Boot Camp
December 11, 2006
I survived my first three weeks of self imposed boot-camp. The weeks went pretty much as per “the Plan” plan. Weekly mileage looked like:
November 20-26:
Run 52 miles
Bike 135 Miles
Swim 1.4km
November 27-December 3:
Run 51 miles
Bike 136 Miles
Swim 3.0km
December 4-10:
Run 58 miles
Bike 135 Miles
Swim 1.5km
I guess I should come clean. I train in miles, not kilometers, except for swimming, which I do in kilometers, although the pool in measured in yards, I swim in kilometers. It allows me to pad my training log by 3 inches every yard. Rest assured, I wouldn’t pad anything else by three inches, honest. But I digress; I record running and biking in miles. It just happened that way and forces me to convert back to kilometers on the fly to keep my mind limber when I’m falling asleep and hallucinating and it bugs the hell out some people I train with.
A few observations from the first three weeks:
I tried a new thing this month. It’s called “swimming”. My first day back, the infamous SaskRV shouted across the pool as I entered, “Do you see this? It’s called ‘water’”. He’s so funny. Anyways, swimming 1.4 to 3km a week isn’t enough for the deca. I did, however, buy a new wetsuit; a faster wetsuit. It’s still not enough.
I only missed 3 workouts from the “plan”: two swimming (go figure) and one run (evening work function) which is seems to suggest that I am a deeply disturbed individual with far too much free time on his hands. In reality, life would be a lot easier if there was 30 hours in each day. I could get everything done.
I need to find another hour a week to bike this winter. I think of it as just another sacrifice to the cold unfeeling gods of mileage. I figure that I can get up an hour earlier on Saturdays and spin for an hour before heading to the 2 hour JFT workout. I never really liked sleeping, anyways. The rest of cycling is proceeding as planned. I’ve built some fitness to the point where I can no longer pop over a heart rate of 160 beats per minute at will. I have to work at this. I think I need to change things up a bit in the next 3 week cycle of hard, hard, and hard by adding some power. I know its’ too early but I like to break a lot of the “rules” of training and I like to be competitive in short races, as well as the insanely long ones.
I seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement with the Wednesday night bike workout Nazi, Deb. She will continue to give me workouts I don’t like and play music that I hate and I will just shut the hell up.
I wish I could just get out and run for about 45 minutes to an hour a couple times a week and do some decent moderate to sort of hard Lydiard kinds of efforts. This would be a nice a change from the slow, painful, between-track-workouts shuffle that my runs have devolved into lately. I could do this when I take the offspring out for a run, and try my best to crush them. However, I suspect that it will be the other way around. Alternatively, I could run Marvin, the retired greyhound a lot harder at noon. The downside to this is that Marvin does not like to run. Once he figures out what is going on, I run the risk of dislocating my shoulder when he stops dead in his tracks.
I should come clean on something else. I would be lost without a heart rate monitor while cycling. But I wouldn’t be caught dead running with an HRM. Why:
• I’ve never seen a Kenyan with a HRM
• They people I run with don’t give a rat’s ass what my heart rate is.
• In the last kilometer of a race, my fellow competitors are not going to slow down if my heart rate pops out of my optimal zone.
I’ve trained with people who slow down when they pop out of that workout’s hear rate zone….or at least; I’ve trained with them for awhile and then ditched them. Sometimes, you need to run with a bit of “passion”.
Beyond the extra 20 hours a week to abuse myself, not coaching has another divided. Without having to haul around my coach man-purse filled with entry forms, training programs and valium (for me) I can return to bike commuting to work. I have this wonderful 22 year old road bike, converted to a single speed. The beauty of this arrangement is that no one will ever steal it, ever. I put some knobbies on for the winter. However, I realized after the first major snow fall that commuting on this bike all winter may not be feasible unless I keep a supply of clean underwear at work. I think it is back to the mountain bike for the winter commute.
And speaking of bikes, I have a pair of Genesis titanium aero bars on my racing bike, I wasn’t too taken with the s-bend extensions and wanted to try strait extensions. Until a factory pair arrived, I thought I would fashion a prototype using 2 lengths of tube I cut from a lamp in the basement. I would’ve got away with it but my daughter ratted me out. Mary wasn’t really amused and my punishment for this misdeed was that she told all my training buddies. Big deal. I have my eye on a part from the blender that would great as a heart rate monitor mount. I just need to wait until the next time she is out of town.
Other new and exciting developments: I’m now a permanent employee at the corporation rather than just a contractor. I made the first in what promises to be a long series of presentations to the president and VPs on research. I have to admit that it was hard taking it seriously when I saw so many of them with lamp shades on their heads a few weeks before. I wasn’t sure to open the floor to questions or order another round of shooters.
