weeks 6/7

 Very busy here with work and life admin stuff so going to update weeks 6 and 7 in this post.  these two weeks were very similar and kinda fit my current "business as usual":

                                Week 6                Week 7

Swim yds                 4,500                    5,500

Bike miles                  237                       224

Run/Walk miles         20.8                     24.6

PT/Weights time        5:10                     4:10

Total Train time        26:53                   26:54

Through the 1st 7 weeks here are my weekly averages in 2024:

Swim            4,357 yards

Bike:             234.6 miles

Run/Walk       20.4 miles

PT/Weights    4:32

Total time       26:20

Chugging along with lower intensity base building!

Week 5

 I continue to generate pretty big training volume:

Swim: 6,000 yards

Bike: 246 miles

Run/Walk: 23.3 miles

PT/Weights: 4:05

Total Training Time: 27:58

This turns out to be high points in the Swim and Run/Walk for 2024 so far (albeit just 5 weeks) and the second largest training time for a week....

Next week I'll update you on my Build it Back Better project (no this isn't a Biden thing)....

2024-Week 4; January; and don't fire me coach!

 Well, week 4 did not turn out to be a recovery week....this despite being on the road for 4 of the 7 days (road trip to/from Cleveland and two-days in NYC).  My body seemed fine with the volume and I ended up doing more than I had originally intended--if I had coach, I'd be in big trouble if this is what I did with a recovery week:

Swim: 4,000 yards

Bike: 249 miles

Run/Walk: 16.1 miles

Weights/PT: 5:40

Total Time: 26:33

----

Today also ended January and it definitely turned out to be a big foundation month:

Swim: 17,500 yards

Bike: 1,046 miles 

Walk/Run: 82.6 miles

Weights/PT: 20:30

Total Time: 114:44

In comparison, last year I did: 17,000 yards; 142 miles bike, 27 miles walk/run , 5:50 PT and total time of 31:48.  

No surprises that I did a lot more this year as last year January was just my 2nd recovery month post knee replacement.  But the delta between this year and last shows just how much further along I am at the beginning of this year that last.

Bodes well for 2024--onwards and upwards!

2024-Week 3

 Originally, I was supposed to travel on Tuesday/Wednesday for work and then again Saturday/Sunday to take Jen's dog to her place in Cleveland.  Both of these trips were delayed due to two separate winter snow storms.  As it turns out, I'll be driving to Cleveland and back tomorrow and Wednesday and the work meeting is likely moved to next week.  However, due to this schedule change, I ended up having a bigger training week this week than I had originally anticipated:

Swim : 5,500 yards

Bike: 256 miles

Run/Walk: 19.7 Miles

PT/Weights: 5:15

Total Training Time: 28:40 

So we are only three weeks in but all five of these metrics represent high points for 2024 and are very solid, frankly, Ironman-level training loads.  I also begin to add some intensity in my swim and bike.  As the week wore on I definitely felt this week's (and prior weeks') volume.  My guess is I pare this back a fair bit this week with both the Cleveland trip and a need to recover/absorb my ytd training....all good so far!

2024--WEEK 2

 This week was strongly impacted by my Wed-Sun trip to very frigid Minnesota to help my Brother as he was moved from the hospital to a long-term rehab facility (he is recovering from a bad wound in his foot and getting ready to have his hip replaced--among other things).  I also was at our Cabin on Ten Mile Lake getting it in fighting shape and ready to go into a bit of hibernation for the balance of the winter.  Needless to say, my training was pretty impacted by the lack of good options (no pool for example) and the 200+ miles I had to drive each day to/and fro Dave's rehab place and the Cabin.

I also was there during the first major cold snap of the year and by default, my best training option was to walk outside.  Here is what yesterday's walk was like:

I had anticipated the cold and brought along a bunch of my high altitude cold weather gear and the walks I did there (every day) were actually quite enjoyable....Crazy to do an 87-minute walk and see absolutely no sign of human life!

Anyways, here are the totals for the week:

Swim: 3,000 yards.  Managed to up the volume by 50% over Week 1, as I begin the process of ramping up.  I'll plan to up it 50% again this week to at least 4,500 yards....I feel pretty good given the 3-4 months off that I had (just a couple of easy swims down in Mexico over Thanksgiving).

