Changing Focus: The Rest Of The Plan

With my first of two "A" races over with for the year, my training from now until Ironman will take on a different focus: a bike focus.  This was the plan from the beginning, so I'm not changing strategies because of the race.  

I believe in the 'train your weakness' philosophy only to a point.  I think it gets over-emphasized.  Yes, you need to strengthen your weaknesses, but it's your strengths that are going to get you to your goals, especially if one of your strengths is the bike or run.  Swimming won't get you quite as much in triathlon just because it's the shortest leg of the event so there's only so much time you can make up with a good swim.

The bike is my strength, and I believe that if I'm going to make it to Kona I'm going to do it on the bike.  I'll still be putting in a lot of work on my running and swimming so it's not like my program is changing a whole lot.  Mainly I'm going to increase my bike volume and back off my running frequency a bit so I'm better rested for cycling.  I've been running 5 days per week for well over a year now and cycling 3-4 days.  I'm now going to run 4 times per week, but I'm increasing my mid-week run length so I'll still get in the same volume.  I'll be cycling 4-5 times per week shooting for 200-250 miles per week.  The week I'm doing the Endurance Nation Camp in July is going to give me more than 300 miles so July should be about a 1,000 mile month for me.  I've never biked 300 miles in one week (278 is my record) or 1,000 miles in a month. 

My cycling plan will include one long ride on the weekend, one mid-week long ride at a moderate pace, one tempo or threshold ride and a recovery ride.  My running will include either a tempo run or hill workout, a long run on the weekend, a long(ish) run mid-week and a recovery run where I'll focus on form and cadence.  I'm frustrated with swimming these days so I'm going to try things my way for a little while and see what happens.  What's my way?  Those who are very familiar with my training probably have a good guess: volume.  I'm a big believer in volume and I'm going to see what some higher volume does for me.  I can't really work in more swims per week, so I'm making my swim workouts longer to add volume to the program.  More frequency would probably help, but I can only do so many workouts in a week.  Each swim workout per week will be in the 5500 yard range - roughly 90 minutes of continuous swimming.

Here's my swim plan:

I went swimming a couple of weeks ago and rented a kayak for Courtney and she absolutely loved it so we bought her the kayak pictured above.  It's going to do wonders for my swim volume because all she wants to do is get out on the water right now.  I also have an H2O audio and I downloaded a metronome CD so I can work on stroke rate (per Jen's comment on my last blog post).  I've tried about everything with swimming - coaches, clinics, underwater video, masters, drills - but I haven't really worked on my stroke rate.  So my plan is stroke rate and volume and I'll see how I do at the Door County Half Ironman in a month.

Lastly, there's my core/strengthening routine I'll be doing every other day.  I'm going to post the entire routine in a future post.  It will be a short routine that will help my core strength and will help with injury prevention.  

I actually spent some time a week or two ago planning all of my workouts for the rest of the summer.  I haven't planned out my taper yet, and I think I'm going to tweak my plan a tad this week to make sure I have everything covered.  My main focus going forward, other than the bike, is key workouts.  I have my key workouts that I need to nail, and everything else is about supporting those workouts or making sure I'm well rested for those workouts.  

One other thing that's changing with my program: rest days.  I'm going back to Monday rest days.  I haven't been doing that and I'm paying the price.  Mondays have been swim only days, but it's not the same as a rest day.  I did Monday rest days last year and it worked out well so I'm going back to it.  My body needs one full rest day per week.  Tuesdays I feel pretty good (when I rest Monday) so those are my tempo days - I'll alternate between Tuesday run tempo and bike tempo each week. 

And the last piece of the puzzle:

Right now my weight is at about 171 and I want to go into Ironman between 160 and 165 (I was 186 on Jan 1 - the most I've ever weighed).  I bought the book Racing Weight to help me put together a nutrition plan that will give me the right nutrients and calories to support my workouts, but also help me shed some extra body fat.  

Every time I talk about weight, I get reminded I'm already lean.  I know.  It's not about body image or anything like that.  This is simply about performance and from a performance standpoint, I have body fat I don't need.  

