Training Update

Training is going.. um... well, I guess.. As a refresher, I'm training for my first Half Iron Man. That is a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run. It will be on 8/22/2010s, I'm getting a little worried as I run out of training time.. Here's the race: http://ironmantimberman.com/.

I'm debating about switching to the Sprint distance, which would be .3 mile swim, 15 mile bike and a 3 mile run. However, I really can't see myself doing that. Even if I don't successfully complete the half iron man, at least I'm going to try!

My best event currently is the bike. I'm currently riding with the Westerville Bicycle Club and doing about 30 miles twice a week. The ride last Wednesday was my best so far. We ended at 28 miles and I really could've (and should've) done 10 more miles. Even though the 28 miles were fairly easy and we had a good pace, I still need to up the mileage so I can get closer to 50 miles.

I'm pretty sure my weakest event is still swimming. Two weeks ago, I did meet with a trainer to analyze my swim stroke (and everything else involved). Initially, he wanted me to fix my stroke, as I wasn't bending my arms and doing a high elbow and was keeping my arms really straight, even though I've read about high elbow and watched videos. So I've been practicing on the correct form in regards to my "catch" the last couple of weeks, and occasionally I think I have it, but 80% of the time, I still am not doing it correctly. My highest number of consecutive laps is 5 (in a 25 yard pool). A mile is 35 laps, so I'm not too close.. :(

And the running is frustrating as well. In February I was doing 5 or 6 miles on the treadmill and feeling pretty good. But once I went outside and started running, I realized that treadmill running doesn't work quite as easily as outside running. I did run 4 miles this morning outside on a fairly flat course, but it was still nice to do 4 miles. I struggle last Thursday with doing 3 miles at Blendon Woods, which has 3 decent sized hills. The course description for the race says "rolling hills", so I guess I best try to practice on some hills. It is really a matter of me running more. Back in high school I used to run 3 miles a day, and I need to try to put more runs into my workout now.

I'm trying to use different websites for tracking my progress. Ideally I'd like to use just one of course, and I really do like dailymile.com. Here's my profile on the site: http://www.dailymile.com/people/Eschneid. It is a good site for tracking all of your mileage, in all three sports (as well as other excercise). This is the only site I would use actually, IF they had an iphone application to track my rules and automatically sync up. But they don't have one, so I'm also using mapmyrun.com. I just found this application on the iphone and it does automatically sync up your rote and stats to their website (and also gives verbal updates at each mile on your pace, distance and other stats, so that's nice). There are so many run tracking applications out there so I've been testing a bunch, but I think I'll stick with iMapMyRun. The apps work well for running, but I don't think they work very well for cycling. I mean, I love the MotionX application, but on any lengthy ride, the iPhone's battery will not last, which defeats the purpose. My friend has a Garmin, so I've he's been sending me all of our ride stats when we go.


I did sign up for one other race this year. A triathlon in Cincinnati on May 29th. It is a 1/4 mile swim, 10 mile bike and 3 mile run. So that should be a good measuring stick.