August 30, 2013

Refocusing on Austin 70.3

I'm now all signed up for the Ironman Austin 70.3.  I'm shifting my training slightly to focus on this as my "A" race along with the Dallas marathon.  I feel like my marathon training should have me in good shape for the run portion.  I need to focus on ramping up my swim and bike.  I'm following a training program from a training book I got.  I think it's working pretty well.  I guess the race will tell.

August 24, 2013

Recovery and Over Training

This week I had a super hilly 16 mile long run, including the biggest hill in Austin called Ladera Norte. The "Run From Hell" is aptly named.  Through this, I feel like I might be overtraining a bit.  I'm exhausted and sore.  I don't feel like I'm recovering as I should.  I took a couple of days off and caught up on rest.  It's made a HUGE difference.  I got to where I neither physically nor mentally could get into my workouts.  It was a struggle to start, really hard to get through the workout, and didn't feel like I was getting fully back to square one after the workout.  I'm feeling better now and will continue to keep an eye on this.  I need to learn to listen to my body.

August 21, 2013

Time Trial & Brick Workouts

A couple of updates from this week.  As part of marathon training, we have to do a 2 mile time trial.  We're supposed to run this as hard as we can consistently for those two miles. This allows us to establish a baseline for which we can predict what my target goal pace will be for 10K, half-marathon, and of course the marathon.  I pushed really hard and finished in just under 16 minutes.  I felt really good about that.  I'm getting faster and stronger and might be able to set a good PR for the Dallas marathon.

The triathlon club I'm a part of offers free brick workouts every Wednesday night.  I joined for the first time this week.  It was good, tough workout.  We had timed bike, followed by a timed run.  The bike time got progressively shorter and faster while the run stayed the same.  We practiced the transition between each.  It was tough and probably not the best idea to do this the day after my time trial.  But I really enjoyed and am looking forward to doing more of these the rest of the season.