December Totals and January Objectives

Here are the totals for December:

Swim: 13,700 yards
Bike: 563 miles
Run: 48 miles
Trek: 27.7 miles
Stretch/Weights: 9:50 elapsed time
Total time: 75:44

I'm very satisfied with these totals given where I started from and the struggles I've had with my knee.  I'm in the midst of a very encouraging week and with the completion of my latest Eflexa cycle my knee seems to be holding up pretty well.

I'm pretty confident I can have a solid month and in considering my plan for January I reviewed my last nine Januarys.  consider these totals:

A little background can help you interpret.  2007 was my strongest year.  I worked with Peter Reid as my coach that year and by November I was definitely fit enough to qualify for Kona, but I didn't.

2008 I was self coached and once again fell short.  In 2009, I decided to take break from long-course and had a mental health year so January was way down.

In 2010 and 2011 I was back at it and managed to qualify in both years for Kona 2010 and 2012.

2012 was biz as usual but I fell short Kona wise.

In 2013 and 2014 (Aconcagua) and 2015 (Vinson) my mountaineering expeditions cut my SBR training way back (2013 did lead to another Kona qualification for 2014).  and 2015 led to my surgeries and other procedures and my year off from triathlon.

So what to do about January 2016 given my modest goals and still fledgling comeback?

Swim:  I'm thinking 30,000 yards plus--I'm ready to start a pretty rigorous 3-month swim block.

Bike:  600-700 miles--I'm going to be cautious here and emphasize a lot of quality computrainer time.

Run: 60+ miles--If I can do more I will but while I've had a nice 5-6 day run and I don't want to get carried away with things--it's quite possible that I'll never run 100 miles in a month again.

Trekking: 2-3 big days in SNP

Weights/stretch: 1-2X/week

Physical therapy: 2X/week

If I get reasonably close to these standards I'll be well on my way for 2016....

Christmas week totals

As i mentioned in my prior post, I took it really easy this week:

Swim: 0 yards
Bike: 132 miles
Run: 6 miles
Stretch/Weights: 90 minutes
Total time: 11:58

This week i intend to work quite a bit harder as I roll into what i hope will be a Long course like month in january.  Good start today with 3;30 in workouts....

Last week--on the flight path

so last week's totals were a bit impacted by a pretty bothersome cold I came down with a week ago Sunday.  The net effect was I missed one run and 1 swim.  Otherwise, a pretty solid mid December training week:

Swim: 4,000 yards
Bike: 161 miles
Run: 11.5 miles
Stretch/Weights: 2 hours
Total Time: 16:25

I went to my ortho today and last Monday.  i continue to have fluid build-up.  Last Monday I had 27cc and this morning 21cc.  We are both at a loss for why this keeps happening.  On the positive side of the ledger I had a pretty solid Computrainer FTP session.  I'd guess my FTP is around 265 watts now.  Not great, but not bad--lot's of work ahead of course.

This coming week is going to be an easy week given the holidays.  And then we'll roll into 2016 and begin to ramp it up heading towards Oceanside....

Week totals

As i mentioned in the post about last week's efforts, this week was quite similar to last.  I had 5 days up in Boston and on Monday, I had the 2nd day of my latest Shenandoah trip.  Hard to get any major workouts in with the work and social things of the past week (we went to a christmas party last night with tony Bennett!).  Anyways, still a reasonable December week, especially given the early stages of my comeback efforts:

Swim: 4,000 yards
Bike: 114 miles
Run: 11.5 miles
Climb/Trek: 13.8 miles
Stretch/Weights: 70 minutes
Total Time: 18:49

Should be a more triathlon balanced week this week--I should be able to hit a little bit more of SBR and probably won't trek much.

Onward and upward

Shenandoah Dec 2015 Trip

I had the great fortune to take a 2-day solo sojourn to SNP this past Sunday/Monday.

As is my MO, I hit the road at 3:51 a.m. and arrived at Panorama at 7:20.  I was surprised to see the gates to Skyline open (usually this time of year they open at 8) and proceeded North to Elkwallow, the start of my first day's hike.  I had elected to do the Knob Mountain/Jeremy's Run hike.  I've done Jeremy's--a 14 crossing ascent adjacent to the Run a couple of times before but I took the slightly shorter, but more vertical Neighbor Mountain approach.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  It was 40 degrees at the outset and rose to about 52/53.  No clouds and very little breeze--as good as it gets!



