Frozen Foot 5 Miler

Yesterday I raced the Frozen Foot 5 Mile road race in Traverse City. I normally don't race much besides a few xc ski races during the winter, but I always find a nice little fitness jump after a race and there really is no better test to see where your fitness is at. I wanted to see where I was truly at with my running right now. I really had no specific goal, but was pretty sure I could run 5:45 pace with the course being fairly hilly with a decent amount of wind. The temps were awesome though for this time of the year being almost 50 degrees. Rare for sure in N. Michigan, but I'll take it as I'm sure the snow will be returning soon.

I felt great and ran 28:05 for the 5 miles, which equates to more like 5:38 pace. I was 2nd place on the day. For this time of the year I am very pleased with this. I have only been training for 6 weeks and the first 4 of those weeks were really just getting my body rolling again. I've been doing some solid training the last 2 weeks, but did not expect that pace to feel so controlled. I think the bit of run block I did this fall is paying off and then just the consistent training. Each year I do this sport I sweat it gets easier and easier to get back up to a good fitness level after taking a break.

Happy New Year

2012 was awesome wasn't it?! I can't wait to see what 2013 has in store. It's shaping up to be our best year yet with another baby on the way and me training for my first Ironman. This week I have upped the ante so to speak with the training. It has been tough on the body, but already by Friday the body is starting to remember what it feels like to go fast. Because of the tough winters here, the best option is to do fairly high intensity work in all 3 disciplines. I plan to get in anywhere from 10-15 hours consistently throughout the winter before bumping the volume up once it gets nicer outside. I have always felt  that the best approach to training is to disperse the training pretty evenly between swim, bike, and run. There are lots of things to consider here, but at least this time of year I try to do that. When it warms up the bike volume picks up and the run volume also. I tend to swim a bit more during the winter, back it down a little in the Spring and then once school is out I up the swimming again with an additonal open water swim or two.

This first week has seen me doing a very high end session in each discipline. These are fiarly short and sweet, but are probably the toughest sessions of the week. This week the main sets were for the swim: 4 x 25, 4 x 50, and 4 x 100 basically all out. For the bike it was 4 x 20 sec., 4 x 40 sec., and 4 x 60 sec. with about 20 - 40 sec. rest depending on which small set I was on. These were done at 500+ watts, 450+ watts, and 400+ watts respectively. That was followed by some big gear work. Run wise it was 4 x 100m, 4 x 200m, and 4 x 400m basically at best effort as well. This was followed by some aerobic hill repeats. I haven't done much work this fast in a long time, but I am looking for another breakthrough and I am confident this faster work will be the key.

I am also doing one more race specific workout in each discipline. This week was 3 x 12 min. on the bike at threshold with only a min. or two recovery between. The run was 3 x 2k with a 1/4 mile jog in between or so. These were done at threshold as well. The swim set was 3 x 300 at the same effort. These efforts are also done at close to olympic distance effort.

The last 3 sessions of the week are more half ironman or steady state type effort. 25 min. at that followed by some big gear work for the bike session (I sub in 60-90 min. of xc skiing as well on that day). Run workout is 11-12 miles with 5 or so at steady state. Swim workout is more endurance based with a 1000+ straight along with a longer paddle set where I use a buoy for some of it and also some band work.

On top of that I hit 3 strength workouts that last about 30 minutes each and that pretty much sums up the first real week of the 2013 season.

Bring on next week!