Zack's Triathlon Blog

So after a very restful rest day I was feeling well rested and not sore for the first time in a long time. My resting heart rate is down in the upper-50's. Apparently your resting heart rate goes down as your level of fitness increases, so I suppose that having mine come down from 70ish to 57ish is a good sign.

Given how rested and not sore I was feeling today, I raised my goal for my swim. I wanted to finish up the easy swim workout and then see how much more I could do. As it turned out, I was able to do the easy swim workout exactly as specified and was then able to swim a 400M! The longest I had gone before was 250M. Not only that, but once I reached 400, I actually felt like I could keep going. In total I did over 1800M today which also marks the first time that I have gone further than the race distance. Now the challenge is that the race is in open water - which means that you can't see anything and you can't take rests at the side of the pool when you get tired.

Unfortunately for my training, but fortunately for me, I will be heading to Lake Tahoe this weekend for some snowboarding. Believe it or not, I will not be taking my heart monitor along with me, so no calorie report on snowboarding ;) It will be hard to get in as much exercise as the swim/bike, swim/run, and bike that I will be missing, but it has to be better than sitting on my ass all day.

Ok...
I'm pretty wiped out...

After waking up at the crack of dawn, desperately scrounging the 10 million things that you need to support a swim/bike, and then picking up Josh and Katie, we wound up making it into the pool on time. Before talking about the workout, let me rant about how much freaking stuff you need to do a triathlon. Just for today's workout, I needed to bring: Sneakers, Bike Shoes, Bike Helmet, Sweat Pants, Hat, Sweat Shirt, Biking shirt, Dry Shirt (for after the bike ride), Biking Shorts/Swimsuit (fortunately the same shorts work for both), biking socks, dry socks, heart monitor, two water bottles (one filled with water and one filled with Gatorade), a package of Cliff Shot Blocks, A Cliff Bar, Gloves, Windbreaker, Sunglasses, Wallet, Keys, Cellphone, Bike, Bike Rack, Towel, and a cup of coffee. I had to somehow find a way to transport all of these things without losing them, and figure out in which order they needed to be used and what could and couldn't be in the trunk given that the trunk couldn't be opened once the bike rack was in place. Needless to say, everything did not go quite as planned, but I managed to get through everything. You can now see, why making it to the pool on time was an accomplishment in itself. Clearly this is part of the reason we practice this stuff. If you were brave enough to read all that... I'm sorry.

The nice thing about being one of the slowest people in the pool last time, is that they put me in with the slow people. There were 25ish lanes in the pool (it was a huge pool) and they put the slowest people in lane 1 and the fastest in lane 25. Due to my stellar performance last time, I was placed in lane 2 :)

It was remarkable to see how much I had improved, and I certainly no longer felt like a swimming loser. I was able to complete 1400 yards in just 45 minutes! The same distance (ok, I suppose this is a little less distance than the 1400 meters that I did the other day) took me 63 minutes on Tuesday. Definitely fun to see yourself improving so quickly!

After the swim, chaos ensued again while everyone rushed around to shower, change and eat/drink in order to have some calories in them for the bike. I found that people were gradually clustering in one particular part of the parking lot, with bikes so I joined them. The route turned out to be the exact same as the week before. Despite being tired from the swim and the long run yesterday, I was able to finish the ride in 7 minutes less than the week before! Again, nice to see noticible improvement.

Finally we came back and had a big potluck picnic thingy. Thankfully there was lots of food because a) I forgot to bring .5lb of lunch meat like I was supposed to, and b) 90 people who have been awake since 6AM and have just done 3 hours of exercise devour food like a pack of piranas. After everyone could speak again some of the cancer survivors came up and spoke. It was very touching and reminded me that we are not only working hard for ourselves, but for those who's lives have or will be touched by blood cancers. If you haven't donated yet, please do now by clicking here. Every little bit helps!

For those of you who have donated, thanks so much for your support! It means a lot to me, and to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

A summary for anyone interested:

	Duration (Min)	Distance	Calories
Swimming	148	2.42	933
Biking	144	31.5	1346
Running	150	12	1470
TOTAL	442	45.92	3749

Today Josh, Amanda, Sadie and I went running along Crissy Field. It was nice to do it as a group and Sadie and Amanda kept eachother company while Josh and I ran ahead to do the interval training. Overall it was a fairly slow run as we were trying to keep our heartrate low. In the end we covered the distance that will be in the Triathlon, which certainly helped to boost our confidence.

Tomorrow is our first official "brick" workout, which means that we will be doing more than one activity. The plan is to do a swim and then bike. This will be my second coached swim, and I'm pretty anxious about it as last time I was pretty much the slowest one in the pool.

Wow... my upper body is sore. I'm guessing that it has something to do with the 100 pushups that we did on Wednesday night.

Today's mission was a distance swim, and being the swimming weenie that I am was shooting for the age group workout (the easiest one). This was supposed to contain two back-to-back 250's on 20 seconds rest. While it sounded easy after my progress on Tuesday it proved to be quite difficult. In the end I was able to do one 250, one 150 and a couple of 100's. I swam a total of 1100M, but swimming long distance without resting still eludes me. I'm hoping that my sore muscles had something to do with it.

So, after a tough coached run on Wednesday night (in which the coaches tricked us into doing 100 pushups), Josh and I went for a bike ride on Thursday morning. We drove and parked in a parking lot where Skyline Blvd meets Highway 92. I had been there before for a motorcycle ride and remembered the terrain as gradual rolling hills. Unfortunately for us, it turned out to be a 5 mile ride uphill - thankfully it wasn't too steep. I have to say that the 5 mile ride back to the car was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my adult life. All downhill, averaging almost 30 miles per hour Josh and I raced down Skyline Blvd revealing amazing views of the Peninsula at every turn. Despite the fact that we only covered 10 miles, we ended up doing the "pro" workout due to the mountain that we were climbing. Pretty good for Josh's first time out on his new bike!

