4 March 2007
Week 9 Report
Posted by Brad Hefta-Gaub under: Cycle; Diet; Fitness; Flexibility; Friends; Ironman; Marathons; Run; Strength Training; Stretching; Swim; Weightloss; exercise; fixed gear; fixie; food; single-speed; triathlon.
Week 9 was all about recovery. Like most of my training, I took this pretty seriously, and kept myself busy with other things so that I would be less tempted to go out and ride a long ride. Even with that, I still ended up doing almost 10hours of exercise this week (8.5 was the goal)… but most of this extra work was in the form of “strength training” with my friend Tyler… which means the times are a little inflated because I have more sitting around with him chatting.
I also had a pretty busy week with work, which was good, because I needed to get a lot done. The next couple weeks are going to be hard with 12.5, 15, and 17 hours scheduled, particularly when I consider how much work I need to get done on my new business I am starting. The good news is that being my own boss means I get to set my own schedule, the bad news is that I can’t sit around and collect a paycheck… I need to get out there and get this business off the ground. But, the silver lining is I am having a great time with the work, and I enjoy my freedom.
Here are the details for this week…
Strength Training - 2:45 min (3 sessions) - As I mentioned in my summary, this week was a lot of working out with my friend Tyler. He really wants to do strength at least 3 times a week. Which is probably a reasonable amount. Not as aggressive as my “every day” but it will keep me on track to work on something. This week we did two upper body workouts that were combinations of chests/arms/ and backs, and one legs focused workout today. Tyler hates leg workouts and never did them. It’s interesting because he has pretty defined quads, but his calves have no bulk to them. His legs look really funny actually. I’ve been trying to encourage him to start riding a bike since I think that would really help him develop his calves. It seems to me that “big guys” who ride bikes, always end up with Herculean calves. We also did a more serious abs workout today, which is something I never do… it felt good but hard, and I think that I will try to incorporate this into every strength training workout.
Swimming - 1 hours 15 min (2 sessions) - Just some basic lap swimming, got to the pool twice, should have done more. Had to deal with too many swimmers on both sessions. I really need to find a better pool… this 17 yard pool is getting really ridiculous.
Flexibility - 1 hour 5 min (4 sessions) - Another week of poor stretching… mostly stretched only after runs. But tonight after our leg strength training workout, Tyler and I stretched together… partially as preventative measures for the pain we know we’ll feel tomorrow, and also for me, it was helpful to have someone there to help me get a good hamstring stretch.
Running - 2 hours 15 min (14.9 miles) - I made a point of backing off my running this week. I knew I wanted to do my +10% long run, which meant running 9.4 miles in one run, and so I kept my other run to only 5.5. I was able to squeak this one in while my daughter was at music class. I also decided to switch up my running a little bit today by trying to do a “slow run”. Partly inspired by some comments from John Rankin about training effect and “less is more”, and partly inspired by some discussion I had with Trevor while we waited for Ray to finally make it to the end of Chilly Hilly. So today’s long run I tried my hardest to not work hard. My goal was to keep my heart rate around 130 (65%)… I ended up with a 135 avg (pretty close), and about 1 9:25/mile pace. I guess it’s good to know that I was running about a minute per mile faster than my IM run time, and was able to sustain a heart rate average of 15 beats per minute less. But I was really having a hard time running “that slow”… I know that sounds crazy… but I really wanted to run faster.
Cycling - 2 hours 35 minutes (35 road miles, 10 spin miles) - Wow! Less than 3 hours on a bike? I can’t remember the last week I spent less than 3 hours on a bike. I guess this explains how I was able to keep my hours down for the week… put me on a bike and I just want to ride!
I am still ahead of my cycling miles from last year; at 810.33 vs. 758.6. And I’m still on a good pace for my 5,000 outdoor miles goal, but I can’t have too many more weeks like this… it just doesn’t feel right!
Weight - Holding steady around 140lbs. Which means I did a good job of not eating too much for the lower intensity/volume week. Didn’t get around to working on a more sophisticated menu… too bad.
Total Exercise Hours (including Strength and Flexibility): 9.91
Total Swim/Bike/Run: 6.07 hours
You want Charts? I’ll give you charts! How about these charts?
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