Another week, another post

Look at me! Two posts in as many weeks, I’m on a roll! A few exciting things to share this week.

First of all, on Friday I was out in my car at lunch and listening to CBC radio. Yes, I said CBC. I’m one of them now ;) At lunch time they have a program on called “The Ontario Noon Phone-in” where each day they have a different expert on where they talk about different topics. On Friday’s show they were talking about your “growing-old” hero. I thought immediately of Sister Madonna Buder (link). Sister Madonna Buder is a nun from the Northern USA. She has been competing in Ironmans for many years. She doesn’t go hard core with her training she just runs and bikes on all of her errands. For the last several years she has consistently been breaking records for her IM finish times. Oops, I neglected to mention the fact that she is eighty this year! She is the oldest woman to complete and Ironman and every year she breaks her own record! What an amazing woman!

On Saturday mornings I go to a spinning class at my coaches store (linky). They have computrainers (link) in the store as well. It basically simulates riding outside, automatically changes the tension and measure your power in watts, you also have to enter your weight, so it includes your weight in it’s speed calculations so it knows that the speed when I produce 200 watts of power is slower than when someone Blythes size produces 200 watts of power. Pretty cool stuff. Well, this Saturday, 11 time ironman champion Lisa Bentley (link) cam into the shop. (She also has cystic fibrosis – how amazing is that?) They had a fundraiser for CF where you could donate a minimum of $25 to ride the computrainers with Lisa Bentley. They had us on the 10K time trial course so it was a bit of a competition. I was getting a cold, so I didn’t do very well (over a minute slower than my time from 2 weeks ago!) But at one point in time (very briefly – the course starts with a downhill) I was in first and Lisa Bentley cheered “Go Laura J!” How cool is that? Yes, this makes me a dork, but I don’t care!

On Sunday I got to go see Christine and Jen. It has been a LONG time since we have all got together (beginning of December?). It was good to see them both again. We were originally going to go to the Zoo, but we had to change plans because of the crappy weather forecast. Too bad, I was looking forward to seeing Julie again. Oh well, next time :).

I think last week I mentioned that I had my first 2x1500 m swim on taps for Wednesday? Didn’t go so hot. I’ve been feeling like I’m on the verge of getting sick any day now so that is probably what it was. I did the first 1500 m right on pace but the last couple of hundred metres were really hurting. I think I could only keep the pace (should be easy for 500 m for me) for only 300 m on the second one. Ugh. I did however see a really cool thing on the internet that talked about swim form and drills to do and I realized something that I’m not doing right in my stroke, the last two times I’ve been swimming I’ve worked on this point and already my times are coming down big time. Pretty cool. Warm up pace is now what it was for my 1000 m repeats. Weird. I also picked up some drills that will help me with my form issues :).

The Start of the Journey

I’ve been meaning to update my blog for a while now. I want to track my training for IM to be able to look back on this for years to come, but I haven’t been able to find the motivation to start. So this is me. Starting.

On Monday nights I stay at work a little late as I have a training group in London that starts at 6:30. So new plan – Post on my blog every Monday while waiting for training group to start.

So far training has been going well. Haven’t really gotten hard core yet. Arash got me the wonderful present of 5 months of coaching from a triathlon coach in London and that has helped enormously. I know that when my work schedule gets tough I’m going to want to quit so it helps to have someone that I am accountable to and someone that can help me figure out what I can miss and work around week long trips into the field.

My training schedule has been pretty tame so far. Hanging out around 10 hours a week of Cardio. I’m swimming M, W, F between 2500 and 3500 (!!!) metres per swim. Biking M, Th, S between 45 minutes and 2 hours (although lately I’ve been adding in another bike with DH on the mountain bike trails in Woodstock). Running T, Th, Su between 40 minutes and 2:05 (yesterday – going to do the Mississauga Half Marathon in a few weeks). Note: There are no rest days!!! At first I found that a little tough, but lately I’ve been feeling really great! I feel nice and strong and energized. When the alarm goes off at 5:15 am, I usually just get out of bed without thinking twice. This is what has been the hardest for me to do since starting work. 5:15 is really early. Even more so when you don’t usually get to sleep until after 10:30. My body is adapting though and I am getting stronger.

Since working the coach I have made the following improvements.
1) Long swim increased from 2400 m to 3500 m.
2) Swim pace has gone from barely being able to hold 1:50/100 m for 2x500 to being able to hold it or better for 3x1000m (have my first 2x1500m workout on taps for Wednesday – I’ll be sure to report back afterwards).
3) My swim time goal went from 75 minutes to 70 minutes and lately I’ve been thinking I can do even faster.
4) My bike efficiency has improved from ~50% to ~60% but I still have a long way to go
5) My bike time has improved though. In January I did a 10K TT in 19:18 and two weeks ago I did the same course (on a computrainer both times) in 18:39 with a broken rear derailleur (forget the fact that I wanted to throw up afterwards ;)).
6) Run time went from 29:30 for a 5K in October (felt like crap about that) to 56:00 for a 10K last weekend (note: 3 days after said 10K time trial and with no rest going into the race).
7) Long run pace has improved by :30 per km.

There really isn’t much more to update in my life right now. I am mostly living and breathing Ironman right now. Only 6.5 months until race day ;) Real training will probably start picking up after I do a half IM in June (practice race, not a goal race).

The only other news that is really noteworthy, although most of my faithful readers (??? Do I still have faithful readers after my dismal blogging over the last few years?) probably already know from facebook, is that I got my P.Eng. in January. So after embarking on the journey to become an engineer in September 1999, I can finally call myself an Environmental Engineer. Cool. Oh yeah, and I am also now a project manager at work – If I could only find a project to manage ;).