Cycle #2

It seems as though I just finished writing about how it seemed all too early for my first training cycle a thing of the past and here I am writing about getting though a second training cycle. This cycle was busy one, with Christmas being right in the middle of it. So I knew my nutrition would be sub par at best and I would be left searching for time to get my workouts in. I made it thought the holidays and didn't have to skip any workouts or cut back on the duration of any of them either. On top of the holidays falling right in the middle of this cycle my sister-in-law's wedding and all of the festivities of a wedding fell right at the end of this cycle and the wedding itself was on day 1 of the 3rd cycle. So, I'm sure you can believe me when I say that this past cycle was a hectic one to say the least. I am also writing this post 4 days already into my 3rd cycle, if you didn't believe exactly how busy things have been.

Brief Recap

This past cycle was almost identical to the 1st cycle with some minor differences in duration. I had my first "track workout," which I did on a treadmill due to Wisconsin being buried in more than a foot of snow. My standard track workout during my marathon training is a simple set of 800's or a half mile sprint. I start with 3 sets of them and work up to a set of 10. In the past I have always done these on a track. The idea behind it is, if you can complete 10 sets of 800's, all within your goal marathon time converted into mins and secs as opposed to hours and minutes, you can successfully run a marathon in that time. For example: my goal is running a 2:59:00 marathon (sub 3 hours). So when I do 800 meter repeats, my goal time to complete the 800 meters in 2 minutes and 59 seconds. After each set, you either jog or walk for recovery for the same duration (a 1:1 work to recovery ratio). I may change this up a bit this spring, however. After reading a short article on some random website regarding 800 repeats done on a track, I may do a nearly identical workout on the road. Basically you just sprint for the time and don't get caught up in the distance. The thought process according to the website was that it avoids the mental aspect of running in circles for nearly 10 miles as I have done in the past. Another compelling argument is there is better cross over from actually doing your track workouts on the road where you race as opposed to a circular track. So, we'll see what I ultimately decide to do once the snow melts and I can get on a track again. Because, honestly, I have always enjoyed getting on a track and beating myself up with a hard track workout as a good change of pace from the usual countless miles tracked on city sidewalks.

This cycle also included my first CSS (Critical Swim Speed) workout. As I discussed in my recap of my first cycle, I did a CSS Test and determined that my CSS was a 1:36 pace per 100 yards. Which, seemed slow to me. So during this past cycle I did a CSS workout with a main set of 8x200 yards done at CSS pace with 20 seconds rest between sets. I was surprised at how tiring that actually was. I ended up having to break up the 8 sets into 2 separate sets of 4 with an extra minute of rest between the 2 sets of 4. So my main set looked more like 2x(4x200), which still left me exhausted by the end. I ended up swimming a total of 2300 yards.

As I hinted at from the start, my nutrition had been subpar throughout the holidays. Between the beer consumed and the holiday treats, I'm sure I packed on a few extra pounds that I am going to have to dedicate time and effort toward removing. Part of me wants to say, "hey, you gotta live once and a while," which is totally true, but I need to start having a little self control and need to learn when enough is enough. Over the past week I have found myself eating to the point of feeling like absolute crap, and not just mentally for eating like crap, but literally to the point where you just can't eat another bite. With the holidays behind us, I am going to really start dedicating my efforts to taking control of my diet and start attempting to get the most out of it. Personally, I have always found myself saying, "well, tomorrow I will start eating better." or "I can splurge a little tonight, I'm working out for a couple hours tomorrow." I have also noticed that I usually find my self saying "oh, I have XX months until that race, thats plenty of time to loose the extra weight." And what happens is the obvious, I get to race day and I'm the same weight or more and hating myself for the decisions I made the previous months. And that NEEDS to change.

Favorite Workout

It would either have to be the 800 repeats I did on the treadmill (which I explained earlier) or a bike workout I did in the basement on my spin bike. I was scheduled to ride for 70 minutes. Personally, anything longer than 45 on an indoor trainer is mindless, so I need something to keep my focused and keep my mind occupied. So I started to ride with a moderate warm up and then starting at 10 minutes in I did a 1:00 standing climb followed immediately by a 1:00 sitting hard tempo ride. I then dialed it back to the moderate intensity I was at during the warm up and repeated the climb and tempo ride on every 10 minutes until the 70 minutes was up. I was a hard workout and never found myself wondering how much longer will I be sitting on this bike.

Moving Forward

Like I said, just because Christmas has come and gone doesn't necessarily mean I'm in the clear. My sister-in-law's wedding is on December 29th and we have 4 of our closest friends coming from out of state to visit and come to the wedding as well. The 4 friends are 2 married couples that we have met in college and been close friends since. One couple moved down to Georgia and the second returned close to their hometowns in the Twin Cities. Along with the wedding and all the festivities surrounding the wedding, New Years Eve is right around the corner as well. So like, I said, my diet doesn't look like its going to be improving anytime soon. As far as my training plan goes, I am actually decreasing my total duration over the 9 day cycle to avoid over training and is my last Anatomical Adaptation phase. After cycle 3 I will be jumping right into my Base phase, where workouts begin to get more specific and longer in duration in preparations for the Marathon and really long workouts to get ready for the Ironman. Plus, I am writing this on January 2nd, which is day 4 of cycle 3, I only have 5 more days of cycle 3 left. So, I will be writing an entire other post in the very near future. My thoughts are to discuss my resolutions (not all fitness related) and about our time spent with family and friends!

So until next time, Be fast, be strong, and carry on!