Thursday, November 18, 2010

I've got information man! New shit has come to light!

So a few interesting things to report on.  Had a really good week of workouts and actually hit my goal time for the week - 11 hours of workouts.  Now it certainly didn't happen the way the plan was laid out - swims took a bit of a hit and I compensated with more bike and run work.  Its probably not a bad bit of substitution given my relatively poor performance on the bike and run portions of Ironman Canada and my relatively good performance (by my standards) in the swim. 

The interesting thing for me as well in the couple of months sicne Ironman Canada is how little I've actually got out to team training sessions as compared to last year when I was there religiously.  It's been tough this year to get out there - probably for a variety of reasons including being a father of 2 kids now, work being decidedly more crazy, and a few out of town trips.  I'll have to commit to more consistency of that in the new year.



I did make it out to the November team meeting and was highly motivated to do so.  Was an opportunity to hear a great overview of nutrition requirements for triathlon training, race day and recovery.  The key piece for me was hearing how incongruous the goals of weight loss and intense training are.  So, to some extent, it gives me more freedom to eat more robustly with a view to working out more robustly and hopefully enhancing my race performance next year.

I also did lactate threshold testing with Kevin Masters this past week as well.  It was important to me to see if there was any difference from last year's test - and thankfully there was!  Greater power output at relatively same heart rate zones!  Good news.  In addition, I was pleased with the view on the compu trainer with how my legs were working - relatively even on the up and down strokes.  So there is improvement from my rookie year.

All in all it was a good past couple of weeks.  Onwards and upwards.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Progress is made!

Well hopefully turned a corner this week.  Dropped 4 pounds since last Wednesday.  Now the key is going to be to continue the trend.  I've had to much up and down in the past few weeks so try to sustain momentum on the downward slide.

I'm kind of glad to see October pass.  With Thanksgiving trip to Regina, two out-of-town trips, and numerous evening functions for work my diet and exercise regimen was severely challenged.  I guess I should be relatively grateful that from a weight perspective I'm pretty much back at the October 1st starting point.  At this point I'd like to lose another 8 pounds at least to get into the 170s before Christmas hits.  Pretty much all that stands in my way is a 8 day stay in DisneyWorld at the end of November into December!  It may be the happiest place on earth but it doesn't mean its good for the body (or the pocketbook). 

I've been getting more consistent with the workouts too (I hope).  Got a long run in yesterday as well as an early morning swim.  Even after a bit of a layoff the swim experience was not too bad.  2200 metres with some good strength drills and some sustained leg kicks.  For my run I felt I demonstrated a bit more speed than usual.  So all in all a not bad week.