200+ miles on the bike per week, 40+ miles running and 15,000+ yards in the water.  Add in core work, weight loss and some yoga and that's my plan in a nutshell.  Sounds easy....right?

Release the Geek!

When it comes to training, I'm a geek. No doubt about it. I love crunching the numbers and, better yet, comparing them to previous numbers. So with a new year comes a new training season and a whole new set of numbers to compare to previous years. And with this year being all about going as fast as I possibly can at IMWI, comparisons are very helpful in determining if I'm making progress and on the right track.

So I started out by comparing some running numbers. First, overall volume.

2008 = 989 miles
2009 = 1304 miles

That's a nice increase, and I'd like to keep that number growing this year. I don't have a specific number in mind, but I would like to break 1500 miles. That averages out to 125 miles per month, or about 29 miles per week. Mainly I'm just going to log a lot of miles and see where I end up. If I don't break 1500, no worries, but it would be nice.

Then I compared 2008 and 2009 by weekly running mileage:

2008

2009

As you can see, I consistently ran more miles per week in 2009. That came mainly from stepping up my running frequency to 5 times per week. Plus, I bumped up my short, easy runs from 3 miles to 5. You can also tell I like to take some time off to recover near the end of the year.

So my goal for 2010 is to build on that. I'm going to keep my frequency at 5, but I'll bump up my distance a bit and I might run twice a day one day per week during the spring and/or summer to help keep my volume high.

But, while it's nice to see numbers broken down like that, I already knew I ran more in 2009 so that wasn't really that helpful. So I wanted to get down to a more micro level and see if I could learn something from the numbers to determine if I'm on the right track, see if I'm improving. I feel like a better runner, but if you compare IM marathon times I was nearly an hour faster in 2008. The weather had a lot to do with that, but I have no proof that I would've run faster in cooler weather. Feeling like a better runner doesn't necessarily mean you are a better runner.

So I focused just on the month of January to see how this year compares to the previous two years:

2008
Blue = Distance Maroon = Average Pace Red Line = Average Heart Rate

2009
Blue = Distance Maroon = Average Pace Red Line = Average Heart Rate
If you're curious about the run in the middle of the month with the high heart rate, that was a snowshoe run.

2010
Blue = Distance Maroon = Average Pace Red Line = Average Heart Rate

Obviously, there's not a lot to look at for January 2010 yet, but getting these charts set up in WKO+ is going to help me compare years and see my progress. For example, I ran on January 6th in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

In 2008, I ran 2.9 miles at a 10:13 pace. I must have forgotten my HR monitor because there's no HR data.

In 2009, I ran 4.5 miles at an 8:50 pace and my average HR was 75% of max heart rate.

In 2010, I ran 7.18 miles at an 8:22 pace and my average HR was 72% of max heart rate.

So, not only have I gradually increased the distance, but I'm running faster and my heart rate is lower. This tells me that I'm still gaining fitness. I'm building upon previous years and making progress. I feel that right now I'm on the right track and plan to continue using the running plan I was on last year. I made good progress and found some things that work.

If you're wondering what those are, here you go:

- Frequency. I ran 5 days per week. T-F and Sunday.
- Consistency. You can see by the weekly volume chart that I kept my weekly mileage fairly consistent all year. I had some easy weeks for recovery, but I never really let my volume drop off too much.
- More long runs. I ran 10 or more miles 34 times in 2009. I plan to increase that number this year.
- Heart rate. I tried to keep my HR on my base runs around 80% of max. If I found my HR starting to get too low, I'd pick up the pace.
- Negative-split HR tempo runs. There's a mouthful. I did quite a few of those, and I think they helped a lot. I ran out for about 32 minutes at 70-75% of max HR. Then I turned around and ran back (about 28 minutes) at around 90% of max HR. That's a really good workout.
- Hills. I ran Elver hill repeats a lot. This year I'll be doing a lot more hill work.

That's the bulk of it. This year I'm adding a short strengthening routine 3 times per week. I'm also adding yoga to help with injury prevention. And, I'm going to do more track workouts this year. I did a few in 2009, but not many. I love track work so I'm looking forward to getting out there and pounding out some laps.

