Long Overdue for an Update

It’s definitely been a while since I’ve posted any updates, but I’ll try my best to give a nice synopsis of the past two weeks of training. I’m still settling into my training regimen and trying to get accustomed to the new settings here in Charm City. During the past few years in Chicago, I never had to drive my bike anywhere to ride and I had two pools where I could do my swim training at any given time. Here, my options are more limited in some sense, but I’m hoping that it will make for a more successful season. Though I can only swim during Master’s practice times and I often have to drive at least 20min away for good riding, I’m getting more feedback about my swimming technique and hopefully riding up and over all the hills in the area will make me a stronger cyclist. Speaking of training, what does real world Ironman training actually entail? A typical training week for me looks something like this:

Day	Session 1 (am)	Session 2 (pm)
Monday		Master’s Swim
Tuesday	Patterson Park Loop Ride
Wednesday	Run	Master’s Swim
Thursday	Trainer Ride	Run
Friday	Rest
Saturday	Master’s Swim (early am)	Long Ride/Brick (late am)
Sunday	Long Run

In total, each week has 10 scheduled workouts and so far I’m averaging around 8. Since the first 8 weeks of my program are devoted to building a strong aerobic base, the majority of my workouts are done in Zone 2-3 with sets of short sprints or hill climbs for running and cycling respectively. I’ve been able to see some real fitness gains recently as running has become a bit easier and my heart rate isn’t climbing as high as it usually does at a given pace. Swimming is coming along slowly as usual, but that’s probably because I’ve yet to have a week where I’ve completed all 3 scheduled sessions. Even though the training intensity is mostly easy, I’ve noticed that the cycling hill intervals really wear me out. On Tuesday, I did 10 x 1 min climbs in Patterson Park and my legs were feeling really fatigued until Thursday morning. I’ve also noticed that it takes me about 10 seconds to fall asleep at night and I have no problem sleeping for 9 hours straight depending on when I go to bed. Speaking of bed, I guess I’ll wrap up this post and get ready for an early morning swim workout. Gotta stay streets ahead of the game.