Four Months until the Lake Placid Ironman and two months until the Black Bear Half-Ironman! Holy crap it’s coming up quickly.

I know that I had started this blog to give monthly updates on my training and experiences but I had forgotten that work is usually pretty busy in the fall and winter months with teaching and writing grants.  If all of the grants come through, my employment will continue for at least two more years at the university. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to write updates as much as I would have liked. 

To start, I just finished the eighth week of a 24 week training program from a book that I purchased on Amazon.com:

Start to Finish: 24 Weeks to an Endurance Triathlon Paperback
by Paul Huddle, Roch Fey, T.J. Murphy

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Finish-Weeks-Endurance-Triathlon/dp/1782550232/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1395616937&sr=8-4&keywords=ironman+training

The program is divided into four phases that each takes six week: Adaptation phase, Aerobic Base, Ironman-Specific Base, and Race Phase. The first two phases are about building the endurance necessary to start handling the larger training volume later in the program.  I felt like I already had good endurance bases when I started so the first two phases have been pretty easy for me. I’ve worked my swimming up to easily swimming two miles in one hour’s time. I use an indoor trainer to work on cycling at home until the weather warms up and I can start riding outside. I generally do long rides of 2-3 hours on the trainer and some shorter tempo rides following a video that came with the trainer. I’ve been trying to get about a one-hour run outdoors after my long training rides. My weekly long runs are generally from 10-15 miles. I include speedwork and six mile tempo runs weekly as well. The main other thing that I’ve gotten consistent with is doing strength training twice a week using exercises in the book.

I've compared my training mileage at this point in time last year and I'm currently way ahead of where I was at this time last year which gives me confidence that my training bases are developing nicely. 

	January	February	March
Running (Miles)
2013	115.25	103.89	100.01
2014	112.52	117.22	138.07
Biking (Miles)
2013	201.40	190.26	104.19
2014	309.80	281.37	355.29
Swimming (Km)
2013	13.20	14.20	10.00
2014	22.20	19.70	25.30

New Tri Bike - http://www.quintanarootri.com/_bike.asp?content=CD0.1-i2-2013

I knew that I would need to upgrade my road bike to a true tri bike to help with the bike portion of the Ironman. After a lot of research, I concluded that I should purchase a Quintana Roo CD0.1 tri bike because I felt it gave the best value for the money and has a lot of features that will help with the Ironman. I found a bike shop in Bryn Mawr, Cycles ByKyle, which sells Quintana Roos and has a good reputation for working with cyclists and triathletes. I made an appointment in November and was measured to get the bike fit to my body specifications and discussed what I was looking to do with Kyle. We both agreed that the QR model that I wanted should work and the bike was adjusted to my body measurements and off I went with my new tri bike.I’ve only been able to ride it a few times so far and it seems like each time I ride it has either rained, very wet paths, or cool and windy. I had to get some mileage on the bike and then brought it back to the bike shop to tweak it based on my riding tendencies I’m still waiting for that perfect ride and will hold off riding it again until the warmer weather sets in and the trails dry out from all of the snow that we received. 

Lake Placid Training Camp - http://www.etacoach.com/lakeplacidcamp.php
Another thing that I had heard about was an Ironman Lake Placid training camp that the ETA Coach, Jason Kilderry, organizes in June. I signed up for the camp which takes me to Lake Placid for four days in June to check out the lake, bike and run courses. The cost of the camps was $550 which includes all lodging and meals, along with instruction from Jason and his staff on the courses at Lake Placid. I’m excited to get up there and preview everything and see what I got myself into. ETA Coach also rents a lake at a YMCA camp in Medford Lakes, NJ where triathletes can practice their open-water swimming prior to their events and I’m looking forward to getting back out the lake this spring. 

Philadelphia Triathlon Club - https://www.facebook.com/groups/PhillyTriClub/
Another group that I signed up for is the Philadelphia Triathlon Club. The club organizes social and educational sessions for triathletes. They have a tent (with their own porta potties) for their club members at most of the major races and triathlons in the Philly area. I’m going to join the club for a course preview of the Black Bear triathlon at the end of April since I will be doing the Half-Ironman distance at that triathlon. The club has a house for Lake Placid, which I could have joined in on and saved a lot on lodging fees, but I’ve already got a hotel room. They also have their own Lake Placid training weekend which is not as informative as the ETA and more of a do-it-yourself training weekend. I recently attended a club social at the Bryn Mawr running club and the speaker was from Mid-Atlantic sports. I got a lot of good tips, especially about a nutrition plan, to help with my training preparation and strategy for the Ironman.

Fall Race Recap
My Fall races went really well, although I was mostly focused on running and did very limited swimming and biking. I was trying to run a Boston marathon qualifying time which I did at the Steamtown Marathon in October. I ran the Steamtown marathon in 3:23:49 so I just got under the 3:25 that I needed and was a marathon PR. I was cruising along and on pace for 3:15 until I started experiencing hamstring and calf cramps that forced me to stop. I ran two half-marathon in Philly, the Philly Rock 'n Roll and the Philly Half Marathon. I crushed the Rock 'n Roll to a new PR of 1:33:05 for new half-marathon PR. The Philly half-marathon went well too and I finished in 1:35:37 which was my third fastest half-marathon. I did a couple of 5K on back to back days an placed 3rd overall in the Chicken Run 5K with a time of 20:03 (very hilly) and then ran the next day and completed the Parkway 5K in 19:34. Lastly, I was talked into running the Rocky Run 50K and ran the entire route (and a little extra when we missed a turn) in under 5 hours.

Upcoming race schedule

Phillies5K - 3/22 Finished 24^th place out of over 4,700 runners. Time 19:32, Pace 6:18 min/mile
Bucks County Half-Marathon - 4/13
The Fleche Buffoon 75 Miles Bike Ride - 4/19
Million Dollar 73 Miles Bike Ride - 5/3
Broad Street Run - 5/4
WPR 26x1 Relay - 5/17
Black Bear Half-Ironman - 6/1
ODDyssey Half-Marathon - 6/8
Lake Placid Training Camp - 6/19 - 6/22
Lake Placid Ironman - 7/27

Inspiration Triathlon story of the month:
Near-blind triathlete's new outlook.

That's all for this month. Hopefully I can get back to monthly updates  at the end of April. Happy training!