One more thing about 2010....I plan to set a new weekly mileage personal best. So far the most miles I've run in a week is about 45. I hope to break 50 at least once this year.

I figure I'll need to run a 3:30 marathon or better at Ironman this year (that's an 8 minute pace) so I have my work cut out for me.

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.

Annual Training Plan

My annual training plan is coming together. Here's the weekly hours and training phases:



At first glance, yes, it's a lot. It's almost 700 hours of training in 10 months. It averages out to around 16 hours per week. But, it's not all swim, bike and run so it might not be too bad. I'll be doing some lifting and yoga in there.

The two red weeks are race weeks: the Door County Half Ironman in July and Ironman Wisconsin in September.

The plan always looks so neat and organized when you graph it out like this, but it's really hard to make the black bars (the actual hours) look so perfect after months of training. There's always a week here and there that gets derailed by something. But I figure it's wise to start with a good plan, and then stay flexible and adjust it as needed.

Week one is done

Week one of training is in the books, or to be more precise, in Trainingpeaks.com. The week went well, but it wasn't quite the easy first week I'd planned on.

My first run after nearly a month off was a little rough. I ran at night in the snow and didn't see a hole and rolled my ankle. Surprisingly, my ankle felt fine, but I think I tweaked a muscle in my quad because it has been hurting since. Running aggravates it so I'm taking today and tomorrow off running to see if that helps the pain go away.

Other than that, the week went well. I got 8900 yards of swimming, which is a great first week. Training for Florida I only had 7 weeks with higher volume than that, and topped out at less than 15,000 yards on my biggest week. So I'm ahead of last year with my swimming.

Running and cycling will come around. My fitness is low right now so I'm working on getting it back, which shouldn't take long, and then I'll focus on building strength and endurance.

If you notice, the chart has 30 minutes of 'other.' What's 'other?' Yoga. I'm adding yoga to my routine this time around to increase flexibility and strength. I'm not flexible so yoga is pretty tough for me, but I'm not going to give up on it this time around. I'm determined to keep at it until I improve enough that it's more enjoyable.

I'm also going to begin strength training this week, which will include some weightlifting but mainly core work. A strong core helps prevent injuries so that's going to be crucial if I'm going to survive another year of ironman training without an injury.

Swam with my H2O Audio again Sunday, and I love that thing. I got it set up in the locker room before getting in the pool and that worked out much better. From that point on, I didn't notice it. The ear phones stayed put and the music sounded good. A great b-day gift. Thanks mom and dad.

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Facebook. What can I say about Facebook? Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's cool to keep up with people you don't see often. Sometimes it's a little creepy. And sometimes you see things that make you wonder why you friended some of the people you did....

If this had been one of my male friends, I may find it funny. But a female friend? It's a little disturbing. I figure later tonight she'll become a fan of dutch ovens. I mean, why not? If you're a fan of farts, you surely must be a fan of being trapped under the covers with one. *sigh*

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The Olympics are coming!



Some great pics of the torch:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/olympic_torch_relay_heads_to_v.html

'Tis the season

'Tis the season to decorate for x-mas. Now that that's done (see pic), back to training. 'Tis the season for that too.

But first, a fun fact: 'Tis...I never thought about it until I started writing this post but I had to stop and think: is it 'Tis or T'is? I wasn't sure if it was short for it is or this is. So I looked it up, and it's short for it is (so is it's, by the way).

So Ironman training officially started this week. I like to compare my training to what I did the year before so I can see if I'm making progress and/or doing more volume. Unfortunately, I lost my training log when my computer melted down a few weeks ago so I cannot compare. I can only go by memory, which at my advanced age is fuzzy at best. Ah, the twilight years.

But, 'tis not too hard to remember how much I swam in December. Zero. Nada. I stopped swimming right after Ironman (September) and didn't get back in the pool until January 10, and even then I only swam a few times in January. They say your swimming fitness comes back the quickest, and I let that thinking go to my head. I'll get back to where I was really fast and then build on that, I thought. So the end result was a swim time in Florida that was almost identical to my swim time in Madison one year before. Not bad, but not what my original goal was.

