Well, yesterday was Monday...better known from heretofore as Pilates Day. I've always wanted to do Pilates. Not just mat Pilates but Pilates on that contraption thingy I've now learned is called a Pilates Reformer. Looks like a RACK to me. Reminds me of William Wallace in Bravehart after he's finally captured and they take him up in front of the town and the guy says, "Rack him!". Although I was not disemboweled or anything like that, the whole experience has left me in a considerable amount of pain just 24 hours later.
As long as "going" to another workout does not get too cumbersome, I'm seriously considering making a trip to Hardcore Pilates twice a week as part of my Ironman TX training. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to take me to the next level. I've given the advice on many occasion how it's important to work on your core but I've been somewhat hypocritical...well, completely hypocritical...as I've never worked on my own core. Like EVER!!! So, I'm thinking that I should see a lot of improvement real soon. I'm very excited.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Deconstructing the swim
I spent the better part of an hour and a half yesterday afternoon in a coached swim session at the BEAUTIFUL Pearland Natatorium. The goal of the session was to evaluate my stroke and try to identify why, while my swimming has improved immensely, I still don't feel "right". After swimming a 50 with coach walking the deck over me, coach noticed a GLARING flaw. And fixing this thing with my kick is going to mean taking my stroke apart and starting from scratch.
As daunting as it sounds to "start from scratch", I'm really encouraged as I've never really had a grasp of what the swim stroke is. I've done drills, I've catched, pulled, kicked, breathed, balanced, all those things you do during a stroke, but I've never really understood how it all fits together. Do you know how frustrating that's been? To know you're "improving" but that you don't really know how to put it all together. Well, thanks to Gaye, I'm starting to get a glimpse of how this thing works and I KNOW I'm going to be a better swimmer come May.
According to Gaye, the stroke begins with the kick. As with nearly all sports that derive their primary power from rotation of the core body, the body roll in swimming starts in the legs. To learn this at a most basic, foundational level, I put the fins on and got Vertical. It was strange to be in the water over an hour and not swim ANY but still learn so much and make so much progress. Most of what we concentrated on was what Emmett Hines refers to as the Vertical 6-Beat Rotation Rhythm Kicking Drill. Your can read about it in the article Bottom-up Swimming Part I, subtitled "Let Your Legs Drive Your Long Axis Strokes". After getting a feel for the kick in the vertical, I went horizontal, trying to keep the that Right-flutter-flutter-Left-flutter-flutter beat going. It was like an infant learning to walk. There were only glimpses of doing it early on in the session but as we progressed, I got better and better. It's gonna take some serious time to get this down but it's foundational. It's basic to the rest of my stroke so I've GOT to learn this.
Read Emmitt's article. It's great. Like I say, I'm really excited about where I'm going with my swim.
As daunting as it sounds to "start from scratch", I'm really encouraged as I've never really had a grasp of what the swim stroke is. I've done drills, I've catched, pulled, kicked, breathed, balanced, all those things you do during a stroke, but I've never really understood how it all fits together. Do you know how frustrating that's been? To know you're "improving" but that you don't really know how to put it all together. Well, thanks to Gaye, I'm starting to get a glimpse of how this thing works and I KNOW I'm going to be a better swimmer come May.
According to Gaye, the stroke begins with the kick. As with nearly all sports that derive their primary power from rotation of the core body, the body roll in swimming starts in the legs. To learn this at a most basic, foundational level, I put the fins on and got Vertical. It was strange to be in the water over an hour and not swim ANY but still learn so much and make so much progress. Most of what we concentrated on was what Emmett Hines refers to as the Vertical 6-Beat Rotation Rhythm Kicking Drill. Your can read about it in the article Bottom-up Swimming Part I, subtitled "Let Your Legs Drive Your Long Axis Strokes". After getting a feel for the kick in the vertical, I went horizontal, trying to keep the that Right-flutter-flutter-Left-flutter-flutter beat going. It was like an infant learning to walk. There were only glimpses of doing it early on in the session but as we progressed, I got better and better. It's gonna take some serious time to get this down but it's foundational. It's basic to the rest of my stroke so I've GOT to learn this.
