I've been doing some pretty serious triathlon training over the last two months. I actually overtrained early in February and ended up having to take a few days off to recover, but have been stronger than ever since. This graph is the fruit of my desire to see objectively how much harder I've been working. Though not all of the lines will keep going up as precipitously as they have recently, it is nice to see some movement in the right direction.
One thing you'll notice is that my running gradually ramped up until last month, then drastically jumped from 16 miles to 34 miles. Though that's still not very much (less than 10 miles per week), I'm starting to build my base for the upcoming season, and feeling much better on runs than I did just six weeks ago. My longer runs are getting longer, my pace is quickening, and just last week, I started doing interval workouts, which I'll slowly intensify over the coming months. The major issue I'm encountering is calf tightness, so I've been spending a few minutes most days rolling out my calves on a dumbbell handle to keep them loose. I have also been integrating runs with either bikes, swims, or other workouts, which are called "brick" workouts, since these sessions build strength and endurance so effectively-- and since your legs feel like bricks when you start to run after biking. Here's once brick workout I plan to start working into my routine once it starts to warm up outside. The run is probably the most important component of the triathlon, and it's where I hope to make up some ground after what will no doubt be average swim and bike legs.
Bikes:
Biking in the winter in Boone is a challenge. Only one day of out 10 ends up being 1) at least 40 degrees, which is my cutoff to avoid hypothermia and frostbite, and 2) a day I'm not working or otherwise occupied. All I've been able to manage over the winter is to maintain a base level of biking fitness. If I had access to a stationary bike or a bike trainer stand, I would be putting in more miles, but that's not an investment I've made yet. I will be putting my primary focus on bicycling and brick workouts over the next few months, and will ratchet up my interval work and distances on my long rides. Long-term, I do get nervous thinking about the risk of a major crash, but I'm doing all I can to be a safe rider.
Swims:
Because the weather has been so cold over the last month, I added a few swim sessions that would have otherwise been biking sessions, and ended up setting personal records in the mile swim twice in the course of a week (36:15 then 35:45). I have settled into a pattern of alternating my custom ladder workout (200m-150m-100m-50m-100m-150m-200m-150m-100m-50m with 75 second breaks) with short, high intensity intervals of 25 to 50 meters (often using a modified "head-up" freestyle stroke which isolates my shoulders and builds shoulder strength), distance swims of 1-1.5 miles, and ancillary work like backstroke with flippers and breaststroke. I've obviously been putting in enough time in the pool to make some significant gains this year, which has been a welcome surprise! I occasionally feel a twinge in a rotator cuff, and swimming surprisingly contributes to my aforementioned calf soreness, but I haven't been dealt any major physical setbacks in the pool. I hope to keep my momentum going over the coming months, but don't anticipate increasing my swimming frequency given time and energy constraints.
Other workouts:
To evolve into a good triathlete, I am going to need stronger shoulders for the swim and stronger legs for the bike (and run). I have been focusing my efforts on exercises like pull-ups, squats, and powercleans, with the occasional dumbbell snatch or thruster workout to round things out. I limit my recovery periods, so my workouts are mostly metabolic conditioning sessions of the type popularized by Crossfit. Since my workouts tend to be less than 30 minutes, I often pair them with a run. One exercise I particularly value is the "man-maker," (which I taught my college friends on a recent get-together), which consists of one-armed dumbbell rows, a push-up, a squat clean, shoulder press, and lunges. I like to do 3 or 4 sets of 15 with a 30-pound dumbbell, which is more reps that I was able to a year or two ago... so I am getting stronger! And just as important, I do a little MovNat mobility work every morning, and a whole MovNat workout or yoga session from time to time to stay supple.
Races:
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be free to do the Lake James or Watauga Lake triathlons this year, but I am planning to do the Huntersville Sprint on 4/28, the Smiley Sprint in Clemmons on 6/9, the Lake Logan International (a longer race) on 8/4, and finish out with the Lake Lure Sprint on 8/10. If all goes well this season, I may be looking at some half-ironman events next year... but I don't want to jinx it. For now, I'm content with entering triathlons as motivation to train harder and get stronger, although it would be nice to be a competitive triathlete and an ironman one day. Or perhaps I'll find something else to motivate me in the future. For now, the triathlon is the thing.
To those of you who couldn't view the graph above, here it is in a different format:
