March, It's-a-On Like-a-Donkey-Kong

Sup Homebrews??

So it's March, which means the road to September has begun. My swimming is on a mission from a total tactical sense. I've ripped apart my form and slowly piecing it all back together. It's kind of funny, I've been doing workouts in the pool steadily since 2000 yet it takes this long to finally listen to what the experts have to say, "form first, workouts last". It's true, I have made more gains in the pool these last few months than I have in the seven years prior. I suppose experience and a level of faith in oneself helps a bit. If you keep doing the same old shit over and over and over again its pretty hard to complain about those reoccurring results. I guess it doesn't hurt that I'm not totally burnt out from swimming either. It's a fresh look so I'm rolling with it. Those hard vomit-sessions can come later, like August!

Overall, my fitness is coming around. I've been doing my long runs in the hills, which has been a real challenge, but this half marathon coming up mid-April is sort of scaring me into it. I have a pretty kickass 12-mile route that has over 2000 feet of climbing and I'm usually a full MPH slower than I would be on the flats. It's been a good test to get adjusted to all of the long steep running and it's also exposed some weaknesses in my lower back and core. And I am definitely my worst critic when it comes to my core. It'll never be strong enough. At least with the lower back I finally invested in a real nice desk chair since I spend so much time being a geek. Within the first week of having my new swivel-saddle my lower back pain has nearly diminished. Today was my first run test on the flats to get an overall idea of how well the base training went and I think I'm happy. It was rainy and windy today and made for a good HTFU 6-mile run.

Biking has been up and down, which can be expected for March. I have logged a lot of hours on the CompuTrainer in February and so far March is going well too. Though my ride today got cut short because my rear derailur hanger snapped and about sent the rear der through my wheel. A story for another time, just glad it was on a trainer. The group indoor rides have finally come to an end since everyone is migrating outdoors, but I managed to get over there for 5-weeks straight where we did some tough 2.5hr rides followed up with a 30-min transition run. Those workouts have been great and last weekend I managed to the same workout from home. So here's the first posting of data from that workout, which is also showing off my new workout feature of Performance Pro:

- The Workout

- Overall Summary

- Stats for each segment from the workout above.

Yeah, it can be data overload, but the stats become extremely useful when you look at the easy and hard parts of a workout. You can see if you actually hit your marks and if you paced well throughout the entire ride. As an Ironman, pacing is somewhat important, no?

The down part of biking lately is adjusting to my new surroundings. I'm finding that climbing is not a problem around here. I've already done a few rides on the new TT bike and hit some major climbs. However, since I'm still discovering where to ride around here I also need to get to some areas where I can be in the aero position for hours at a time. Being in an aero position around here on big climbs is nearly impossible. It's too steep for too long so you have to be on your drops to breath. I'm sure the early fitness and too many layers of clothing doesn't help either, and once I can get with the group and get better orientated I'm sure things will be fine. Heading south there's plenty forever-flat riding so it's just a matter of time before I figure out where to go when.

Well, I think that's all for now. I haven't posted anything in awhile so I'll try to be more frequent. Spring is right around the corner, we got our daylight back, and tri-season for me begins April 5th. Looking forward to it all.

Foshizzle Monizzle Patizzle,
Drew.