Volume 18, Week 17: Jump In!!

 Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.”  “Yes, come,” Jesus said.  So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus.

Matthew 14:28-29

Week 3 of my Ironman 70.3 Eagleman was a long training week.  Normally, it would have been week 5 but I cut a couple weeks off the front end as I already had a good base going beforehand.  When I decided on this path, I jumped in the deep end.  Hopefully there won't be the sharks that will be swarming below, ready to pick off the slowest swimmers.  Here are my weekly stats with my YTD in red! 

Weekly Stats:

• Weight: 178.3
• -1.5 lbs from last week
• -2.3 lbs from start
• Swim (x3)
• 3.84 miles (6,750 yards )--44.2 miles (77,800 yards)
• 2:19:37--27:46:09
• Bike (3x)
• 69.70 miles--738.17 miles
• 4:45:05--47:55:41
• Run (4x)
• 19.93 miles--240.8 miles
• 3:35:07--39:57:38
• Strength (0x)
• 0:00:00--22:35:46
• Yoga (4x)
• 1:41:34--14:37:43
• Totals:
• 14 workouts--193 workouts
• 93.47 miles--1,023.17 miles
• 12:21:23--154:23:37

 Even though this week was a really long week, it was a great week of training. I did 3 full swim workouts at the Community Center (didn't get booted out of the lane this week!).  I am seeing great improvements on my swimming times and I'm contributing that to the consistency of getting into the pool regularly.  On the Thursday swim, I did a tempo swim which included two 1000-yard intervals. I was supposed to swim them at a Zone 3 pace (hard) and a Zone 2 pace (moderate).  I swam the first one at 1:41 per 100 yards.  That broke a personal record by almost a minute over the 1000 yards.  The second one I swam in 1:47 per 100.  That still would have set a PR but I had already beaten it!  So I loved seeing those times and paces (and I felt like I could have kept going for few more hundred yards...).  

   

 I did 3 bike rides this week still on the trainer.  The last ride of the week was a 2-1/2 hour grind with a 30-min warmup, 10 all-out sprints for 1 minute and 2-min recovery period each, then 85 minutes in Zone 2.  Wrapped it up with a 5-min cool down.  I'm pretty sure that was the longest I've been in the saddle since my last 70.3 in 2021.  I'm being able to hold my aero position longer and longer (bent over on the elbow pads).  That will make me faster on the flat courses. I passed Indianapolis on my ride "Across America" and am close to crossing the state line into Illinois.  This month I'll be getting a professional bike fit and then I should start up some outdoor rides hopefully!  Can't wait to get out onto the real road again! Gotta beat the sharks on the bike.  

    For my runs this week, I had a couple of high intensity runs and one recovery and one long slow run.  For each run (or bike), I get an execution score.  My first two runs I got a big fat ZERO%!  This came from the fact that I just couldn't get my HR up high enough to hit my target on my upper end speed work. This coming week I am redoing my HR zone test, so maybe that will change my zones and I'll be able to hit them more consistently.  I was going hard for the speed parts of the run so I still was able to get good workouts in, but thanks Garmin, I got no score for even just trying.  My long Zone 2 HR run was Sunday morning before church instead of after, as we had a church lunch where they served Jose Peppers.  Pretty sure my run wouldn't have been all that great with 3 lbs of chips and espinaca rolling around in my gut.  Keeping my HR down has been getting easier and I was able to pick up the pace a little while keeping my HR low, and did a 90-minute total run.  Nothing like a 5:10 wakeup call on the weekend!  

    I didn't get any strength training in this week as the days I had them scheduled conflicted with other calendar events.  I had something every single night after school this week, so I had to let something go.  But I did 4 yoga sessions, and I'm still getting stronger with those.  Someone told me that yoga is essentially a form of strength and stretching all in one, so I'm going with that!  