After about 7 miles of delightful hiking I found myself down to the bottom of Jeremy's Run and soon realized that it was a good deal higher than in my prior trips.  I searched and searched for a way across and discovered that there really wasn't one.  The water was a good two feet deep (much deeper than my boots) and so off came the boots and up rolled the pants.  Because I was coming from the west of the Run, I actually had to cross the stream 15 times and had to remove my boots for 5 of them.  The other 10 times had a variety of challenging problems to solve--very stimulating ascent!







The water was very cold, the current pretty swift in places and the rocks quite slick but i was fortunate enough to avoid any mishaps and stayed pleasantly dry and warm!

This next picture shows the tree that I "cowboyed" across (it was a good 3-4 feet above the waterline):



I (carefully) walked across this tree:




This accumulation of stuff was my ticket across the stream here:

In total it took me 7:12 minutes to complete the 13.9 mile/2700+ vertical ascent circuit.  I probably used a good 45 minutes looking for crossings and taking my boots and socks off and on.  A great and rewarding day in the woods.

Here is the data on the hike:

After the traditional night at the Speakeasy (nice Jazz quartet) and the Best Western in Luray, VA, I was once again at the Thornton Gap entrance before scheduled opening and entered just as the gates opened at 7:15.  By 7:55, I was on my way for the second hike of this trip.  For this trek, I entered the AT near Jenkins Gap between MP 12/13 about 2/3 rds up into the Northern section of SNP.  The first 5.5 miles were on the AT and featured summits of Northern and Southern Marshall--the later being the more prominent peak.  There was a 3rd peak as well but its probably a subsidiary peak of South Marshall.  The hike along the AT was very pleasant as once again the conditions were simply perfect--a repeat of yesterday!

At one point I passed this old house foundation--an unintended monument to the time the NPS kicked some 2,500 people out of SNP to open up the land that is Shenandoah today:

I soon came upon the Gravel Springs Hut area, a place that I've penciled for our first night camping when we go for a thru-hike of the AT in SNP (107 miles) next year:





The final 8 miles of this trek were along the Bluff and Mt. Marshall trails.  I saw on my topo map that these two trails seemed to follow along between 2000 and 2500 feet so I anticipated relatively easy hiking.  This proved to be true--mostly gentle rolling terrain for the most part and this led to a beautiful, and relatively quick hike on a spectacular December day.  I had a couple of little pitches and a stream or two but the last part of this trek was quite mellow:

Here's the data (13.8 miles/6:17/2,300 feet of vertical):

Two fun solo days--very grateful to be able to do this!  The knee and legs held up pretty well (although I was very stiff when I tried to get out of the car back in DE on Monday night!).  My new Hoka boots are awesome--the cushion is a real plus!

Thanks for reading.

Last week's numbers

OK--first week back in the saddle--here is what I did:

Swim: 2000 yards
Bike: 99 miles
Run:  11.5 miles
Weights/stretch: 2:20
Trekking: 13.9 miles
Totaal time: 19:37

Tough week to fit everything in with a 3 day trip up to Boston and a trip to Shenandoah.  biggest casualty was my swim--just one session this week.  Modest run week was impacted by big hike on sunday.

All-in-all, not a bad way to spend the first week on December.

This current week will be a bit wacky as well as I only have one full day in DE this week (today).  4 nights in boston and yesterday was the 2nd long hike down in shennandoah.  I'll post data and pics from the hikes shortly.

Expect a similar week this week....

Resumption of "Standard Triathlon Operations"

Continuing to progress--although, we took a slight detour with a fun week with the family down in Costa Rica.

Specifically, I've begun planning and logging my workouts with the current focus on building my fitness up in front of IM70.3 Oceanside in early april.

The upshot of this is I'll once again be providing weekly (at least) up dates on my training activity.  It also symbolizes my return to the world of "working triathletes" as I follow a more focused and coherent training approach designed to yield at least a modest level of triathlon racing competence in 2015.

I'm looking for some where around 20 hours this week as I have a rather long trek scheduled for Sunday....more on that latter.

It's good to be back!