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Week 11 Report

March 21st, 2007

Well, as they say, better late than never… and in this case, we’ll say better something than nothing. I realize that it’s almost already Thursday, and I didn’t even write a weekly report for last week. The fact of the matter is, last week was a big training week (over 15 hours) and this week is event bigger (17 hours). And to top it off, last week and this week were very busy work weeks. Oh, I’m having fun, and I’m keeping on track with training, but man, I’m getting tired. I am really looking forward to next week’s recovery week. Anyway, here are the quick details from Week 11.

Strength Training - 3 hours (3 sessions) - Two big sessions with Tyler, and one session without him. This week Tyler’s out of town and so I have to keep myself honest (uh… I already haven’t done anything in this department for week 12.)

Swimming - 1 hour 35 mins (3 sessions) - Kinda odd, I had one 40 min session, one 30 min session, and one 25 min session. I’ve decided my pool really sucks. I hate that the pool is only 17 yards long… that means 101 lengths to a mile, that’s one reason I track most of my swimming by time or miles as opposed to yards. My wife hates the gym too, so she is researching alternatives. Ok, there’s very little chance the pool will be worse!

Flexibility - 53 min (6 sessions) - Basically, this means 7.5 minutes of stretching after each run or bike, and one of those sessions was a full 15 minutes. I would say this is basic survival level stretching. I don’t think I’m making any progress on my flexibility, but hopefully it’s not getting worse.

Running - 2 hours 45 mins (18.8 miles, 2 session) - One long run of 11.4 miles, and one medium run of 7.4 miles. I sort of took this as a mini-recovery week for my running. Although since I’m only adding 10% per long run, I didn’t want to skimp on adding that distance. I am eager to get back to marathon distance, and although I am thoughtful about not pushing it too hard, I also don’t want to miss a week of progress. So my logic was if I take a week like this every once in a while in addition to my standard recovery weeks for all sports, then I will hopefully give my legs (and more importantly my feet) a break to recover from the bone and joint adaptations.

Cycling - 6.93 hours (117 miles) - Solid week of riding, rode my geared bike for the first time since last November. That was an odd experience. I got most my miles this week with three 30 mile rides. I would consider these to be short-medium length rides. The rest of my miles I got through basic commuting to the gym. In retrospect, this week was a very low-medium effort week with a couple of bursts of harder effort. Which I guess is good for a Base-2 period.

Weight (140lbs) and Body Image (Good) - Ok, weight holding steady around 140lbs, that’s good. I’ve decided to try to track my general “Body Image Index”… well, maybe… this may be a bad idea but I’ll try it as an experiment. The idea I have is to say, ok, how do I feel about my body? I don’t necessarily mean, how do I think I look… but more how I feel. So for this week, I’d say I feel pretty good. As I mentioned before, I feel like the regular strength training is helping me tone up. My arms, shoulders, back and of course my legs feel muscular, strong, solid. I won’t be posing for any “abs of steel” photos anytime soon, but I do feel as if my torso and core is getting “more solid”, a stronger feeling. I have noticed in my runs I feel more upright and more comfortable. I think my posture has improved, and I think this is from getting more muscles in my core.

Total Exercise Hours: 15.14 hours
Swim, Bike, Run Hours: 11.27 hours

I’ve added some new Charts, now in 3D!

Entry Filed under: Fitness, Triathlon, Diet, Weightloss, Swimming, Running, Cycling, Marathons, Strength Training, Flexibility, Stretching, Sports Injuries, exercise