Bike: 190 miles

Walk/Run: 18.9 miles

Weights/PT: 3:00

Total Training Time: 21:13

I have some work stuff to travel for this week but all-in-all this should be a more normal week...

2023, 2024 and I'm back in the game!

 2023

Well its been a very long Radio silence covering a fair chunk of 2023.  I apologize but promise (at least) weekly updates this year....

2023 was primarily about getting used to and recovering from my Total Knee Replacement, which happened on 11/30/22.  It was, in retrospect, a relatively slow and challenging process.  It didn't seem so at the time as I expected it to take 9-12 months to fully recover and I had no way of knowing how hard it was supposed to be.

I just did the work, day-in and day-out.  Following the Ortho's orders at first and then my PT guy, I finally got to the place were I actually considered doing some modest training (as opposed to PT or exercising) by May.  I even did a 5k over Memorial weekend and ran the whole thing--first time I really ran since the operation.  I managed to do a 34 minute 5k--just under 11 minutes/mile.  I followed that up with the Stone Harbor triathlon in July where my son, Anders came and raced with me--he finished 2nd overall and I strangely enough, went a minute or two faster than I had in the prior year, pre-surgery...

I entered a few swimming races as well and generally did pretty well, even finishing in 2nd in my Age Group in one.  All-in-all it was a modest year.  One with low expectations and one ultimately marked by a lot of progress.

We had a ton of social obligations (9 weddings and my Mother and Brother both having major surgeries that I needed to help them with necessitating about 4 weeks in Minnesota and Florida).  By September, I decided to really focus on rebuilding my all-around body strength and on especially rebuilding my left leg.  In the 25 years I suffered with a deteriorating knee my left leg became increasingly structurally inefficient and as a result I favored my right leg.  As a result, my left leg atrophied and loss a huge amount of my normal range of motion.  I began to limp a lot and down the stretch had to run with a large brace.  When I rode my bike, I generated 60-65% of my power with my right leg....

All of the PT and asymmetric strength training seems to have really paid off.  In early November I went down to Shenandoah for what was supposed to be a 7-day through-hike of the park on the AT that had to be cut short for safety reasons because of unexpectedly bad weather, but I did manage to get a 21-mile, nearly 10-hour hike on the AT carrying 35-40 pounds and climbing just under 5,000 vertical feet.  I felt very strong and had zero issues with my left leg.  Very exciting!

2024

I've continued to spend about 5-hours a week on strength/flexibility work since September and frankly feel stronger and better than I have in a long time.  I no longer limp.  The relative differences in power and flexibility between my two legs has noticeably diminished.  I'm highly motivated and frankly beginning to look for new Endurance challenges for 2024!

I've decided to become a more dedicated triathlete again.  I plan on racing at least 5 triathlons and several swim and running races in 2024.  Most of this will be relatively short in distance, but I have decided to join Anders in Boulder in early June and attempt to do the Boulder IM70.3.  I'm less concerned about how fast I am than I am in doing these challenges in a reasonably competent way and just really enjoying that I can still do them.  More on my goals for this year over the next few posts....

Week 1

I just completed my first week of 2024 training.  Solid effort that my body stills seems to be able to handle (although I was a bit sore this morning).  Mostly low intensity aerobically at this point.  I got back in the pool with a couple of easy swims and plan to increase my volume by about 50%/week until I get north of 10k/week.  Most of my riding is indoor Z1/Z2 but I'm beginning to reintroduce Zwift rides, which will tend to drive higher intensity as the pre-season unfolds.  I haven't run yet and all of this week's run/walk volume was in the form of hikes.  My PT/weight training is going great and I feel myself getting pretty strong (for me).  In fact I am benching 170+ pounds again for the first time in a long time.....

Here are the totals for the week:

Swim: 2,000 yards

Bike: 241 miles

Run/Walk: 19 miles

PT/Other: 5 hours

Total time: 26:03

My plan is to report in every Monday, so please check back!  My first Tri of the year is currently scheduled for a Sprint down at Lum's Pond in mid-May.....

Onwards and Upwards!

Total Knee Replacement: 6 months in.