This year, that won't cut it. I'm approaching things differently. I want to train like a swimmer, focus on all aspects of swimming - freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, flip turns, dolphin kicks.... you name it. It's not that I would use most of those things in the Ironman, but they'll make me a better/stronger swimmer and that's what I need if I'm going to come out of the water in an hour next September. To be a better swimmer, train like a swimmer. Makes sense.

To go with my new swimming approach, I'm going to sign up for a masters swim meet in January or February (or both). To get Matt to join our relay team, I agreed to swim the 100 butterfly. Right now I can barely do 25 yards of very ugly butterfly so I have tons of work to do in the coming weeks. There is no way I can learn the butterfly well enough to be competitive. Last place is a guarantee. But I don't care. That's not what it's about. I need something to focus on to keep me motivated to swim, so if making a fool of myself at a local masters meet is what it takes, so be it. I'm willing to come in last (by a lot) if that's going to help me meet my end goal.

So, for the winter, my main goals are to improve my swimming, get in a lot of running miles and maintain my bike fitness the best I can. Then next spring and summer, I'll try to continue with the swim improvement, but mainly I'll be trying to take the speed I gained over the winter and add endurance to it. I'll continue with lots of running miles and hit the bike really hard. Lots of bricks too.



So this week and next week are my "prep" phase of training, which means I'm more or less just getting back into it. These weeks are pretty easy. My volume is low and I'm not working too hard. Just getting in some base miles and trying to get some fitness back. Then it's 'Base 1 - Week 1.' That's when the volume picks up and things get a little more intense.

Complaint: I tried changing the font on this post after publishing it because the font I chose was pretty small. For some reason, Blogger is horrible at things like that. For what is more or less just a word processor, it's a horrible word processor. I feel like I'm working with an Apple IIe over here. Real floppies and grounding myself before touching the computer. Step it up, Blogger!

Pain Pays

Saturday was the last of the indoor TTs at SBR. It was a rematch between me and Eric. Last time I chased him the whole time and closed the gap at the end and lost by 6 seconds. This race started out like the last race with him pulling a 100-200 foot gap. I was climbing faster than him, and he was descending faster than me.

I hit a few of the hills pretty hard and closed the gap. Then I attacked the downhills so I wouldn't lose much time and I was able to make a pass and open up a 100 foot gap on the next set of hills. I figured I was in a pretty good spot since the course finishes on a hill...but there's a short descent before that hill.

He closed the gap to under 30 feet on the descent and attacked at the base of the hill and closed within 10 feet. I gave it everything I had and we both stood and sprinted to the finish line and....

....we tied. Dead even....down to the hundredth of a second.

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For setting the fastest time on the hilly course at the team TT, I won a jug of Hammer Heed, a bottle of Hammer Gel, a flask, a gift certificate for SBR Coaching and a gift certificate for Race Day Events. Sometimes it pays to suffer.

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But it doesn't always pay...



For those who have been following my blog for more than a year, you may remember that I have a spring tradition of buying a new plant. For normal people, that would mean they now own several plants. I own one.


I would love to own more than one plant, but my track record clearly shows that I'm not ready for the responsibility.



I'm not sure how I cut myself potting a plant, but this proves that my problems with plants begin, and unfortunately do not end, with the potting process.

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As for my training plan, I just finished month 2 of my base training. I'm now starting base 3 (4 weeks). That means my volume continues to go higher. Tempo is the name of the game this season, so I'll continue my Tuesday tempo runs and my Wednesday tempo rides (some of these will be bricks). I'm now adding hills on Thursdays. Long ride and run on the weekend, as usual.

I actually repeat base 3 so I'll do two months of this program before moving into the build stage of my training. Then the volume comes down a tad and the intensity goes up again. This is when I'll really start to focus on my mid-summer half ironman (still debating between Door County and Racine) and do a lot more race specific training - more long bricks, more intensity....

Looking Ahead

Finally, the weather is warming up, the snow is melting and spring is in the air. People are riding outdoors, running and generally getting back in shape. So what did I do this weekend? I rode indoors.

I did an indoor team time trial Saturday at SBR. Each member of the four person team rode for an hour so it was a tough workout. Two members rode hills and two rode a flat course. I rode hills.

My goal = 280 watt average.

