A new year

A new year has arrived, and I couldn't be happier. 2009 was rubbish. But 2010 is looking good, and I'm excited about getting back into training. I've been training, but not much. It's hard to get a lot of work in during the holidays. There are always tons of excuses and lots of tempting candy.

But now that the holidays are over, it's time to start focusing on the job at hand, and that's Ironman Wisconsin. I've been tweaking my annual training plan and planning my race schedule. Here's an overview of the new plan, which starts today. New year, new plan:



The plan starts with four weeks of base training, one week of build and then my first 'A' race of the season - the Rockman Half Ironman. You may be surprised I would chose that race as an A race, but the timing is perfect and it's close to home. The Door County Half Ironman is still on the schedule, but it's no longer an 'A' race. I'll race it tired and do the best I can.

After the Rockman, I do two 5 week build cycles and then taper for Ironman Wisconsin. I'll throw in some short races for fun throughout the year. Not sure what those will be yet, but I'm sure I'll work in a sprint tri or two, a few duathlons and some running races, maybe a half marathon.

So that's the plan in a nutshell. My first race of the year is a week from Saturday, the first of 3 one-hour TTs at SBR Coaching. I've done their indoor time trial series the past few years and this winter they're mixing things up a bit by going with three one-hour TTs rather than four 10K TTs. They'll be super tough, that's for sure, but I'm looking forward to them. An hour at threshold is brutal so they should be great workouts.

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2009 numbers:

Swim: 246,000 yards (140 miles)
Bike: 5700 miles
Run: 1300 miles

Those aren't exact, but pretty close. My goal this year is to beat those numbers, especially swimming. That was weak.

Last January:

Swim: 5000 yards - yeah, you read that right...only 5000 - I'll swim about 3200 tonight at masters...should be easy an easy number to beat. Unless I miss masters Wednesday, I'll have this goal met this week.

Bike: 464 miles - not quite so easy to beat since I did some outdoor riding in CO and this year will be all indoors unless our weather takes an unexpected turn.

Run: 108 miles - I'm already at 17 for the month so I think I can beat this number without too much trouble.