ZappoMan.com - Fitness Blog

Week 7 Report

February 18th, 2007

Week 7 Complete - This was a big week jumping to 14.5 hours of workouts. This isn’t the most exercise I’ve ever done in a week, as I had several 16+ hour weeks last year, but this is definitely a lot for this early in the season. The good news is that I am being particularly aware of trying to keep in a nice low to mid effort base zone, so although the hours are long they aren’t particularly hard.

I had to pile up the hours on the weekend again because I was so busy during the week with work. Next week looks to be a similar challenge as we are doing a mini-vacation to Victoria BC for Mon-Wed. Although my wife made sure the hotel has a pool and fitness center, I am sure that it will be difficult (read: impossible) to put in 2:22 of exercise per day. This weekend is the Chilly Hilly, the first “organized” ride of the year around here. It will be fun to catch up with some of my buddies from the cycling community. But more on that next week.

Here are the details for this week…

Strength Training - 3 hours (3 sessions) - Pretty good rhythm this week of working out for  fewer longer sessions. I’ve pretty much adjusted to doing mostly upper body and leaving my leg workouts to cycling and running. I’m sure this isn’t the best approach, but it’s one that is keeping me motivated. Working out with a lifting partner is certainly more social, and Tyler is good company. It also helps to have someone else to push you. Tyler is a pretty muscular guy, but it’s interesting how different our conditioning is. Namely Tyler is just getting back into fitness, and I’ve had 3 years of pretty solid cycling based conditioning.

For some reason this means my triceps are ridiculously strong compared to Tyler. I can explain this as cycling position related, but it’s probably a sign of bad form on my part… my spin coach was maniacal about how our arms should be like feathers on our handle bars… triceps like this must mean I was holding myself up. But the upshot is, I am putting Tyler to shame with general arm “endurance”. Near the end of our last workout he attempted to do dips and could only muster 5 and a half (with just his body weight). I slapped on the weight belt and 25lbs and whipped out 15 like they were nothing. He joked that he had 60 lbs more body weight than me, so I slapped on 60lbs on the weight belt and was able to throw down another 3 more…. he wouldn’t have been able to return if I could have mustered 7.

Swimming - 2 hours (3 sessions) - Well, calling this three sessions is a little generous. My first session was actually half and hour with my 4 year old, working on her swimming. But there was a lot of “dolphin rides” and swimming along with her as she was floating on her back and doing modified TI drills, so it was water time. I had a nice solid 1.5 mile continuous swim on Tuesday, and then this morning I had a rather chaotic 30 minute swim at the busiest time of the week at the pool. I waited an hour before I could swim and then there were actually 3 lanes with 2 swimmers each (including my lane) and several other people still waiting to swim. I still need to find a better solution for improving my swimming speed. But that’s a project for next period.

Flexibility - 1 hour (4 sessions) - Basically I’ve dropped my daily routine and I’m to a point of stretching after long rides or runs. This is not good, I need to regain my discipline. I can feel tenderness in my hip flexor and I know a problem will show up down the road if I don’t take a preventative approach to this.

Running - 2.44 hours (18.7 miles) - Three solid runs of 7, 4, and 7.7 miles. Two of these were bricks. I will admit I was feeling a little slow on two of these runs, but since my average for the week is a 7:49 pace, I can’t complain too much. Considering that more than half of that running came after 26 and 52 mile bike rides, it means I am doing well at maintaining a sub 8:00/mile pace for mid and long distances bricks even though my Ironman is 7 months away. I feel like I have a solid running plan, and now simply need to fight the urge to ramp too quickly. 

Cycling - 6.91 hours (118.23 miles) - Good week of base cycling. I continue to do all my training on my Redline 925 fixed-wheel bike. I continue to hack it up to make it more like a road bike. This week I switched out my seat to my normal road seat, and since we had absolutely beautiful weather yesterday I removed my fenders. It’s funny that I was taking off my fenders when all the fair-weather riders are putting fenders on as they take their bikes out of the garage after storing them for the winter. Today I did 42 miles but at 16mph I took it pretty slow (at least for me), again the hours seem long, but the effort is not significant; my average heart rate for the ride was 132bpm or 66% max.

Weight - Not good. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve put on a couple extra pounds. It could be muscle mass from the strength training, it could be a little water retention, but I suspect it’s poor eating habits on my part.

Total Exercise Hours (including Strength and Flexibility): 15.36
Total Swim/Bike/Run: 11.36 hours (note, again a new max for the year)

Charts? You want charts? Here you go…

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