I came close with an average of 275. I weighed in at 171 Saturday so I averaged 3.56 w/kg. I want to average 4.0 w/kg at time trials and to do that I need to get my watts up to 300. Losing a few pounds won't hurt either but I've been struggling to lose weight lately. It's frustrating. If I can get down to 165 and get my watts up to 300 I'll hit my 4.0 w/kg. If I can't lose weight, I need to get my watts up to 310. That's a big jump from 275.

I've got some work to do.

I don't know how my team did yet because the overall results haven't been posted yet, but I was told I set the fastest time on the hilly course so I'm happy with that. The last of the indoor TT series is this Saturday so I have one more day on the trainer.

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Sunday I met Jim in the arb for a long run. Those familiar with the arboretum know that it's a fairly challenging 10K loop. There's a fair amount of small hills, which add up to quite a bit of climbing when you do a couple of loops.

I've been having a pretty good year for long runs and Sunday was no exception. We kept the pace fast enough to be challenging, but not so fast we couldn't carry on a conversation the whole time. We ran for 2 hours at an 8:30 pace so we got 14 miles in for the day. I haven't run 14 miles since the Ironman so it felt really good to get in some high mileage, and to have 8:30s for a long run be a conversational pace is really encouraging. I put a lot of work into my running this winter and I feel like it's paying off.

So I decided to set a crazy goal for Crazylegs. I want to break 30 minutes. Last year I ran it in 32:40, which is a 6:36 pace. To break 30 minutes I need to hold a 6 minute pace for 5 miles. I'm not confident I can do that, but it's going to be fun to try. Why not, right?

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I've been working on my training plan lately and trying to set some goals for the season and pick my races. It's tough to do because I love to race and I want to race everything. But this year I think I'm going to race less so I can get in more training volume for The Great Floridian. That's my "A" race for the year so I need to stay focused. I'll also pick a half ironman to do in the middle of summer but I haven't decided which one yet. I'm thinking I might do the Door County Half or the Spirit of Racine again.

Or maybe I'll have to do the Rhode Island 70.3 instead.

But right now I'm getting anxious to do some early season duathlons and time trials. And now that I have a goal for CrazyLegs, I need to start focusing on that and working some more tempo runs and track workouts into my program. It's good to have goals....even if they are crazy.

The Y

They changed the hours at the high school this year so I can't swim in the mornings, and I don't like swimming there in the evenings because the pool is full of kids taking lessons. They only have 2 lanes set aside for lap swimming and I always have to share a lane, sometimes with 2 or 3 people. I don't really mind sharing a lane, but it gets tough when you have 6 people in 2 lanes and you're trying to do intervals. It gets old.

So I figured I'd give the YMCA a shot. It's really close to work (and home) and you can do a month by month membership so I can cancel it during the summer if I want. Plus it's about $20 per month cheaper than most health clubs...and for good reason I'm quickly finding out.

The pool isn't bad, and I like the hours so no complaints there. But the locker room is nasty and really small. And the place is kind of crazy with all the kids running around. I miss the Riverfront Athletic Club. That place was awesome.

But anyway, I'm back in the pool now. I've been slacking big time this winter, so now that I have a membership to the Y I have no excuses. I've been there 3 times now, 3 days in a row, and each time I had a lane to myself for at least half of my workout. I barely knew what to do it's been so long since I've had a lane to myself. So I've now gotten in 3 good swim workouts.

I checked my log from last year and the most yards I swam in one month was 43,875 (25 miles) in June so I'm setting a goal of swimming more than 44,000 yards in March.

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Training Peaks

I've been using Training Peaks online this year to schedule my workouts, and I just discovered that there are tons of workouts available to me, and all I have to do is drag them onto the calendar. The only problem is that there are hundreds of them so you could spend a lot of time digging through them, but the search feature is really good so it's not that tough to find some good workouts quickly. This is going to save me a lot of time, and I tried one of the swim workouts today and I really liked it. This should help me mix up my workouts because I end up doing the same workout all the time because I don't feel like coming up with new workouts.

