For those of you that have been visiting our website looking for weekly updates, let me be the first to apologize to you. Chris and I are realizing how difficult it is trying to hold down full time jobs, train for this event, fundraise for LLS, coach on Saturdays’ for Team In Training, and still maintain our all important family relationships. We are being pulled in every direction.
Suffice to say, our training has been going along with only a few hitches. Luckily, nothing serious that some rest, Ibuprofen and Bio Freeze can’t resolve. We are in week 17 of the 26 week program. The countdown has begun. Our training time has exponentially increased since our last recovery week. We are training an average of 2.5 hours during the week and the weekend bike rides have hit 4 plus hours.
This week, we will be swimming three days covering 3,200 to 3,400 yards per workout. Our running frequency has increased to 5 days per week. Some are only 30 minutes long following a swim or bike ride but our long run planned for Thursday will be 16 miles. I still don’t know how we do our long runs and then go to work for a full day. Mid- day forces us to decide between eating lunch or taking a short nap. I try to get both done over my hour break.
We are riding 3 days per week as well. Our Tuesday ride of 1.5 hours is on a stationary bike that drives our heart rates through the roof. Friday is our fast interval ride of 3.5 hours. During the ride we will put in 20 minutes at race pace followed by a short 5 minute recovery before repeating over and over again. We end the week with our Sunday long ride. For the past 5 weeks, we have been driving to Glendora, Ca to ride 44 miles into the mountains to Mount Baldy. It is all climbing to the ski resort for the first 22 miles. The ride back to our cars is very fast as it is all down hill. Last Sunday, we varied our routine and rode from Yorba Regional Park, over Santiago Highway, down El Toro Road to Laguna Beach, up PCH to Huntington Beach and back the final 21 miles on the river trail. It was 74 miles start to finish. Sorry for those of you not familiar with the area but it is a mix of fast flats and lots of big hills. We were pleased with our average of 18.5 miles per hour for the 4 hours. We are both faster on our bikes than our last Ironman.
We have visited our middle school kids with the ‘Adopt an Athlete’ program a couple of times. The last visit we discussed running technique and equipment then we ran with the kids. They are doing great in fulfilling their personal goals. One student has reported losing 9 pounds by making healthier food choices. Another student wanting to improve his mile time from 8 minutes to 7:30 per mile was recently timed by Ms. Kato at 7:00 per mile. How exciting it is for us to see these students working hard to achieve their own ‘Ironman’ goals.
Well, time to get to bed so that I am not dragging during my workout tomorrow. Again, thanks for checking in with us and we will try to do a better job of keeping you informed as we come down to the final few weeks.
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