Read Emmitt's article. It's great. Like I say, I'm really excited about where I'm going with my swim.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Bike Mod
I was lucky enough to have coach see me ride a few weeks ago and she told me something interesting last week. She said I don't look "comfortable" on the bike. She asked me if I was and I didn't know how to answer. I guess I'm comfortable considering I'm sitting my big ole' butt on a little 3 inch bicycle seat and considering I'm hunched over like the hunchback of Notre Dame. But seriously, the only reason I thought I might be comfortable is that I don't really know what comfortable means. Anyway, she said that my hips and knees are flailing out on the 12 o'clock side and that I may need a shorter crankset. My current one is 175 mm and Gaye suggested I go to a 165.
Trusting Gaye completely, I ordered a new cranset and bottom bracket. I had no idea how kind of expensive this mod would be. I'll put it this way, In the old days, I could have bought the whole family each a new bicycle for what this costs. But Gaye insists that without this, I'm not going to be able biomechanically to ride further than 50 or 60 miles and not be injured.
So, I'm going with a SRAM Red crankset.
and a SRAM Blackbox GXP BB with ceramic bearings. SMOOTH!!!
Hopefully, I'm all set now.
Trusting Gaye completely, I ordered a new cranset and bottom bracket. I had no idea how kind of expensive this mod would be. I'll put it this way, In the old days, I could have bought the whole family each a new bicycle for what this costs. But Gaye insists that without this, I'm not going to be able biomechanically to ride further than 50 or 60 miles and not be injured.
So, I'm going with a SRAM Red crankset.
and a SRAM Blackbox GXP BB with ceramic bearings. SMOOTH!!!
Hopefully, I'm all set now.
One More Week to Prep
I've been getting my house in order so to speak, getting some things in place that will hopefully improve my chances of success training for my first IM triathlon.
1) I met with my coach to talk about Ironstar, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and to get feel for what went right and what went wrong. We identified an obvious weakness with my bike fitness as well some modifications I need to make to my bike ASAP.
2) My regular training periods are going to be 3 weeks with 2 up and 1 down (recovery). Knowing my start date and those periods, I scheduled every 3rd Monday with my boss as a work from home day so I can get an extra hour of sleep (as opposed to fighting traffic) and not have to put on dress shoes and go into the office. Just a little thing but I think it'll help my stress level too as I can always get more done for Memorial Hermann while I'm at home working than I do in the office with all the interruptions.
3) Then every third Tuesday, I scheduled a PTO day where I'm off work completely. I'll get to do some active recovery that day with a nice bike ride in the morning, a nap, and an easy run in the evening. This will also give me some time to catch up on some honey-do's that I may be behind on due to weekend training.
4) Every Tuesday I'm off, I scheduled an hour massage.
5) I set up a new Training Peaks account and have been playing around with it for a couple weeks now. It's really going to make planning and logging easy. I don't like the interface for nutrition. It's really not usable which is a shame.
I still need to buy some more clothes. One thing I found training for the Half is that I spent a lot of time ironing and packing and figuring out what I needed to take with me every morning. I hate it when I'm too tired at night or just home too late to lay everything out. I end up putting it off until the morning and then spend a good hour ironing and packing when I should be out the door. Then I'm late starting my workout and then late for work which adds a lot of stress trying to catch up during the day. I'm going to Penny's or somewhere this weekend to get enough slacks that I can take them to the cleaners on Friday, pick them up on Saturday and have enough clothes to set everything out on Sunday for the week and not have to worry about it each day. Getting this part of my life organized is going to be HUGE for me. Getting out the door quickly, before traffic begins to build in the mornings is going to save driving time and save stress.
What else can I do? I've got one more week to get things in order before it starts.