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Indoor TT #3

Yesterday was the third indoor TT. I had a great warm up and felt really good so I was confident I could beat my previous time. I did....kind of. Here's where I get frustrated with computrainers, and I'm not all that impressed with them for what they cost. Once again, the calibration seemed a little off, because I increased my watts by 24 (according to my Powertap) and only improved my time by 1 second.

I was running in second place the whole time, only about 200 yards behind the leader so I was working hard to catch him. In the end, I came up 6 seconds short but I think it worked out perfect because I got a killer workout in. I don't know if the calibration was off or not, but I do know it wasn't the same as it was last time. For what computrainers cost, I would expect them to be more consistent (not to mention the watts never agree with my Powertap). But in the end it was perfect because being only 200 feet behind the whole time had me pushing myself much harder than if I had been way out in front or way behind. So the end result is that I had my best indoor TT so I'm happy with that. But I'm a little disappointed I didn't win again because I could've used the money since my computrainer account is down to $0. So it goes.

If you don't make your booty move....

Indoor TT #1 didn't go very well for me - for various reasons - so I was determined to make this one better. I had only one goal - suffer. I didn't care what place I came in. I wanted to stay focused for the whole race and get my average watts back where I think it should be.

Mission accomplished.

Last time I believe I averaged a little less than 250 watts. This time I finished with an average of 297 (from my Powertap, not SBR's computrainer). I averaged 315 in my best TT last winter so I still have a lot of work to do this year but I finally feel like I'm on track. My focus is back. My motivation is back. My holiday weight is disappearing.

It's amazing how quickly fitness disappears. Last spring at the Double Bong TT I held 280 watts for an hour...and improved my endurance throughout the summer. Now I can barely top that number for 16 minutes. I realize it's important to take a break and recovery both mentally and physically, but it's frustrating to see your fitness disappear.

So it goes.

After the TT, I met Dennis in the arb for some snowshoeing. We looked for the lost city, but it is in fact lost. No sign of it. We figure that's probably because of the snow, so maybe I'll find some remnants of it this summer if I do some trail running in the arb. It could also be because we stuck to the trails and didn't venture off into the Lost City Forest...maybe there are some signs of it out there.

4 miles

The Lost City was a planned subdivision back in the 1920s. They started it, but didn't get very far for two reasons: the Great Depression and the soil. Basically, it sunk. It's funny how nealy 100 years later it's fun to search for "The Lost City" when in fact it's really nothing more than a bad idea that probably cost some dumbasses their jobs. Big mistakes tend to lead to interesting historical trivia.

As an ex-Teamster I feel it's my obligation to head back there this summer and see if Hoffa is buried there. You never know.

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I didn't feel like spending a lot of time creating a fancy schmancy spreadsheet for my Great Floridian training, so I joined TrainingPeaks.com. I've been using the software for a year now, but I haven't had the online subscription. Online, you can create and track your training plan. The software just allows you to upload and analyze workouts.

The online version is awesome and I wish I had joined last year. I can create my yearly and weekly workout schedule easily and access it anywhere, which is nice because I tend to forget what my lunch workout is supposed to be. I e-mailed it to myself a lot last year, but now I can just log on and see exactly what I'm supposed to do. Here's a shot of the weekly planner for this week. I'm doing 3 weeks of prep before my actual training program begins and I believe this was week 2:


I wanted to post my whole training plan, but the whole thing doesn't fit on one screen and I don't know how to use Hypersnap well enough to get a snapshot of the whole plan. So here's the first few weeks....


This is very similar to the plan I used for IM Wisconsin, except I created it all in a spreadsheet and it took a lot of time. I know it looks involved and confusing, but it's really not that bad...especially when you do it on TrainingPeaks.com. Basically, I'm just following Joel Friel's book and creating my own workouts. The x's on the right side of the page designate the types of workouts I'm supposed to do during the week (speed, muscualar endurance, testing....). I mostly ignore those and do whatever I want. This year I'm going to try to follow the plan a little closer but I suspect that won't really happen. So it goes.

Here's part of my training plan from my IM spreadsheet...


I know.... crazy.

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I'm not the biggest Lance fan you'll ever meet, but for some reason I'm very interested to see how his comeback goes. Here's a good Lance video...

If you don't make your booty move, your booty must be dead.