So I broke down this morning and signed up for the indoor Turkey Triathlon down in Racine at the RecPlex. Their slogan is “Eat more pie, do a tri” you got to love that!

I know have a 10 minute swim, a 20 minute spin bike and a 15 minute run looming ahead of next weekend. With at least a 5 minute transition between each leg of the race. The end result and finish place is based on total distance traveled.

My swim is getting better and close to being back to normal, so I’m expecting to hit at least a quarter mile or maybe even a little better since I know that I have a long transition time to catch my breath.

As for the spin bike, I’m not really sure since I don’t know for certain how speed on a real bike will translate to distance on a spin bike. Maybe I’ll have to try and get a time trial in this week at the gym.

And the run, well that’s my weakest as I keep saying and I never feel like the treadmill is any where near the same as far as distance is concerned with running outside. But at best I can run a high 9 to a low 10 minute mile. So if I give it all I got, I’m hoping that I might be able to get above a mile and a half. But we’ll see.

I also got talked into doing the “Stroke & Pedal” class at The WAC, so I won’t be having as much down time as I did last year. But that’s probably a good thing since this past off season I gained almost 20 pounds.

Tune in next week for my race results…

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

I ended up with a conference that I had to go to for work up in the Dells the last week of October and as a result I missed the Lakefront Discovery Run.

The conference was great and well worth it, but the fact that I wasn’t going to do the run caused me to slack on my training.

And that caused me to lose even more motivation and slack off completely for the last couple of weeks.

But that cost me big time, let me tell you.

As a result of all that lack of training I managed to gain back 10 pounds over the last few weeks.

However, I did get back out on the road this past week and started a new training plan with a new goal in mind.

The new training helped me to drop 2 pounds for the week, so that’s headed back in the right direction.

And the new goal; well if all goes well, Shelly and I will be doing the Disney Princess half-marathon.

I know what you’re thinking and yes you read that right, it is called the Disney Princess half-marathon. But they actually allow coed teams to enter as long as the guy runs with the girl.

And for me to finish a half-marathon, I’ll be very happy just keeping pace with Shelly and not worried about tearing up any records which I have no hope of doing anyway.

Plus the race will help to keep me training through the winter and I need to get up to that distance any way so that I can start to plan for my half-Ironman. It’s still 2 years out; but that’s a lot of training, so why not tackle it in chunks rather than all at once.

I figure I can get up to one distance, and then work on maintaining that level as I add another one.

We’ll see whether that is a good idea or not in the end.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

Is there no justice in this world?

At least my Clydesdale ranking isn’t going to be in jeopardy any time soon.

Any way, back to this past week;
I managed to workout everyday this past week and even got in 4 bricks and 1 open water swim.

The open water swim was only about a quarter of a mile, but more importantly I was able to test out the new wetsuit. After checking with every place in town and finding out that none of them had one that would fit me, I went with the online option. I was able to find out what I wanted in my travels around town and what would fit me, so it made the purchase a bit easier.

I went with the NeoSport Sprint full suit from Wetsuit Wearhouse. I went back and forth with Shelly over whether or not to get the sleeves or not, but I can tell you that now that I found one that fits and I tried it in the water; I’m glad I went with the sleeves.

As for the rest of the training this past week; it went pretty good and I’m feeling about as comfortable as I can be with what I’ve done training wise.

Would I have liked to train more? Yes. But I feel as though I’ve gotten in as much as I could and I think I’m ready for next weekend.

I’m also looking forward to this week and the bit of a break that I get from the taper.

Although I’m not to sure how that will work this Thursday night at Tri Fit… I guess I’ll find out.

So my goals for Saturday; stay with my own game plan in the swim – long and strong with my strokes and don’t try to rush it. Kick the bike and take every advantage that I can with it since I’m able to really crank that thing out. Steady and smooth with the run, trying to maintain about a 10 minute mile for as much of it as I can.

Overall, I’m hoping to finish with a time of 3:20:00 or less. I’ll let you know how that goes next week!

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

We eventually got another dog (Lucy). Okay it was actually 1 month later cause Shelly couldn’t stand being without a dog. I tried to take Lucy for a walk a few times, but again it wasn’t the same. That and she just didn’t really care if we went or not. And six months later we got Sprecher, but by then I was off the whole walking kick.

By this point Shelly was onto her triathlon kick and training several times a week, so it was time for me and the girls to get started on something.

Now in the interest of being perfectly honest with myself and everyone else, I’d love to tell you exactly how much I weighed at this point. But the truth is I was just a bit to scared to get on the scale for the first 2 weeks.

When I finally did have the guts to step on the scale…

It read 278! I was not too happy about that.

Now, given the fact that I waited 2 weeks before I got on the scale, plus the fact that I found out that our old scale was about 4 pounds off. I would have to say that I was unfortunately somewhere in the low 280’s before I started walking.

So I kept walking!

I also started to keep track of what I was doing on our calendar in the kitchen. Looking back on that calendar page I’m happy to say that I only missed 2 days in the month of June.

It was some time in June that Shelly got herself a bike which meant that I had mine back. So I figured what the heck, I’ll set it up for myself again and take a short ride.

Allow me to STRESS the fact that while you never forget how to ride a bike, it is a very shaky experience to get back on one after 10 years! But I made it down to the end of the block and back without falling off. I called that a successful day and put the bike back in the garage.

No need to get crazy that first time out!

Later,
John W.

A Clydesdale in training

Okay, so the weather wasn’t great, but I got the bike out and went for a short ride today. Well, short as far as the distance went but as far as time was concerned. It took me over 30 minutes to get in a messily 7 miles.

I’m afraid to think of how bad that would have been if I wasn’t putting in time on the spin bikes.

But I had to get back on the real thing. That spin bike was driving me crazy…

It’s weird; I actually like the spin bike during the Tri-Fit classes. It keeps it interesting with the instructor and everyone else in there.

But, to just go to the spin bike room and ride it on my own.

There is only one way to explain it, boring! Even with the mp3 player blasting away, it’s just boring.

There is no comparison to actually riding a real bike.

But I will be putting a little more effort and resistance into the training sessions from now on. Wow, it felt like I had nothing in my legs on that ride today. And I really thought that I was going to be able to make it a lot further than just 7 miles in the 30 minutes that I planned to ride.

There is also a big difference in how the bike shoes are on a real bike verses a spin bike. I liked it, it has been a long time since I’ve had toe clips though, and those muscles are really feeling it. But I need to work on that some more also.

But it still felt good to get an actual ride in on the bike.

As for the rest of the week; my diligence paid off and I made it to the gym during most of my lunches. And it paid off with a 4 pound drop in my weight.

So yes, the gym bag is already packed and ready to go for tomorrow.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

There are still some small maintenance things that need to be cleaned up, the RSS feed doesn’t work (update: I found out it won’t work because I’m doing the free hosting through GoDaddy) and I have a few pages that I need to complete. But other than that, I feel that I ready to take this thing on full speed.

My game plan will be to post something each Sunday to recap the week and take a peek at the week ahead if there is something worth mentioning.

Along with that over the course of the next few weeks I’ll do some other posts to cover some of the background on how I get to where I am right now. To make things a little easier to manage (in my mind anyway) I’ll title all the background stuff as “The Road: Something” to separate it from the other posts. And I’ll also address the items that I brought up in my first post.

So that’s it, I’m ready to get blogging!

Later,

John W.
A Clydesdale in training