1) I met with my coach to talk about Ironstar, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and to get feel for what went right and what went wrong. We identified an obvious weakness with my bike fitness as well some modifications I need to make to my bike ASAP.
2) My regular training periods are going to be 3 weeks with 2 up and 1 down (recovery). Knowing my start date and those periods, I scheduled every 3rd Monday with my boss as a work from home day so I can get an extra hour of sleep (as opposed to fighting traffic) and not have to put on dress shoes and go into the office. Just a little thing but I think it'll help my stress level too as I can always get more done for Memorial Hermann while I'm at home working than I do in the office with all the interruptions.
3) Then every third Tuesday, I scheduled a PTO day where I'm off work completely. I'll get to do some active recovery that day with a nice bike ride in the morning, a nap, and an easy run in the evening. This will also give me some time to catch up on some honey-do's that I may be behind on due to weekend training.
4) Every Tuesday I'm off, I scheduled an hour massage.
5) I set up a new Training Peaks account and have been playing around with it for a couple weeks now. It's really going to make planning and logging easy. I don't like the interface for nutrition. It's really not usable which is a shame.
I still need to buy some more clothes. One thing I found training for the Half is that I spent a lot of time ironing and packing and figuring out what I needed to take with me every morning. I hate it when I'm too tired at night or just home too late to lay everything out. I end up putting it off until the morning and then spend a good hour ironing and packing when I should be out the door. Then I'm late starting my workout and then late for work which adds a lot of stress trying to catch up during the day. I'm going to Penny's or somewhere this weekend to get enough slacks that I can take them to the cleaners on Friday, pick them up on Saturday and have enough clothes to set everything out on Sunday for the week and not have to worry about it each day. Getting this part of my life organized is going to be HUGE for me. Getting out the door quickly, before traffic begins to build in the mornings is going to save driving time and save stress.
What else can I do? I've got one more week to get things in order before it starts.
Monday, November 22, 2010
The break is over
I think my break from the mental and physical rigors of training is coming to an end after 2 weeks of minimal activity and a little bit of overeating. I'm really getting antsy not working out. My plan for these few down weeks was to continue to run some and bike some and even get in the pool but absent a structured, prescribed schedule, my tendency from day to day is to just skip it. I work best when I plan my work.
So, I scheduled some workouts for this week. Gonna try to get on the trainer, do the Turkey Trot on Thursday, and get in a long run on Saturday. Time to dust off the cobwebs and get to work.
I've been preparing for the coming training season by scheduling a day off from work every 3 weeks during during my training. My schedule will be 2 up/ 1 down from now until my taper so it's easy to see when my down weeks are. I scheduled a massage every three weeks too.
So, I scheduled some workouts for this week. Gonna try to get on the trainer, do the Turkey Trot on Thursday, and get in a long run on Saturday. Time to dust off the cobwebs and get to work.
I've been preparing for the coming training season by scheduling a day off from work every 3 weeks during during my training. My schedule will be 2 up/ 1 down from now until my taper so it's easy to see when my down weeks are. I scheduled a massage every three weeks too.
So, training official starts Monday, December 6. Gotta get all my ducks in a row so I'm ready to hit the ground running, so to speak.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
IMTX, Here we come!!!
Before November 7 and my Half Ironman race, Ironstar, all I would say about IMTX was "Well, I'm registered." I tucked that away, put it down, WAY DOWN, until after my half. Well, it's after my half and I'm prepared to say, "IT'S ON!!! I'm DOING Ironman Texas!!!"
I see a pretty incredible journey before me and I know I'd kick myself in the butt if I didn't chronicle my thoughts, struggles, victories, and experiences. So, in the spirit of Run4YourLife.blospot.com, I'm starting Tri4YourLife.com, this blog.
Let the journey begin!
I see a pretty incredible journey before me and I know I'd kick myself in the butt if I didn't chronicle my thoughts, struggles, victories, and experiences. So, in the spirit of Run4YourLife.blospot.com, I'm starting Tri4YourLife.com, this blog.
Let the journey begin!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)