Over 12 hours of training time over the last 7 days.  But weirdly, I loved each and every minute, even getting up early for the 90-minute bike ride before work on Thursday or the swims in the mornings.  This coming week will be a "rest" week with only about 7 hours of training, mostly recovery type workouts.  I should be looking forward to those about every 4 weeks!

Training Reflections:

There were several things I learned this week.  First was the fact that I need to retest my HR zones.  I put out a FB post to a group I'm a part of and received a lot of good advice for how often to retest.  I even had a response from a guy who will be racing with me in Maryland in June.  He's done the 70.3 and full Ironman the last 2 years and he said to reach out to him with any race-specific questions.  I hope he's ready, because I'm starting to write them down!  

Second, I was reminded twice this week that the hardest part of swimming early in the morning is not getting up at 4:45.  It's not getting into the truck and driving to the gym by 5:15.  The hardest part is jumping in the pool.  Even though the gym says the pool water is a comfortable 82 degrees, it still seems awfully cold when I first jump in!  Of course once I get going, it's just fine.  The other way to get in is to slowly go one step at a time.  I'd rather just get it done all at once!  But then at the end of the swim workout there's always the hot tub waiting for me.  That's sitting at a nice 102 degrees.  That one I have to go slow!

Third, on my bike I've been watching the TV show "Lost" for the second time through.  The first time was when it was on TV back in 2004-2010.  I remember how weird the show got after the second season (really maybe after the 6th episode!), but I figured it wouldn't be as weird as I remembered it since I know it gets weird.  Nope.  Still weird, and I'm still convinced that what I heard was right that they just made up story lines week by week.  But I'm not a quitter.  So I'm going to power through. 

    Finally, this week, I saw that 70.3 Eagleman was voted #1 Best Bike course and #3 Best Swim in North America.  Ironman Florida was voted #1 Best Swim and #3 Best Bike in North America. Looks like I picked two great races!!

Life Lessons:

Just like jumping in the pool at 5:30AM, sometimes it's just easier to jump in with both feet instead of slowly inching your way into an activity or a life change.  For me, this Ironman wasn't a "test the waters" type of thing.  Yes, I've been doing triathlons for 11 years, and running half- and full-marathons for almost 17.  So it's not like I jumped straight from couch to Ironman. (There are some people who've done that--they are a different breed!) But when I made the decision to do this race in November, I just had to jump in.  If I thought about it too much, or tried to figure all the details out of how I would fit my training in (or even took a good long look at what my training weeks would actually look like), I may not have made the leap.  So I hit the register button and was all in!  

As I was deep into my long week, I thought about this a few times, especially when I had to get into the pool. (Why doesn't it seem as cold in the afternoon?)  The thing that kept coming to me was when Peter jumped out of the boat when Jesus told him to come out onto the water during the storm after the disciples saw someone walking on the water in the massive storm.  I've heard several sermons where it was said Peter didn't ease himself over the gunnel into the waves.  Since he truly believed it was Jesus, he jumped in with both feet.  And walked across the water.  A quote I've heard often is "if you want to walk on water you have to jump out of the boat".  Yes, there is a time to be cautious and make sure plans are in place, but there are also times I would talk myself out of whatever it may be.  If Peter thought through what he was doing, he probably would've thought twice. But he jumped.  I had to jump straight into my training plan.  There's no easing into it.  I either do it or I don't.  It's easy to think this way when the stakes aren't that high.  But if God calls me to do something (change careers after 16 years in Law Enforcement?), I need to just jump in.  Trust God when I know it'll work out.  And trust God when I'm not sure it'll work out.  I'm learning this each day both in everyday life and also in my Ironman training.  

Thanks for following along again this week!  Off to my "rest" week.  I have a swim time trial, biking HR zone test and running HR zone test coming up. I'm super interested in where my zones will be. I'm feeling the training working, an am fully committed to getting stronger each week leading up to my big races.  70.3 Eagleman is 3 months from next Sunday.  Not that long.  

Keep fit, Stay THE Course, 

and Keep moving forward!

5,840 hours, 41 minutes, 15 seconds until