The Road to the Ironman – My first brickish workout

Saturday - What is a brick workout? Well it is a triathlon term that mean you do one sport right after the other. Over all it was a big day and at the end of the day my confidence grew a little bit. It started early doing 50 miles on the bike, followed by a short 1500 yard swim (just short of a mile) and when it cooled down a bit I did a 4.5 miles run during the sunset. Overall I was pretty beat but as I woke up this morning I weighed myself and I am back to my previous Cancun weight, nice.

Sunday - The initial goal was to ride all three days this weekend but yesterday wiped me out, so it became a Kim day. We went out for lunch, caught a movie (Shrek 4) and then went to see some baseball. Shrek 4 was OK , the game was OK and I ate way too much.

Monday - The forecast was not great but when I woke up it was sunny and not very windy. Still feeling the effect of Saturday’s brickish workout, plus all the junk I ate on Sunday the first half of the ride was a test mentally. I just took it segment by segment, it was awful. The goal was to do another 50, but it wasn’t looking good. I changed my display from miles travelled to time and kept focusing on ten minute chunks until it reached an hour and a half. Once I did reach that magical hour and half I took a break. I was pretty disappointed at my speed, 16.4 mph. broke out my Clif Bar and listened. I was great! Being in the middle of corn country, there was no man made sounds to be heard. Just me and the wind!  With my Clif Bar done and plenty of fluids it was time to turn around. I am not sure what happened but I was flying. I suppose I had a tail wind most of the way back raising my overall average to 17.5 mph. Now 1.1 mph might not sound like a lot, that is a pretty good improvement over 50 miles. I averaged close to 21 mph on the way back. I beat the weather, glad I beat the negative thoughts in my mind and really enjoyed myself all the way back home. If the weather clears I will go out for a short run, there is a part of me that hopes it rains all day.

Memorial Day marks 104 days until the big day and 48 days to the half Ironman. In two weekends I will be in my first race, in Batavia, IL. I can’t wait because I can finally put this training to the test to see if it is doing anything. The race is a sprint distance 400 yards, 14.2 bike and a 4.1 mile run. Last year I ran it in 1:26:52, taking 20 minutes off the 2008 race. I don’t expect to take another 20 minutes my time but it would be nice to improve my time by a few minutes.

I remember how fast time seems to go between Memorial Day and Labor Day every year. So that really means it won’t be too much longer until I will be in the water with 2,600 of my closest Ironman friends. Memorial Day weekend will be a weekend I will remember as I start my 140.6 mile journey that day.

Running totals:

Running miles treadmill: 206.10

Running hours treadmill: 31:15

Running miles outside: 161.10

Running hours outside: 25:00

Biking miles: 917.60

Biking hours: 48:10

Spinning hours: 7:00

Swimming laps (25 yard pool) : 3,262 lengths or 1,631 laps

Swimming distance: 85,000 yards or 48.3 miles

Swimming hours: 18:00

Weight lifting hours: 22:45

Stair Master miles: 86.22

Stair Master hours: 10:50

Stairs in Cancun 1:05

1 pathetic game of volleyball: 1 hour

TOTAL HOURS – 170 hours and 45 minutes