A Little Bit of Confidence

Despite the knee injury in September, I've fully recovered and my speed is ahead of where I was last year at this same time. The specific date escapes me, but I believe it was sometime in February of 2011 when my training runs started to consistently happen at a sub-8:00/mile pace. These last few serious 3-milers in specific have fell well under the 8:00/mile bar, with a couple only a few seconds away from knocking a whole minute off the workout. This bodes VERY well if I am able to stay mentally tough and physically strong throughout the remainder of winter training (run strong, not hard!). While it's already mid-January, the weather has been favorable enough to only turn me recently toward majority-treadmill workouts. However, I'm able to get at least one outdoor run per week, the last one being clocked at a 7:36ish min/mile pace.

Not to count my chicks before they're hatched, but I'm following the same training program I used for last year's half marathon, which a few weeks later led to my 21:56 5k PR. If all goes according to plan, I'll have a fantastic shot at setting a sub-8:00 min/mile 10-mile PR and!... wait for it... a very real shot at eclipsing my 5k PR from last year.

Some recent smart dieting has also helped me shed ~5 pounds, which is nice, but I'm anticipating at least another 5 once I start making swimming and biking a more regular part of my 10-miler cross-training. The trick is to make it happen before some of that delicious easter-related candy starts making its way onto the shelves of stores I populate. It's very strange to me that I'd fall victim to such a specific candy at a specific time of year when I have no other dessert-related vices what-so-ever. Candy aside, I've got a great collection of micro-brews that I'm DYING to start laying into. However, I'm very strict in my consumption and stick to a few random rules:

1. 1 beer is earned after each consecutive hour of cycling on my indoor trainer.
2. 1 beer is allotted for each weekend day there are football games
3. 1 beer is permitted in celebration of the birth of a friend's child (just 1 lately)
4. 1 beer is earned after any race

So, since my bike is currently up-side-down + in pieces, I have no "very pregnant" friends, there is football on tomorrow and I have a (kinda) race... I'm allowed 1.5 beers... which will probably just round down to 1 (if any).

Recent blog-entries have also been considerably lacking in photos, but here's a photo of a house I'm working on which will hopefully make up for that a little.

Greek Revival Being Revived in Upstate NY

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Time to Start Swimming Again!

Since I've officially registered for at least one triathlon, I have a great motivator to start getting back into the pool on a regular basis. Today's attempt was in vain, and the ridiculously overweight pool-director told me that none of the lanes would be open (@ prime-time) due to swim lessons (also run by fat people). While I waited to see if enough people skipped swim class to let them open up a lane for me, I just dropped down every 60 seconds and did 25 push-ups. Nothing ridiculous to sap the strength just in case, but I guess it's better than nothing. In between sets of push-ups, I had ample time to stand around awkwardly on the pool-deck in one of these pondering some swim-related pieces of wisdom. I found a decent list HERE and just wanted to highlight a few of the bullets that struck a chord with me:

• Conditioning trumps drills - This can be very true if you're an experienced swimmer coming off of low-to-no swim exercise. Chances are, you're disciplined enough to get  back into decent swim shape w/o having to buckle down on relearning the basics. Of course, once your endurance is back up... then yeah, do your drills!
• Do longer main sets - For mental as much as physical endurance. Swimming 10x100m with 0:15 seconds rest in between is VASTLY different than swimming 2x500m.
• Increased swim fitness translates to B + R - Absolutely. If you're able to focus more on building muscle endurance rather than simply trying to keep your lungs from turning inside out on bike/run intervals, then you're one BIG step ahead of the game. Also, swimming is a cheap + easy way of tightening up your body and losing some bad weight. That cheap weight is 5-10 pounds that your knees don't have to worry about when they're pounding up and down the trails.
• Learn how to use your kick - Kick?... what's that? When rehabbing the knee, I got reeaaalllly comfortable using a pull-buoy so it seems as though I've got to learn to kick even more-so. Back when "I had it," I felt a great sense of rhythm where I was swimming from fingertips to toes. And, when you're in a short/normal pool (i.e. not the 50m Wilson Aquatic Center), that rhythm is greatly disrupted enough as it is.

Annnnd a couple of my own additions...

• Learn to breath on both sides - This seems like a no-brainer, but if you can't do flip-turns (anymore) or breath on both sides, then you had better pick at least one and figure it out.
• Start using the watch (again) - Using a watch was a HUGE tool I used to make sure I was keeping my efforts high. It kept me honest on all sets and constantly had me shooting for specific goals, rather than swimming aimlessly and convincing myself that I'm swimming much harder than I am. A watch is also great for my morale and is a very tangible way to recognize improvement.

In other news, my wife and I are dabbling in the South Beach Diet. We're not so much participating in the diet as much as we're trying to adapt the ideals. Overall, my appetite for crappy food has greatly diminished and the LBS are starting to drop off 0.1 at a time. That's not to say we don't stray off the path every now and again (a man needs a sturdy beer in the winter, after all, and what "diet" is going to allow that?!). I think this is more of a "big picture" thing (not a 3-week experiment) and a great way to help transition into our training for the 10-miler in April.

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REDEMPTION: 2-for-2 On Race Registrations

I made the executive decision to register for two races last night - one 10-miler and one Sprint Triathlon. The 10-miler is the George Washington Parkway 10-Miler in Alexandria, Virginia on April 22. This race will take the place of the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler which shafted me via a lottery process. The silver lining is that I will have more time to build up my base, thus having more confidence to set lofty speed goals. It may also be nice to run in warm weather, as opposed to the 40-degree weather of last year's DC 13.1 in March.

The second race I signed up for was the Hudson Crossing Sprint Triathlon on June 10. It's a smallish triathlon taking place in Upstate NY that is exceedingly well organized and well-run. I couldn't say enough positive things about the race last year and I really can't wait to give it a go again this year... perhaps with more time for proper training! It's also always nice going back to race the same races b/c you end up having a record you can shoot to break.

All in all, I am exceedingly happy with registering for these two races. One will provide me with copious amounts of motivation to exercise through the winter, while the other will encourage me to stay on top of my swimming and spend some time on the bike-trainer. If you glance sidebar-right and see the very lofty 2012 schedule, you'll note that I have a lot more than just (2) races planned. It's a bit misleading though, b/c many of those are just placeholders that I will need to decide between (or not at all). I hope to hit at least 75% of that list though, for what it's worth!.. especially with the 5Ks and triathlons.

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MICHIGAN WOLVERINES

MICHIGAN WINS!!! GOOO BLLLUUUEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

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0 for 2 at Race Lotteries

As it stands, I'm 0-for-2 in race lotteries all-time. In late 2011 I was rejected for both the NYC Tri and the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler. This is very disappointing as I would have loved to make both of those races A-races and structure my year around them. In both cases, the charity requirements are seemingly too much of a hurdle to be feasible options.

It appears as though the CB10-miler has a transfer period in early-to-mid February that lets people transfer their registration over to another potential runner. However, I have no idea how successful I might be at getting in that way. So, unless I magically catch a transfer, I'm stuck looking for different races.

One possible race on the list is the Parkway Classic 10-Miler (metro DC). I'm off doing recon on what the course/race-conditions are like, so perhaps this will be my "race-excuse to travel to DC."

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