T1 - The Road Begins - Run/Swim Brick

Well, not really begins, since I've been training for over a year now, but this is Training Day 1 of the actual Ironmman Training Program which, I'm guessing, may be a little tougher than what I've done previously. Of course, that's why they call it an Ironman, right? Anyway, this is going to be more of a training log for myself. Short posts, talking about what I did and how i felt about it, what nutrition I used and other such exciting things as that. I may also occasionally use this for training-related musings, or musings stemming from what I might have thought about during 6 hours on a bike. We shall see.

I'm using the program from beginnertriathlete.com, which can be found at http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=441.

We shall see how effective it is. At any rate, here is what happened Day 1

T1 - Gainesville

Run : 45minutes very easy run, RPE 3.

Took 2 Lipodrene and drove down to Gainesville Health and Fitness, ran from there up NW 8th Ave. about 2.4 miles, to the top of the hill that turns around at NW 22nd St. That hill is a serious bitch, so much so that I stopped at the top until the light turned green. Maybe a solid minute or so. The first half felt good, and my knee, which went out again when I was trying to play basketball on Thursday, only bothered me at the beginning. Not sure how much of that was it healing and how much was the left over Percocet from last summer.

Let me tell you that straightaway by the planet walk thing has no shade and was hot as fuck. But I feel like training in hot as fuck weather is probably a good idea, since Panama City will likely not be 87 degrees on race day. Anyway, this 45 minute run probably took me closer to 50-55 minutes, but I didn't note my start time and had no watch on, since speed is not my main concern here. Downed a water bottle and a half afterward before getting in the pool. No ipod was used today. I'm trying to minimize that even though I did go out and blow like $35 on headphones today.

S: long day
wu: 200swim, 200kick, 200pull, 200swim
main: 1 x 1500, RPE 4

Did the swim right after the run, maybe 10 minutes in between (transitions at the gym, not so efficient). The beginning felt real sore, since my upper body muscles weren't fully recovered from lifting this week. Not sure why I thought that would be a good idea, although probably not as dumb as playing basketball. The warm up went very very slowly, even though the swim was the one event I felt like I did ok in Orlando. By about lap 20 today, I started feeling like I was in my groove, although I lost count of laps a few times. Did 1500m in about 35 minutes, which is right on my average. I think the swim is going to be the least miserable of all the events, but again, we shall see.

Overall today felt really good, just to get back at it. Had a Cliff bar after the workout and bought some Muscle Milk for post-workout. This is to help me avoid post workout meals such as the ever-nutritious Whattaburger of the highly-satisfying Orville Reddenbachers Fat Free Microwave Popcorn. Today was easy since I didn't have much else to do and no real travel was involved.