First two week 2017 training totals

Here's a quick summary of the start two 2017:

Week 1:

Swim: 0 yards
Bike: 147 miles
Run/Hike/Climb: 39.5 miles
Other: 3:45
Total time: 22:42

Week 2:

Swim: 2500 yards
Bike: 160 miles
Run/Hike/Climb: 14.0 miles
Other: 4:48
Total time: 18:33

Just starting to ramp up swim again--will have pretty big swim months in Feb/Mar in Santa Monica

I'm combining the Run with all the Hiking and climbing stuff as it is mostly focused on Nepal at this point.

the other stuff is principally wights/stretching and physical therapy for my left fore arm...

onward and upward!

Little Devils Stairs Scramble

OK, just to update my second day down in Shenandoah to kick off the new year...I had a really nice day.  First off, it wasn't raining cats and dogs and 35 degrees like on Tuesday the 3rd.  It was raining, which was not expected but it was periodic and light and not a concern in any way.

I had elected to take the Keyser Run fire road (MP 19.3) down past the old Bolen cemetery to start this trek.  I felt pretty darned good given how stiff I was the prior night and that morning.  The Bolen cemetery for those who don't know, is the finest tribute to that lost way of life here in Shenandoah.  I made great time all the way down to the cemetery with all of my mile splits under 20 minutes...

Continuing on past the Bolen Cemetery I traced the edge of the park boundary and finally came upon the start of my main objective for this training exercise.  I was looking for a very steep, moderately technical climb to begin to reformat my bod for Anders and my coming Nepal trip.  I was surprised (although I should not have been) by the number of stream crossings I had to navigate--really steep ravines and a lot of rain typically equal a lot of water flowing down hill!:

In quite a few places that technical challenges were such that I would grade several pitches as true Class 3 rock scrambles.  It was wet, slippery, and definitely a place you could hurt yourself.  One of the things I love about being on my own in these situations is that it demands that you don't mess up. All of a sudden, I found myself at the top of the scramble and realized it had taken me a good 90 minutes that seemed like just 9....

I had contemplated doing another relatively easy 4-mile loop but elected to declare victory and try to get home before it got dark (which I was successful at).  In total I did over 21 miles on these two days and this is a good chunk of the 200 mile true-on hiking/climbing goal I have set for myself as part of my preparation for Nepal.  

I'll take it!  Here is the data from this climb:

2016 Training Totals

Ok, so i finally was able to get my data out of Slowtwitch--here is how 2016 stacked up against 2014--my last "normal" triathlon training year (I did Kona that year):

Swim

I did 90 swims (once every four days) for a total of 144,355 yards or about 1603 yards/session.  In 2014 I did 311,688 yards so i was at about 46% of my "normal" total.  This is not surprising as fairly early in the year I decided to focus principally on climbing (Kilimanjaro and Elbrus) and not do the Roth IM.  Still I did enough to get back into triathlon.  (I'll cover my plans for 2017 in a post in the next few days.)

Bike

320 rides for a total of 8,141 miles or about 25.4 miles/ride.  In 2014 I did 8,412 miles so pretty much the same overall effort.  I would say I did more rides this year but far less long rides as i did not pursue an Ironman this year.

Run/Hike

1,510 runs/hikes in 201 sessions (7.5 mile/average).  These numbers are very much influenced by all of the hiking/climbing I did.  I would guess my actual run mileage was closer to 700 miles or so.  In 2014 I did 1,483 miles but the vast majority of that was running.

Other

103 hours vs. 32 in 2014--this reflects all the alternative/cross training and PT work I do now, especially to prepare me for mountain climbing.

Total Time

1,028 hours vs. 905 in 2014.  This is the first year that I've recorded more than 1,000 hours of working out/training.  While my training has moved away from being tri-specific and it's also become less intense, I still was pretty committed to training this year, and for sure, a great bounce back from my "off-year" of 2015 with my major back and leg problems.

More to come....

Happy New Year!

Hey gang--normally I'd have a bunch of analysis of the prior year's training and accomplishments but I'm in a bit of limbo as Slowtwitch has recently changes its UI and it hasn't gone that smoothly so i don't have to a lot of my training data for 2016--hopefully soon.

As for 2017, I have my new goals at the top of the blog--more on those later.

In preparation for the Nepal trip, I've headed south to Shenandoah yet again for a couple of days of training.  I don't have any pics from today's hike because it was raining cats and dogs and about 35 degrees so I was very focused on just getting the work done.  I did the two Marshall Mountain summits in the Northern District on the AT and returned via the Bluff and Marshall Mountain trails.  I cruised really well for the first 10 or so miles but started to feel it over the last 3+ miles.  Lots of training work will no doubt need to be down before I'm ready for the Himalayas but part of the fatigue today was no doubt due to my just resting twice--and for just a couple of minutes each time.

Here is some data from today's effort:

Of note, I last did this hike back in 12/15, so about a year ago as I was starting to get up for last year's Elbrus/Kilimanjaro combo.  Back then it took me 6:17 and today about 26 minutes faster....not to bad!

Update

Still having fun getting back into more regular triathlon training.  I'm fighting a challenging case of tennis elbow in my left arm but the PT I've been pursuing for a couple of months now, does seem to be lying off.  Here were my November numbers:

Swim: 14,650 yards
Bike: 727 miles
Run: 39.5 miles
Other: 15 hours
Total Training time: 74:06

Last week

Well gang, I'm rolling back into a more normal triathlon training approach--I have my first triathlon of 2017 in exactly two months down in Naples, Florida.  Here are my past week totals:

Swim: 2,000 yards
Bike: 171 miles
Run/Hike: 11 miles
Other: 4:05
Total time: 17:54

My arm is holding up well with 4 easy swim sessions under my belt--will start increasing frequency and distance--cautiously.  Also had a nice Computrainer session--nice to be back into it!

Last week in SNP

Last week a bunch of us went down to Shenandoah National Park.  Judy and I hiked three days and a number of folks joined us for the last two.  We took it relatively easy as each hike was around 10 miles as opposed to my more typical 12-14 miles.  Still, good workouts and the views, as always were fantastic.  Not quite peak color, but as you can see below, very nice.

In total we did 30.6 miles with 8,049 feet of ascent.  This took (with breaks) 19 hours and 7 minutes in total.

The first day saw Judy and I climb up past the 6 Whiteoak Canyon waterfalls and then at the top of the upper falls we headed north rather than over to Cedar Run.  This brought us to the Old Rag fire Road, which we followed back down to complete our circuit.  This hike was 10.18 miles with 2,402 feet of climbing and it took us 5:40:

We stopped a number of times so i could experiment with my photography.  I had some nice neutral density filter shots and played around with my Hyper-Wide 10mm Rectilinear lens:

Day 2 was a point to point starting at the Panorama parking lot and ending at Skyland.  this turned out to be 10.54 miles with 3,173 feet of vertical which took a leisurely 7:29 to complete:

Our third day we went back to our go-to Old Rag--this was my 8th summit of it.  9.88 miles/2,474 of vertical over 5:58: