't want to swim today. The workout started out really badly and it took me a long time to sort of settle into a comfortable flow. The good news is that I did eventually settle in and managed a 2600 yard workout today (longest ever) and was just 2x50 away from completing the entire workout (They always put the pool covers on and shove us towards our bikes before I can finish the workout). I have never been that close and so I see that as a big positive!!! I was also able to complete the prescribed distance of each set without any stopping (if it said 300, I did 300 without a rest). The one weakness I had was that my 20 second rest periods between distances was often closer to 45-60 seconds, but even that is better then before.
Next, we had a 2 hour ride waiting for us. While prepping for the ride, I misplaced my keys and by the time I was able to get going I was a good 5-8 minutes behind the team :-( I mentally prepared to just settle in and ride alone until the turnaround, but the Coach Mike had a different idea. Somehow, Mike convinced me that it would be fun to chase them. I think that we had some favorable traffic lights that helped out some but we did manage to catch up to them fairly quickly and none to soon. I was just starting to fall off of his wheel when we caught up with the back of the pack. This was the first time I have ever tried to chase down anyone ever (any sport) and it was fun. It was also the fastest sustained ride I have ever done that wasn't at the very end of a ride. I had a feeling that this would come back to haunt me later when we got to the hills, but it was worth the satisfaction of catching the team and having people to ride with. The hills were actually not so bad. A lot of steady cuphill but only a few places that were actual climbs. The worst was the climb up Bailey but that is really not as bad as many of the other climbs that we do regularly. In the end, my little chase episode didn't cost me very much at all later in the day ( a sign that I am getting stronger) and I think the fact that I wanted to kill myself during the last 4 miles was more a fact that we had been going consistently for 4 hours (combined swim/bike) and with my lack of sleep, I was just drained.
At the end of the workout, I really felt like this is definitely a workout that I could not have even thought of completing 2 months ago. Real measureable improvement. Maybe this Ironman think can actually happen :-)
Enough of my sleep deprived complaining! Training was great today! I was really tired and really didn't want to swim today. The workout started out really badly and it took me a long time to sort of settle into a comfortable flow. The good news is that I did eventually settle in and managed a 2600 yard workout today (longest ever) and was just 2x50 away from completing the entire workout (They always put the pool covers on and shove us towards our bikes before I can finish the workout). I have never been that close and so I see that as a big positive!!! I was also able to complete the prescribed distance of each set without any stopping (if it said 300, I did 300 without a rest). The one weakness I had was that my 20 second rest periods between distances was often closer to 45-60 seconds, but even that is better then before.
Next, we had a 2 hour ride waiting for us. While prepping for the ride, I misplaced my keys and by the time I was able to get going I was a good 5-8 minutes behind the team :-( I mentally prepared to just settle in and ride alone until the turnaround, but the Coach Mike had a different idea. Somehow, Mike convinced me that it would be fun to chase them. I think that we had some favorable traffic lights that helped out some but we did manage to catch up to them fairly quickly and none to soon. I was just starting to fall off of his wheel when we caught up with the back of the pack. This was the first time I have ever tried to chase down anyone ever (any sport) and it was fun. It was also the fastest sustained ride I have ever done that wasn't at the very end of a ride. I had a feeling that this would come back to haunt me later when we got to the hills, but it was worth the satisfaction of catching the team and having people to ride with. The hills were actually not so bad. A lot of steady cuphill but only a few places that were actual climbs. The worst was the climb up Bailey but that is really not as bad as many of the other climbs that we do regularly. In the end, my little chase episode didn't cost me very much at all later in the day ( a sign that I am getting stronger) and I think the fact that I wanted to kill myself during the last 4 miles was more a fact that we had been going consistently for 4 hours (combined swim/bike) and with my lack of sleep, I was just drained.
At the end of the workout, I really felt like this is definitely a workout that I could not have even thought of completing 2 months ago. Real measureable improvement. Maybe this Ironman think can actually happen :-)