Sorry for the extended delay in updating the blog--super busy times as I'll get into below.   First-off, here is a summary of my volume totals for the first 6-months after my Total Knee Replacement:

Swim

As you can see, my swim totals are not that impressive so far.  Comparatively, during the first 5 months of 2022, I swam 219k yards compared to just 88k yards this year.  In other words, I've only swam about 40% of last year's volume so far this year.

This is really not that related to the TNK.  Obviously, December was, as I still had the open wound and so had to stay out of the pool.  However, since then I've had the green light and my limited kicking means the TKR really has not been a barrier to my swimming.  What has happened is a series of life commitments as well as admittedly, less motivation to swim with no clear multi-sport plans laid out.  From the life commitment perspective, I've already attended 4 weddings (out of 9 this year) and two of those were in Mexico (including my youngest daughter's wedding) that involved 5-day trips.  I've also driven to Kansas and back twice and once to Cleveland to help my other daughter with her residency driven relocation.  Also, we went to London for 5-days to support Alex/Rachel in the London Marathon.

I started to ramp up in May but then we moved our primary residence to the NJ shore and this necessitates open water swimming but for the first couple of weeks the water temp was below 60 degrees and my usual NJ swim crew was not yet back in town and this didn't help my motivation.  I started June off strong but then we got hit with the Canadian wildfire smoke so that was another 3-day set-back.

Lot's of excuses I know, but I'm now starting to get wet more regularly and expect to do at least 100k yards for June-August and frankly will try to do more than that.

As a consequence, I'm swimming about 15 sec/100 slower right now than last year (1:55 vs. 1:40)....

Bike

It was quite challenging/painful for me to ride my bike much for the first ten weeks or so.  My knee just didn't have the range of motion.  I found it was a little easier on a recumbent bike but I wasn't able to really get going until the later part of February.  My volume since then looks pretty solid but its really not, compared to my historical standards--for example, last January I rode over 1,700 miles in just that one month (more than April/May combined this year).  The net of this is I rode 3,123 miles in the first 5 months vs 6,569 last year, which about 48% of last year's volume--not really what I'm looking for.

Early on, as I mentioned my TKR really held me back and while its noticeably better now, I still find when I push up above about 200 miles/week, my knee(s) start to get achey.  Some of this is probably related to the TKR but I think some of it is a function of the detraining that may body went through post surgery and the difficulty one has, when you are 65-years old, when you ramp up again.

I'm at the shore now and able to ride more consistently outside so I expect my volume to climb up above 1,000 miles/month.  I've also began to ride a bit longer (although I still haven't gone further than 50 miles in one ride) and I'm starting to add more intensity intervals/higher spinning rpms on my Zwift trainer and hope to begin to see my bike fitness begin to shape up.  I'd say at this point I'm down about 30 watts relative to last year, which is pretty substantial.

Run/Walk

Almost all of the volume to date has been walking although I ran for the first time on the beach in Mexico for about 400 yards in early May and then I ran 1/2-mile in 5:30 in the 3rd week of May.  I finally, on a bit of a whim, decided to enter the Stone Harbor Turtle Trot 5k run over Memorial Weekend and see what happened.  Low and behold I was able to run the whole thing--although quite slow!

You can see I managed to average 10:54/mile and I even negative split the run.  It frankly felt normal and like I didn't have nearly as much of the limp that characterized my run pre-surgery over the last few years.

This is encouraging and I've started to run 2-3 miles 2-3 times week (which is about the most I plan to do--at least for now) and my knee seems to tolerate it reasonably well so far.

Physical Training

You can see that I peaked out in March with 20 hours of dedicated PT.  I'm still doing this fairly regularly but I suspect that will be down around 10 hours/month or less going forward.

Looking Ahead

I think I'm going to try to do 2-4 super-sprint/sprint triathlons this year including the Stone Harbor Sprint on 7/9 with Anders when he comes out and visit.  I'm also planning on doing several open water swim events and in fact have a 1.2-mile OWS on that same day in July!

I'm also planning to do, in October, a solo through-hike of the Shenandoah NP AT section, which would be about 105-miles over 6-7 days.

I'm hopeful that these events will help with training motivation and that I can begin two ramp up my post-surgery fitness some because while I've recovered well from the surgery, and the knee pain is by-in-large gone at this point, I'm not in very good endurance shape and I suspect my races will clearly show that...

Time to work harder!

Onward and upward!