Putting the pen to paper

It's much easier for me to visualize the outline of a long training plan when I physically write things out. So, this morning (after getting some work done around the office) I got out some light reading materials and got to work!

I'm going to blend what I did last time I went to Lake Placid with Matt Fitzgerald's Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide (Level 7/8) 24 week IM plan. There were certain workouts from the last plan that I know (mentally at least) prepared me for the race. I will also use a longer than planned taper, which I took from the QT2 Systems website. I really like the things they do, and I almost signed up for coaching from them, but I couldn't justify the cost. I'll write about my thoughts on coaching some other time. Anywho - this is what I came up with!

24 weeks divided into 3 meso cycles - base phase, build phase, and peak phase. The way Fitzgerald builds his programs, you kind of cycle through a run, swim, and bike focus every few weeks, so I'm really going to just stick to the plan and let it work. From now until Feb. 11 is when I really need to prepare myself for the program. My fitness kind of sucks right now, but I'm relatively strong compared to past winters. More on that later.

 This will be the basic schedule week to week. The key workouts have boxes around them.
Monday - rest day
Tuesday - quality bike or run (they will alternate week to week) with a swim
Wednesday - the opposite of Tuesday also with a swim
Thursday - Brick and either a swim or weight session
Friday - quality swim session (LONG set! 1-2 hours). Maybe a shorter second session during the day.
Saturday - long bike and short run
Sunday - bike and then long run.

Eat, tell my wife I love her, sleep, repeat for 6 months...

Fitzgerald called for a swim then run on Sunday, but I really liked biking and then running long. It really prepared me, I think, for the IM marathon. And I want to go faster than my 3:23 from 2011... Fitzgerald also had a hard bike session on Friday, which I switched to Tuesday. I want to make sure I'm relatively fresh for my Saturday ride. This time around I want to make sure I'm really focused during key sessions. It becomes very difficult when heavy fatigue sets in, but digging a little deeper and really finishing those workouts will, I believe, get me where I want to go.

Despite my mojo being up, the weather is trying to hold me down! We've had a lot of snowfall (for PA) this time of year. I'm doing my best to work through it with strength sessions and pool sets. I tried to ride my mountain bike through the snow covered fields the other day and wow was it hard! I'll be on the trainer until this stuff clears (which might be soon bc it's supposed to hit 65 this weekend!). 

It's a little messy... but I could spend the early morning cleaning OR on the bike. Guess which one I chose? And guess which one Maddy wishes I chose? (Just kidding - kind of).

Last note - coaching winter track has kept me pretty strong. I do a dynamic warm up with the kids everyday, and we do a lot of shorter sprint sets. With the snow covering the track, we've run A LOT of stairs in the academic buildings and we even hit the gym a little bit. Strength seems to be there, but, as I alluded to earlier, my aerobic fitness is way down. I know that I just need to be able to handle the training in February, so, for now, it's going to be kind of unstructured. I'll need to be able to run an hour, swim 3k, and ride 3 hours by Feb. 10. I'm not too worried.

Thanks for reading!

Happy holidays!