Getting in the Groove

Well, my second week of triathlon training is now behind me and I’ve made some solid progress.  The hours this week are still light due to me wanting to properly acclimate my body to running and swimming.  The last thing I need is another injury.  Actually, this transition has been easier than I anticipated, but that may just be the honeymoon period.  In the coming weeks I’ll have my racing schedule ready to be revealed, but, until then, you’ll just have to imagine what my racing plans will be!

I have had a couple of major lessons learned and they were both in the realm of recovery.  Firstly, I learned that I need to spread my sessions out more.  I struggled through a couple of FTP session on the bike because I was still exhausted from my swim.  I’m still so new to swimming that any session I do is an intense one because I have only one speed (fast).  As I progress, I suspect this will be less and less of a problem.  The second lesson has been in overall food intake.  I’m struggling to keep my weight up due to the increased training loads of the three sports.  Normally, I sit comfortably at around 143, but I’ve dipped down to 139, which is too low.  With the added upper body mass of swimming, I’d like to see my self somewhere between 150-155 pounds and 10% body fat.

Swim:

This is by far my hardest sport.  There’s something about swimming that I struggle with, so this is where much of my focus will be.  When I started this week, I was confidently swimming 2:00 per 100m.  After some focused time working on my body position, advice which I got from a local pro triathlete, I am now comfortably swimming 1:40 per 100m.  If you’ve never been to swimsmooth.com, then I HIGHLY suggest it, it’s what brought me these quick results.  They have a lot of great advice and even a “calculator” to predict what sort of deficencies you have in your form.

Bike:

The bike has actually been surprising bad the last couple of weeks.  This is mostly due to me taking some time off of riding after my latest accident.  I didn’t anticipate losing so much form so fast, but, alas, it happened and I am now battling to get it back.  As mentioned in a previous post, I’m now doing most of my bike training indoors, which has actually gone really well.  I got several focused SST sessions in and solid long ride on Sunday.

Run:

I’ve seen the most gains here, which is pretty awesome!  As the saying goes, “You bike for show, but run for dough”, so progress here is the most critical, but it’s also been the sport I’ve been most conservative in.  I’ve had trouble with me knees in the past, so I wanted to go slow in hopes of avoiding injury and I have.  My track workout on Tuesday was the most encouraging.  It was designed to increase 5k running speed as well as work on leg turnover.  Essentially, it’s 400m repeats with 200m jogs, repeated 15 times.  Currently, I’m doing the workout at approximately 6:58 pace, but I’m certain I can drop that down into the low 6:00s or high 5:00s.  As my body gets stronger, I’ll continue to push the pace.