Training Volume Update

Sorry for the lag in posts--lot's going on.  I went out to Los Angeles in early Feb to help Anders get ready for his move to Boulder (where he arrived on Friday) and Judy and I actually took a mini-vacation down to Mexico from Thursday the 3rd to the 8th.

February looked like this (in comparison to January):

                                    Jan        Feb

Swim (000 yds)         47.9       42.5

Bike (miles)              1,714    1,169

Run (miles)               19.4        28.1

Time (hours)              124        89

So February had quite a bit less training volume than January.  This is not surprising given the travel, the fact that February has 3 fewer days, and January was an off-the-chart volume month for me.

Perhaps a more interesting way to look at my training volume is to look at the first 10 weeks of 2022 and compare to 2019-2021.  2019, was the last pre-Covid year and the year we qualified for Kona in November, so it's a great base to compare to.  One thing that was different about 2019 is that was the year we climbed in Bolivia so my early season training is impacted by the need to do lots of long hike/climb/trek/run training.  2020, was a really weird year with the early phases of Covid and all of that disruption.  2021 is probably the best comparison, at least up through mid-year when Kona was rescheduled to October of 2022.  The charts below show trailing 4-week averages to make the trends easier to visualize:

This first chart shows my swim training volume and you can clearly see the big early commitment I've made to swimming in 2022.  I also hit swimming pretty hard in 2021, but as you can see, as I had planned, I jumped on my swim training much earlier than 2021 and am on track for my original objective of swimming 120,000 yards in the 1st quarter (I'm already at 109,000).  The impact of Covid is clearly evident in 2020, as well as a relative lack of early season investment in the swim in 2019.  I'm off to a good start to my 2022 swim training and in addition to the volume, I'm hitting some mid-season times in my time trials.

Anders and I hatched the idea of "bike monster" or heavy-up bike emphasis when we were climbing in Bolivia in 2019.  I first did that mid-year in 2019 (so you don't see it here yet) and I jumped on that in 2021 and especially this year--January was a huge bike month for me (the most volume I've ever done in a month).  February trended down due to other obligations as well as a need for me to back off a bit physically.  I'm now starting to ramp up again (did 341 miles this week).  I plan to continue in the 300-350 mile range over the next few weeks and then begin tweaking my bike training when I can begin riding outside on a regular basis again (probably April-ish).

My knee continues to get worse and worse and as a consequence, 2022 looks like 2021 so far--which is to say, a few miles hiking each week but very little actual running.  Unfortunately, this is what I'm limited to physically at this point.

As you can see in the chart above, I seem to naturally gravitate to 20-25 hours of training time per week.  January, as I mentioned above was off the charts and February was down below 100 hours due to other commitments and the 28 days.  Even with our recent vacation, and a reduction in volume with it, I expect to reach 100 hours in March.

Anyways, pretty much on plan 10 weeks in.  My next decision will be on whether or not I choose to do a super-sprint in 2 weeks to kick the racing season off....