Ready Set Go! Start Week 20

February 2, 2009 -

Today is the day I feared. No more "train how you feel like it" workouts. My 20-week official Ironman training program began today. I think I was feeling a little intimidated by it as I laid it out on a big calendar. All these workouts eerily staring back at me with their varying distances and time commitments and intensities.

But....that was yesterday. Today I just went for it and it was great. I understand that this is going to be a roller coaster of ups and downs, going this hard for six days a week for the next 20 weeks however, it will be a new level of training and discipline that I have yet to attain in all my prior years of racing and triathlon. So the unknown that I once feared is now an unknown that I embrace. I know....deep....right?

Anywho, the only thing I need to do is figure how to fit these longer workouts into my day. I have a full time job, which does require a lot of travel, and I have a wife and two young children at home so I can't be doing a lot of night workouts, and I have to watch my time out of the office for day workouts. That basically leaves my arch nemesis, Senor Morning Workout to play with.

Under that thinking I got up this morning and hit my run part of the training plan and got that out of the way. Then, during my lunch hour today I went to the gym and got my pool workout in. I imagine that these workouts are supposed to go back to back, but for now some of them will just have to be split. We'll see what types of adaptation I make as this training goes on.

Day 33 Training Log - Today's training was a 45 minute run and a 2500 yard swim. The run ended up being at an 8 minute pace and a 2500 yard swim broke down to being a warm-up of 200 swim, 200 kick, 200 pull, and 200 swim. The a free of 1500 yards and a cool down of 4 x 50 yards at a continual slow down. I felt solid on both workouts.