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March 25, 2006
WHAT'S NEXT???
Training for me must have a purpose. If I do not have a goal, a race, or some other factor motivating me, I find that my training consistency, as well as my training intensity suffers. With that in mind, I have three events that I’m planning on racing over the next couple of months.
The first is the North Forebay Triathlon. This is a really fun race that I’ll probably do as a relay with some people from work. It’s a sprint distance, with a 3-mile run, 1 mile Kayak, and a 10-mile mountain bike ride. I most likely will be doing the run leg, since we do not have many runners at my work. It is scheduled for April 29, 2006. See all the details here: http://www.theschedule.com/EventInfo.cfm?EventID=14429
My next event, and the one I will really have to push the training envelope for, is the Chico Wildflower Bike Ride http://www.chicovelo.org/wildflower.html
As luck would have it, this event is the day after the North Forebay Triathlon. Chico Velo (our local bike club) puts this event on, and they offer multiple venues, with mileages ranging from the childflower (15 miles) to the Wildflower, which is 100 miles, and about 4,300 vertical feet of elevation gain. If I can get ready that quickly, I am going to try to do the 100-mile ride. Of course, with only 6 weeks to prepare, I may not be able to ramp up that quickly – a lot depends upon how much of my bike fitness from last summer that I have retained over the marathon training program.
My wife and me last year at the "Childflower" - a 15 mile scenic trip from Chico to Durham and back.
My next event, just 2 weeks after the Wildflower, is the race I have been building up for all year – the Lake Oroville Triathlon
http://www.lakeoroville.net/triathlon
This is also a "Sprint" distance event, extremely well organized, and just a lot of fun to do. The ½ mile swim is usually colder than hell (last year the water was around 62 degrees), then the 15 mile bike ride is good, with a couple of pretty challenging uphill sections, and the 3.1 mile run has lots of hills to get your heart rate up. We hope to have at least one relay team from work racing, as well as myself as an individual. We have thrown out a challenge to the Police and Fire Department at work – telling them that us City Hall desk jockeys can smoke them to the finish line. It remains to be seen if any of them show up on race day…..
For training this week, I started off with a twenty-five mile bike ride, from my house in to Chico, and then around Bidwell Park. It was a good ride, and gave me confidence that I haven’t lost too much of my previous bike fitness. Tuesday evening I did thirty minutes on the Life Cycle (they moved my usual spin bike out of the main workout area, into the spin room), and the about 30 minutes of swimming. The gym was an absolute zoo, I remember now why I go in at 4:30 in the morning. Afternoons are hell!!!! Thursday evening I did a 1.5-mile track run at Chico State with a coach I am working with from Butte College. I did the run in 10 minutes and 50 seconds, at a maximum heart rate of 185. This equates to a pace of seven minutes and 13 seconds per mile. My time was just a little slower than my previous run several months ago. I actually expected that my time would have slipped farther, with the lack of speed work and the stress and strain put on my body by the marathon.
Friday evening I did 30 laps (1500 yards) swimming, with a total time of 37 minutes, 46 seconds. While this was certainly not my fastest time, it left me fairly confident that I have not lost too much of my swimming capabilities.
Sunday I rode my bike to the Chico State Track for a 5k run with my coach. I tried to run this a little smarter than my Friday run, and not go out too fast. My goal was even splits (holding the same pace across the 3.1 miles) of seven minutes and 30 seconds per mile. with a total time of 23 minutes and 15 seconds. I actually turned out a little slower than my goal, with a time of 23 minutes and 28 seconds - but I was able to keep almost perfect "splits" of around 1 minute and 53 seconds per lap.
I turned this into kinda a backwards “brick� workout by doing a 40-mile bike ride afterwards. This was my first ride of the year with a hill workout, so I started out with Humbolt Road, which is only about 800 vertical feet. It still really gets your heart-rate up, but it is not as extreme as Honeyrun Road. I met up with three friends in Chico and we did the Humboldt ride together. Coming down Highway 32, I hit a maximum speed of 31.2 miles per hour - that is freaking scary, on a skinny tire racing bike, especially with the cross-wind we had. Everyone made it down ok, and we laughed about our "death grip" on the handlebars experiance.
All in all a good week, I got some speed work in, did a couple of good swims and met my goals for bike mileage and hills. Best part, three weeks after my marathon, I've been able to not gain any weight!!! It has taken a little bit of effort to control my appetite, and keep from eating the 3-4,000 calories a day I was eating at the peak of my training.
Posted by Dennis at March 25, 2006 11:06 AM