So I had a swimming lesson today. It was only 20 minutes, but the instructor gave me some good tips. In the end I made some great progress and was able to swim 150's! This means that I have finally caught up to the easiest swimming training schedule! In total I swam 1350M and while this included resting, the fact that I could swim for longer distances without stopping was very encouraging.

Tomorrow is another coached run at Kezar Stadium - maybe I'll skip the long bikeride before the run this time.

Many people have asked me how I keep track of my calories burned. I purchased a heart monitor - Polar RS200SD. I use this to track all my workouts and measure the distance and speed of my runs. Quite handy, and a great motivator.

Hi everyone,
I made some significant progress in swimming this week. I can finally breathe on both sides. I can also do several back-to-back 50M swims (though I'm supposed to be doing 100's at this point). I have signed up for a swim lesson on Tuesday, so hopefully that will help me even further. I didn't get in as many swims as I wanted this week - I'll try to make it up in Week 4.
Biking is going pretty well, after my grueling day on Wednesday, I felt well prepared for the team bike ride in Novato on Sunday. I decided to go on the "pro" ride which was a 21.5 mile climb up "Big Rock" and back. The ride took us right near Skywalker Ranch, and reminded me how much I love my bike.
Running is going well, though rather uneventful - I did a 6 mile run in 55 minutes on Saturday. I'm starting to notice some general health changes, I weigh a few pounds less, but I have noticibly less fat. My resting heart rate has come down from 71 to 62 or so.

Totals for week 3:

	Duration (Min)	Distance	Calories
Swimming	83	1.06	602
Biking	218	42.94	1993
Running	128	12	1422
TOTAL	429	56.00	4017

Today I went for a bike ride with Mario, and then rode over to the running workout with the team at Kezar Stadium. It was a pretty brutal ride for me (though a "light workout" for Mario). We rode down the Presidio, along Crissy Field to the Marina, and back. Riding up the Presidio was pretty tough, I managed to keep moving the whole way, but managed to hit a heart rate of 211 doing so.

The running workout was tough, lots of strength training, pacing, and warmups and cooldowns. All in all, the coaches did a great job of tricking us into running around 6 miles and doing all kinds of other training (sit-ups, push-ups and stair climbing).

After the workout I had to ride my bike back home. Whew... burned a total of 1658 today. It will probably be a while before I ride my bike to the Wednesday coach runs again.

Okay, I love my bike! This week was largely focused on getting my bike and keeping up with the training. My swimming is coming along nicely. I am seeing great progression, though I am still tring to catch up to the "age group" workout schedule.
Note: For each event there are three levels of training Age Group (level 1), Elite (level 2) and Pro (level 3). In the runs, I am right around the Elite level, but for the swims I am still below the Age Group level.

I have been doing a bit further distance in the swims (with resting in between each 25M length). I'm still working on breathing on both sides (I strongly favor my left side). Also, I made some progress by holding a floaty thing in between my legs. This stopped me from kicking, and I seemed to be able to swim faster, and use less energy. I don't know what I'm doing with my legs, but it must be horribly inefficient.

Totals for this week:

	Duration (Min)	Distance	Calories
Swimming	78	0.84	637
Biking	106	14.8	800
Running	80	7.9	955
TOTAL	264	23.54	2392

After riding on my friend Mario's road bike, I knew it was going to be hard to convince myself to go through the race on the mountain bike. For anyone else out there who has ridden a mountain bike recently but has forgotten what a road bike is like, a mountain bike is to running as a road bike is to ice skating. The energy you put into the pedals doesn't die away instantly... you just glide along. In any case, I wanted to get a road bike for the triathlon.

I did look around on Craig's List and at various bike shops for good deals, and was actually offered what seemed like a good deal through one particular bike shop (I won't trash them here as they redeemed themselves in the end). When I went to that shop I was told the deal was all filled up, but that they had some very nice bikes from last year for a great price. Needless to say, they fitted me for a fully carbon frame bike (that prior to this would have been completely out of my price range). They were able to discount the bike to a price that was a little above my target price. Given the great deal, I relucently spent the money and took the bike home.

Even on the drive back home I felt terrible. Even though the bike was a good deal for what it was, it was not the bike I was looking for, and the thought of the sales tactics that were used on me left me feeling terrible about the whole experience. I brought the bike to a local bike shop to see what they thought about the deal I was given and sure enough, it was an unbelievable deal. However, in the end I decided to return that bike and get the bike that I originally wanted from a sales person that helped me find a bike that was right for me, instead of baiting me in and then using me to clear out some old inventory. I am much happier with my decision and my bike now.

Week 1 is over and I already feel like I have made a lot of progress. I swam every other day this week to try to make up some ground. Prior to this, I have never done much swimming. I began the week flailing from one side of the pool to the other, and getting there completely exhausted. I have been getting a bit more efficient with some help from my friend Josh.

Notice how I am holding onto the side of the pool in the picture here - that wasn't just for the photo op.

Aside from that I have been trying to get in all of the training recommended. I have not purchased a bike yet, so I rode my mountain bike for the bike rides.

Totals for Week 1:

	Duration (Min)	Distance	Calories
Swimming	93	0.84	555
Biking	95	10.3	696
Running	88	6.7	867
TOTAL	276	17.84	2118