I don’t want to talk about weight loss. The scale at the track says 141.5 The scale at the Y says 145-146. The scale at the Y is a big, fat liar
Later
I survived my first three weeks of self imposed boot-camp. The weeks went pretty much as per “the Plan” plan. Weekly mileage looked like:
November 20-26:
Run 52 miles
Bike 135 Miles
Swim 1.4km
November 27-December 3:
Run 51 miles
Bike 136 Miles
Swim 3.0km
December 4-10:
Run 58 miles
Bike 135 Miles
Swim 1.5km
I guess I should come clean. I train in miles, not kilometers, except for swimming, which I do in kilometers, although the pool in measured in yards, I swim in kilometers. It allows me to pad my training log by 3 inches every yard. Rest assured, I wouldn’t pad anything else by three inches, honest. But I digress; I record running and biking in miles. It just happened that way and forces me to convert back to kilometers on the fly to keep my mind limber when I’m falling asleep and hallucinating and it bugs the hell out some people I train with.
A few observations from the first three weeks:
I tried a new thing this month. It’s called “swimming”. My first day back, the infamous SaskRV shouted across the pool as I entered, “Do you see this? It’s called ‘water’”. He’s so funny. Anyways, swimming 1.4 to 3km a week isn’t enough for the deca. I did, however, buy a new wetsuit; a faster wetsuit. It’s still not enough.
I only missed 3 workouts from the “plan”: two swimming (go figure) and one run (evening work function) which is seems to suggest that I am a deeply disturbed individual with far too much free time on his hands. In reality, life would be a lot easier if there was 30 hours in each day. I could get everything done.
I need to find another hour a week to bike this winter. I think of it as just another sacrifice to the cold unfeeling gods of mileage. I figure that I can get up an hour earlier on Saturdays and spin for an hour before heading to the 2 hour JFT workout. I never really liked sleeping, anyways. The rest of cycling is proceeding as planned. I’ve built some fitness to the point where I can no longer pop over a heart rate of 160 beats per minute at will. I have to work at this. I think I need to change things up a bit in the next 3 week cycle of hard, hard, and hard by adding some power. I know its’ too early but I like to break a lot of the “rules” of training and I like to be competitive in short races, as well as the insanely long ones.
I seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement with the Wednesday night bike workout Nazi, Deb. She will continue to give me workouts I don’t like and play music that I hate and I will just shut the hell up.
I wish I could just get out and run for about 45 minutes to an hour a couple times a week and do some decent moderate to sort of hard Lydiard kinds of efforts. This would be a nice a change from the slow, painful, between-track-workouts shuffle that my runs have devolved into lately. I could do this when I take the offspring out for a run, and try my best to crush them. However, I suspect that it will be the other way around. Alternatively, I could run Marvin, the retired greyhound a lot harder at noon. The downside to this is that Marvin does not like to run. Once he figures out what is going on, I run the risk of dislocating my shoulder when he stops dead in his tracks.
I should come clean on something else. I would be lost without a heart rate monitor while cycling. But I wouldn’t be caught dead running with an HRM. Why:
• I’ve never seen a Kenyan with a HRM
• They people I run with don’t give a rat’s ass what my heart rate is.
• In the last kilometer of a race, my fellow competitors are not going to slow down if my heart rate pops out of my optimal zone.
I’ve trained with people who slow down when they pop out of that workout’s hear rate zone….or at least; I’ve trained with them for awhile and then ditched them. Sometimes, you need to run with a bit of “passion”.
Beyond the extra 20 hours a week to abuse myself, not coaching has another divided. Without having to haul around my coach man-purse filled with entry forms, training programs and valium (for me) I can return to bike commuting to work. I have this wonderful 22 year old road bike, converted to a single speed. The beauty of this arrangement is that no one will ever steal it, ever. I put some knobbies on for the winter. However, I realized after the first major snow fall that commuting on this bike all winter may not be feasible unless I keep a supply of clean underwear at work. I think it is back to the mountain bike for the winter commute.
And speaking of bikes, I have a pair of Genesis titanium aero bars on my racing bike, I wasn’t too taken with the s-bend extensions and wanted to try strait extensions. Until a factory pair arrived, I thought I would fashion a prototype using 2 lengths of tube I cut from a lamp in the basement. I would’ve got away with it but my daughter ratted me out. Mary wasn’t really amused and my punishment for this misdeed was that she told all my training buddies. Big deal. I have my eye on a part from the blender that would great as a heart rate monitor mount. I just need to wait until the next time she is out of town.
Other new and exciting developments: I’m now a permanent employee at the corporation rather than just a contractor. I made the first in what promises to be a long series of presentations to the president and VPs on research. I have to admit that it was hard taking it seriously when I saw so many of them with lamp shades on their heads a few weeks before. I wasn’t sure to open the floor to questions or order another round of shooters.
I don’t want to talk about weight loss. The scale at the track says 141.5 The scale at the Y says 145-146. The scale at the Y is a big, fat liar
Later
posted by Stimpy at 2:23 p.m.
1 comments
