Sunday June 23rd - 62 days out

Weight:  188.6

Diet: Quick oatmeal before church, 2 chocolate chip cookies prior to ride, 3 hour bottle on infinit on ride, family dinner and a couple Sam Adams Summer Ales!

Scheduled Training:  Schedule is kind of out the windy for this week. Had such a bad start to the week I decided to flip flop with next week which was a recovery week and go after next week.  So that said all I needed to do today was a 2 hour plus ride.

Actual Training:  3:00 / 50 mile bike ride.  Felt good and strong at the start which was awesome given yesterday and lack of sleep.  Half way through though thunderstorm city set in and it poured down and blew me around almost the entire way home.  That zapped me legs and killed my mental drive.  Was thinking about going for 85 miles but left it alone at 53ish.

Life:  Didnt get home until 4 AM last night and up early for church with the family.  Hoping to be able to cut the grass tonight before I pass out, we'll see I guess!  This blog isn't meant to be a poor me story, I'm very blessed and excited to be taking on my 2nd ironman. Just sharing the craziness of the path!  You probably can't tell but this pic is the beginning of the storm pouring rain!

Saturday June 22nd - 63 days out

Weight:  188.6 (+.2lbs) down to 183.8 post long run

Diet: Honey nut Cheerios before my run, protein shake after, 

Scheduled Training:  Moved long ride to tomorrow, now today was supposed to be swim, short ride and 1 hour run.

Actual Training:  2:18 - 15 mile long run, 37 easy miles on the bike up in Indy with my father in law for the NITE Ride.

Life:  Happy with my run this morning, just what I needed.  Then I coached Jack's tball game and headed up here for the ride.  Gonna be a late night and I'm already thinking about how much tomorrows ride is going to hurt.

Friday June 21st - 64 days out

Weight: 188.4 lbs 

Diet:  Not good, okay breakfast, breakfast pizza for a party at work for lunch (just a few pieces) and meatballs/tacos for dinner at a work function at the Churchill Downs

Scheduled Training: Rest Day

Actual Training:  40 min bike session on the trainer.  Not mentally into it and legs were a little fatigued. Didn't want to do touch much because I'm riding 5 hours very early tomorrow and possibly doing the ride Indy at nite ride tomorrow. Legs will be toast!

Life:  Pretty normal Friday. Hoping to hit the sack early!  Up and at it early tomorrow!!!!

Thursday June 20th - 65 days out

I'm struggling with motivation and stressing about being under prepared for the race this year.  The training plan I'm using has a TON more volume than last year and its been very hard to keep up with work and life getting in the way! Ha!!!  In addition my diet has went to shit for the last couple weeks and I've gained 8+ pounds putting me farther away from the 175 number I told myself I wanted to race at.  So, I've decided to now us this blog as a daily journal to help keep me motivated over the next 65 days.  Thought it may also be a cool insight for others to see what it is like to go thru this.

Weight: 187.8 lbs

Diet: Okay, splurged a little on dinner at Qdoba

Scheduled Training: 1:15 swim and 1:45 strength bike session.

Actual Training:  1 hour bike strength session

Life:  Tired after business trip to San Antonio, Kristin had a bible study from 7:30 to 9:00.  I rode the bike from 7:30 to 8:30 while watching the kids.  Planned to jump on the treadmill when Kristin got home but it was slipping real bad and I wasn't feeling it.  Fell asleep while watching the 3rd quarter of the NBA Finals. 

I've decided to make this a recovery week and redo this week next week.  Also thinking about switching plans...

Ironman Training is Hard

The training hours are starting to add up and my burn out phase is peaking through.  Even though I've had some really great races this year, I'm thinking that racing 3 weeks in a row wasn't such a great idea.  Given that I really tried to "race" them this year the recovery needed was a bit more than I expected.  This caused me to miss a couple long rides which stresses my anal scheduling self out!

The time away from my family including 3 young kids seems worse this year. Thankfully i have the most supportive wife in the world and I really try hard to schedule my workouts around the family stuff.

In addition to that I don't have the training partners I had last year.  Jeff and Kevin were on a similar schedule and it was nice having a couple of really good guys to help push me along and suffer with.  Neither of them are racing Ironman this year and I miss having them out there.  One of the main reasons I signed up for this years race was to race it with my brother.  I'd hoped we would get to train more together and share that part of the journey together also.  Because of his work schedule and the fact we are on different programs we rarely get together to train.  Still a great experience catching up almost everyday on how things are going and still happy to be doing it again!

Okay, enough of the cry baby stuff.  Training is going pretty well and I'm improving in all 3 sports.  My swim is getting better due to a more focused workout plan with more emphasis on drills.  My bike has never been stronger and I'm chalking that up to all the hard trainer work I put in early on the season.  And my run has come along very nicely which I think is from all the form work and continued endurance base.  I'm really looking forward to Muncie and Louisville this year.  Given that I plan to take at least a couple years off before doing another Ironman I hope to make this a great one!

Training Change - Need advice!!!!

Ironman Louisville 2013 prep is coming along nicely.  I've spent the last 2 weeks stepping back and truly focusing on "base" training in my aerobic zone.  This has been a major adjustment for me.  After being told countless times by Jay that my base training should be long and slow I finally decided to listen.  Seems as though most of my running was on the grey zone.  Even though I was seeing improvement I wasn't working my aerobic engine and teaching my body to burn fat as fuel.

Given that I had a good season last year and was seeing improvement this year I feel a little silly changing anything at this point, but I believe it's best for me long term.  They say for burnout, over training and recovery this is how you should do it.  And given my history of injury and Asthma it made sense to me.

The biggest challenge with this new focus is that my training pace is VERY slow compared to what I had been running.  It's embarrassing for one, but scares me that ill also race slower because of it.  Last thing I want to do is change something that makes me slower.  The goal is to get faster at the lower heart rate, I'm just not sure how long that should take.

If anyone has any good experience with this please let me know!!!!  TriFest is this weekend and I'm racing the Olympic distance.  Hoping to see some improvement from last year.  Should be fun!  I'll post an update after that race.

Half Marathon PR

This has been a PR kind of season so far. I finished the KDF Half Marathon in 1:35 and totally blew away my expectations. I hadn't really even been training for the distance so I wasn't sure how it would go and it went great. As you may know I've never considered myself a runner and not to long ago I hated running. It wasn't until recently when I lost the weight and got my Asthma under control that I was really able to work at it.

My brother and I got great starting spots near the front of the race. With 12,000 plus racing that's a good thing. I didn't have to spend a lot of energy dodging slower or walking participants. With the starting position and the perfect weather I was geared up to go hard.

When the race started I told myself to hold back and stay within myself to save something for the last half of the race. I thought I was in trouble when I looked down and saw that I had averaged 7:05 through the first 2 miles. But I felt great so I just kept on truckin.

About mile 8 you go through Churchill Downs and as cool as that was the little climbs coming out of the tunnels really spiked my heart rate. I think those 2 little hills hurt me for later in the race. I pushed it hard through this section and paid for it in the last 2 miles. But I embraced the suck and pushed through to a time I was super happy with.

Really hoping all these early season race results mean I'm on track for an awesome Ironman Louisville in August!