training, not blogging

Wow, where has the last month gone?

Thankfully, I've been doing a lot more training than blogging about it this year, thanks to the Silicon Valley Triathlon Club.

Over the last two weeks alone, I've been on a 45 mile bike ride (including a 1400 foot climb up Old La Honda Road), done a 12-mile run, an 11-mile run and then an Olympic-distance brick (almost) of 25 mile ride/5 mile run. And I'm feeling good about it, too.

My next event is the Woodside Kings Mountain half marathon on Feb 28 which should be a challenge considering there's 1500 feet of climbing up the hill to get to the half-way point of the race.

While a year ago I'd have denied my ability to do a half marathon on such short notice (I only signed up a ten days ago), let alone one with that much climbing, I'm already in good enough shape and running far enough on my long runs to easily complete this.

Besides, I'll be having surgery on my calf just five days later. But that's another post entirely...

Interval training to burn fat

Have been enjoying Matt's recent entry into the "my first tri" blogging world (he just did his first brick, congrats!), and he found an interesting workout style, called the "Tabata Intervals." In Matt's words:

Dr. Tabata discovered that fat-burning was more evident in a hard-core workout session for 4 minutes as opposed to an hour of steady-rate cardio. After a quick Google search of Tabata, I discovered that it has become the go-to exercise for weight-loss. Basically, a Tabata Interval can be done with weights or without.
A Tabata Thruster is where you hold two light dumbbells (max 15lbs) at your shoulders, you squat down, rise up and lift the dumbbells over your head. You do as many reps as you can for 20 seconds, break for 10 seconds, and then repeat 7 more times. Apparently this workout absolutely kills people. Here is an extreme example of the Tabata Thrusters, but it will show you how it's done:

Read the rest of Matt's post to find out about cardio-based Tabata Interval workouts. While intervals can help melt the pounds more quickly, it's still the long slow miles than increase my aerobic capacity overall. I think my cardio improvement is what's impressed me most in my ten weeks of training. Of course, now weighing 185 pounds (I lost six pounds this week while suffering the flu) is nothing to laugh at, either. Especially since I started this whole thing last summer weighing in at 220 pounds.

Thanks for digging the interval info up, Matt. Keep up the great work!

my first brick workout experience

Yesterday marked five weeks until my first triathlon, and my training schedule called for my first combo workout: a ride then a run.

So, I prepared for the workout by putting my running shorts, socks and shoes in the garage next to my iPod and a bottle of Gatorade®. I wanted to make as quick a transition as possible, so having everything together seemed like a good idea.

The combo was prescribed as 30 minutes in the saddle before getting 10 minutes hoofing it. I decided to add a bit to both, depending on how I felt, just to see how I'm doing. Turns out, I'm doing pretty well, at least in these two events.

When all was said and done, I put in 40 minutes on the bike, covering 20km before pulling into the driveway and dismounting. Within 60 seconds, I'd slipped out of my bike shoes, shirt, helmet and gloves and was putting on my running stuff. Within two minutes (forever, I know), I'd downed half the bottle of Gatorade and was lurching down the road feeling awfully uncoordinated as I tried to find a pace.

It was a really weird feeling, as if I was taking half steps with each pace. The strange feeling came from the fact I couldn't really feel my thighs at all, at least in comparison to the rest of my leg muscles. And my pace seemed really slow, too.

But I pressed on, and after I'd covered a mile, it felt as though I'd settled into a normal run, albeit the run still seemed like I was crawling. When I finally returned home, my Nike+ iPod showed I'd covered 2.2 miles in just over 17 minutes... these were near eight-minute miles I was putting up after the ride! Talk about a confidence-builder.

And while I thought I'd done a good job stretching after the brick, I found out this morning there was a major muscle group I completely missed: the gluteus maxima (maximi?). Yes, my butt muscles ache today, but it's in a good way.

And my multiple Ironman co-worker assures me this too shall pass. whew!

I've done my first brick

Brick workout, that is...

This afternoon I did my first back-to-back bike/run workout. Not a whole lot to it beyond 40 minutes on the bike followed by 25 minutes running with about a five minute transition in between (changing, helping the girls with their bikes, etc).

What I noticed most about the brick was how much my glutes were tired from the half-hour of climbing on the bike I'd just done. That, and my calf tightening up on me in the first five minutes of the run.

But, I didn't fall/fail on the run, which was my biggest concern in this first brick.

Now that I've survived, it's time to start training for faster times!