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Week 5 Report

February 5th, 2007

Week 5 Complete, starting of Month 2 and the last week of my “Prep” period. Next week it’s time to get more structured as I’ll be moving in to Base.

Although I didn’t really need it, or intend for it to work out this way, week 5 became a bit of a recovery week. Namely both my volume and intensity of workouts seemed reduced from last week. I even took Monday off completely from any exercise at all. I know it’s good to take a day off every now and again. In fact I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about structure as I move deeper into the training season. I’m thinking about ways to keep my overly-driven type-A personality relaxed on those rest days that will be coming.

Like last week, this week was definitely random, I’ve been really absorbed in my work project and so I’ve been working late into the night and waking up late so finding time to workout has been a little tough. I definitely fell off my process goals for strength training and swimming even more than last week, but I’m not going to let that distract me… two weeks in a row, isn’t good, but I’m going to take it as a wake up call to get more structured. I’m not as concerned about the strength training, as that really was more about me starting to enjoy strength training, and I feel like I’ve gotten over that hurdle.

Last week I said:

“I am going refocus my efforts for next week as I continue to find a workable model for family, work, training, blogging, and play. I definitely want to make a goal for next week to find some more structure; but looking ahead to the schedule I can already tell that’s going to be hard.”

Well…  I didn’t really make it… I mean, worked hard, I got some good training sessions in, I had a lot of fun with my family, but I just sort of stumbled through the week like a bull in a china shop. I “knocked some things off my list”… but it was pretty messy.

Detailed breakdown follows…

Strength Training - 1.35 hours - As I described early, I only did 4 structured workouts this week, but two of those were pretty serious “heavy days”, which is something I hadn’t done yet. I skipped my Iron Yoga this week, again, two weeks in a row, I said I’d get back to that again this week… maybe I actually will next week. The new “home gym” has been a nice addition. It’s let me switch around my routines a little bit, and work on some of my back and triceps workouts that I previously could do at home. Tyler, the actual owner of the home gym, came by Friday and we worked out together. This was the reason for one of the “heavy weight” days… guys showing off… uh oh, could spell trouble. The good news is that Tyler is out of shape, so he couldn’t push me too hard.. The bad news is, Tyler used to be pretty big into weight lifting so he has way more muscle base than I do, even though he’s out of shape now. Supposedly we’re going to get together twice a week to workout. We’ll see.

Swimming - 1 hour - Ugh! this is the let down. I only swam twice this week. I am going to blame this on two things… poor planning (not enough structure) and my fragile ego. I did try out masters swimming, and as I reported, didn’t really enjoy the experience. This blow to my ego made me avoid the pool for the rest of the week, until last night at 11pm when I said, Damn it, I have to swim tonight, I can’t swim only once this week! The good news is that I already swam today (we’re calling that next week for this post, since my weeks start on Monday); for 1.25 miles and 50 minutes. And I’m going to swim on Wed and Friday or else! So I’m going to get back on the horse!

Flexibility - 1.1 hours - Again, kinda sloppy, kinda random, skipped Monday, but other than that did something every day. But like last week, it feels like I was cheating on this goal. I need to do more of a routine. I am being good about stretches after running and long cycle rides. But I didn’t achieve my goal of doing my problem area stretches for 2 minutes each day. Need to work on this!!!

Running - 2.47 hours - 18.9 miles - 3 very solid runs…. I made a point of taking at least one day off between runs, and I got in a great speed session at the track. I am really happy to be back running. But I’ll admit my feet are a little sore. I want to make sure I am not pushing myself too hard. I think next week I will take it easy on running, maybe only run twice.

Cycling - 3.73 hours - 67.5 miles - Again, like everything else, this was a low volume/effort week. I basically only rode 2 longish rides this week (20miles and 42miles) and the rest of my miles came from commuting. Compared to last year: outdoor cycling miles 386.19 vs. 76.1, and total miles 386.19 vs. 399.43. 

Total Exercise Hours (including Strength and Flexibility Training): 9.65 hours
Total Swim/Bike/Run Hours: 7.2

More charts? Here you go…

Entry Filed under: Fitness, Triathlon, Diet, Weightloss, Swimming, Ironman, Running, Marathons, Yoga, Strength Training, Flexibility, Stretching, Sports Injuries, fixie, single-speed, fixed-gear