By Sam

8 weeks done. 22 left. Here are some numbers.

By Week:

By Activity:

Some takeaways:

• From a time perspective I’m about 3 hours behind where I was at this point last year. Almost all of that is because I’m spending much less time in the water. Reason #1 – Danielle is swimming at the same time I am as she trains for her tri and I feel bad making her wait in the hallway. Reason #2 – I’m faster than I was at the same point last year.
• Garmin decided to start tracking ‘Multi-Sport’ instead of splitting it out into biking and running. Come on, Garmin!
• Including ‘Multi-Sport’, my running mileage has increased by 4% and my cycling mileage has increased by 14%
• Speed! My cycling speed is, on average, 1.3 mph faster than last year.

Discipline specific takeaways:

Swim – Although I’m one swim workout behind what I had done to this point time last year, my swim pace has already caught up to my pace immediately before IMWI. For my 2,500 yard swim last week, I averaged 1:49/100 yards. 25 yard pool. No flip-turns. Before IMWI, I was able to do 3,500 yards at a pace of 1:50/100 yards, and I ended up completing the swim in a 1:42/100 yards (1:52/100 meters) pace.

Assuming I’ll gain around 8 seconds/100 yards in the actual Ironman swim due to not having to turnaround every 25 yards (plus the added buoyancy of my wetsuit), my goal before Boulder should be to complete my long pool swims in a pace of 1:36/100 yards. If I take 8 seconds/100 yards off that, and I’ll be sitting at 1:28/100 yards….or 1:02 overall time.

Bike – My biking is quite a bit faster year-over-year, although it is hard to really tell on the trainer. My outdoor rides have been 1-1.5 mph faster than at any point in time last year. Case in point – this ride one week before IMWI and this ride from a couple of weeks ago. I still have another 2 mph to go, however. The most important factor is that my legs are less of a bottleneck than they were a year ago. When I started training for IMWI it was difficult for me to keep my heart rate in the 140s when I was biking because my legs just weren’t strong enough. That is less of an issue this year, which is great!

Run – Not much to say here. Definitely some improvement year-over-year, but that was to be expected after my half-mary in January.

Misc:

Power meter. I mentioned this is my Ironman Boulder training plan post, but it still hasn’t happened. 80% of the blame goes to the fact that we are in the process of buying a house right now (cash flow and what not) and 20% is because of laziness.

Tri Bike. See previous.

More!

• Boston Marathon movie!!!
• Born to Run movie!!! What do we think of Matthew as Caballo Blanco?