T78 - It's Called Being Resourceful - Run, Swim

New York City

I think the best part about Ironman training is the fact that even on vacations, you have to make sure you get in your training. Such was the case on Thursday. When the good folks at Delta decided to move my flight back from 8 a.m. to 6 a.m., I was a little pissed I would have to get up at 3 to catch my flight. That all being said, I realized this would also give me an opportunity to get in my second-longest workout of the week during my first day in the city.


I found a gym on 43rd and 9th called The Manhattan Plaza Helath Club, that featured an Olympic-sized pool and full cardio equipment. It also had a locker room and showers, so it gave me a place to store my luggage all day, in addition to providing a training ground for my run and swim. All this for only $25, which thought was a pretty good deal for training and bag storage. The weather was absolute shit (another reason to never live north of I-10: It sometimes gets cold before Summer is even officially over) and since I had to do 2 hours at Tempo, I thought it might be fun to do 150 minutes on a treadmill.


Run - 150 minutes tempo (Treadmill)
15 Minutes RPE 2-3
2 Hours RPE 4-5
15 Minutes RPE 2-3

2 Lipodrene

I have to say, this was kinda fun. Yeah, the MPHC treadmill was dinky and looked like I could break it with one step that was too hard. And it looked out on a cement path between the cardio rooms and the pool (so nothing to look at but E!'s look at the top 10 Best and Worst Celeb. Beach Bodieas) but I used the iPod and even my slow run I was doing at 6.0

I opted to do like I would at home on this treadmill, doing an hour first, then three half hour sets with brief breaks (like under a minute) for Powerade in between. The breaks all ended up being shorter than expected, which was good. The first hour flew by, as I cranked it up to 6.6 after the first 15 miuntes. Then I maintained at 6.7 the rest of the run, dripping sweat everywhere and getting a few odd looks from the daytime crowd at this gym. No matter. I kept to my gel pattern of every 45 minutes, and aside from the iPod freezing with 25 minutes to go, the run went well.

The one issue I had was that I had so much adreneline going from the music and the ease of runing on the treadmill, that when the iPod broke, I just was like "Oh, fuck this..." I kept my speed up to the final 15 minutes, where I then speed-walked for about 5 minutes before going into a slow trot at about 5.2. I was a little disapointed in my premature cooldown there, but I think this is probably a product of my using the iPod more than anything else.

I was slated to meet with a couple of editors from Cosmo for lunch at 1:15, and oddly I saw one of them on the E! special talking about how bad Tara Reid looked in a swimsuit. It was a little surreal, I have to say, to see someone you were about to go and visit on TV while you get in your morning run, but I can't say it didn't give me a litte extra push.


Swim: Warmup - 6x75
Main - 3x700

1 Lipodrene

Lunch went well, as I rushed through my shower and got a cab up to the Hearst building for lunch. The food at their cafeteria up there is amazing, but knowing I had a long swim that afternoon, I opted for a light sandwich so I wouldn't die on the swim. I got back to the gym about 2:30, put on my jammer and walked over to the rooftop retractable roof pool deck they had. Immediately passed out for about 45 minutes ona deck chair. I'd been up since 3, for chrissakes.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get my own lane for the warmup and about half the first set. Then some girl came in to swim with me, which was fine. But then another person came in the lane. And another. Fucking ciricle swimming. Then I remembered I was in New York City, not Gainesville. You want your own swiming lane? At 4 p.m.? Ok, you want your own 1-bedroom apartment too? Hou 'bout your own subway car? There's 18-fucking-million people in this city, and 4 swimming lanes. Good luck with that. I accpeted the unfortunate fate of circle swimming and sucked it up for the second set and half of the third.

I was swimming well when I could get some speed up, but I was constantly having to pass people, and then tread water so I didn't run into someone coming the other way. Much like New York, just constantly dodging people. So I guess the swim went well, such as it was. But not being able to really get in a groove was frustrating. You can't just knock people out of the way like you can during a race. Or when you're going fore a subway.