Gettin' in Shape

I ran on the treadmill today due to the smoke outside.  I forgot to look at my average pace before turning the treadmill off.

21.9 mph average

Still swimming at the Springville pool through the rest of this week.  Next week the Orem Fitness Center should be opened back up.

21.4 mph average

8:13 min/mi average for the run.  This was my last build week.  Next week is a taper with the Yuba Tri on Saturday.  

22.4 mph average

7:54 min/mile average

20 mph average.  Easy miles today as part of the taper in preparation for the race this weekend.

Easy swim for today.  My two younger brothers and I did the swim in Utah Lake to get more open water swimming in.  We also wanted to test out the wet suits before the race this Saturday.

With race day tomorrow, today was a short and slow ride. 

We had a great time at Yuba this year.  I competed in the Olympic race and two of my brothers Jeff and Mike and my sister Jerri Ann competed in the Sprint race.  The weather was great and the water was nice.  We all had fun.  Also, Jerri Ann and Mike took first place in their age divisions which was awesome.

There were 44 men total that competed in the Olympic distance race with 9 in my age division.  Milliseconds chip timing has me down as 16th place overall but one of the guys ahead of me only ran the 3.1 mile course and didn't do the additional 3.1 out and back for the Olympic racers so this bumped me up to 15th place.

Swim: time of 28:43.  I was 6th out of the water.  I felt pretty good on the swim.  I think the new De Soto wetsuit helped out a bunch.  It's thinner up through the arms and doesn't seem to tire me out as much.  The water was really calm and with only 62 racers in the Olympic there wasn't a lot of bumping and hitting into the other swimmers.

T1: time of 1:29.  10 racers faster than me on this transition.  I debated having my shoes left clipped on the bike but decided against it because I hadn't practiced.  No major problems everything went smooth.

Bike: time of 1:11:59.  I also felt really good on the bike.  (8 racers had a faster time.)  It was a bit cold for the first 20 miles but then warmed up.  I was a little nervous about the hilly course and took it a little easier than I could have.  (I wanted to ride the bike course before race day but I couldn't make time to get down there.)  When I got off the bike I was feeling good for the run.

 T2: time of 2:28.  Painfully slow transition with 58 racers having faster transition times.  This is mostly due to the lace-up brace I wear on my right ankle.  I need to do some strength training with my right ankle and see if I can tighten it up.  For some of the shorter distance races I my try and race without the brace.  Also, because I had the brace on I didn't run without socks.  This is something I also want to try.

Run: time of 54:45.  I felt good on the run.  My min/mi average was 8:50 which was Ok but not the greatest.  20 racers had faster times.  Running is the area where I have the most opportunity to get faster.  I hope Hawk can teach me something.

After the race and later that day I wasn't in too bad of shape and felt pretty good.  It worked out, in that, I'm starting the Ironman training on Monday and I wont start out all sore and beat up.

8:10 min/mi

Bike miles were on the trainer.  With the shorter daylight hours it's getting harder to get the workouts in out on the road.

Short brick workout for today.  22.9 mph average on the bike.

I missed the bike ride for today.  Tonight and the next 3 Thursday nights I'm in a community education class on running technique that Ken "Hawk" Harper is teaching.  A buddy at work mentioned the class so I got signed up for it with him.  The first class was really interesting.  He gave us some background about himself, showed us the proper chest out/arms tight with feet landing flat underneath style.  We looked at our shoe wear and filmed our current running style and body position.  I'm anxious to see if I can adopt this style and how it can improve my running.

My little brother Mike and I ran down to St. George for this open water swim competition in the Sand Hollow reservoir.  It was a small event; we later found out this was the first year it was held.  There were only 30 - 32 swimmers that competed in the mile swim.  (Due to everyone's fast times we estimated the course to be somewhere around .75 miles long.)  We had fun and my 3rd place overall finish got me a free entry into the Scofield reservoir triathlon next year.  Mike took 3rd overall in the half mile race and also got a free entry into the Scofield Tri.

After the swim we went and ran a 3.5 mile section of the Ironman marathon route.  We started on Bluff Street at about 1250 N, turned onto Red Hills Pkwy, and finished at 1000 East which is the turn around point for the marathon route.  I had a 8:06 min/mile ave.

22.3 mph average.  Nice ride today.  Body is feeling good, maybe because of the day off yesterday.

Tonight was the first good run I had testing out the technique Hawk taught us last Thursday night in running class.  I was faster than normal with a 7:47 min/mi average.  For foot strike I already run landing flat footed, so mostly what I concentrated on was keeping my chest out, arms and hands back, with hands close to my chest.  This position felt like it was making me or forcing me to go faster.  I was a little more worn out than normal after the run.

21.7 mph average.  I definately worked my legs in yesterday's run and I could really feel it on the bike.  My calves and quads were pretty sore.

Hawk's boy Golden took us trail running tonight for our running class.  We were up on the Orem bench, I think running on the Bonniville Shore Line trail.

I'm back to swimming at the Orem Fitness center with their summer service shut down finished.  In the mean time I was swimming at the Springville pool.  The one thing I noticed is that Orem seems to used a lot more chemical in their pool.  On the bike I had a 22.7 mph average.

Treadmill today; 7.2 mph average with a 1% incline.

Brick workout for today.  20 mph average on the ride and 8:06 min/mi at 1.5% incline for the run.  It was cold and windy but I still went outside for the bike ride. Before too long it's going to get dark too earlier to get any rides in outside.  The wind and cold weather clothing seemed to add a lot of drag to the ride.