Day 10 "10 Days and 10 Nights"

The 2009 version of my camp, "10 Days and 10 Nights" is officially in the books! I have to thank my wife Jen for being a Super Trooper through this camp. I spent a great deal of time training and she was super supportive through the entire camp. She has given me unconditional support through this entire journey and I would not be having the success I am without her. This was the toughest 10 day stretch of training I've ever done. It was extremely tough physically but even more so mentally. Nearly all of the training I did was alone and it made it tough each day to get myself to go out to train on tired legs with a mind that was tired of training. For my last day of camp I began with a 4 mile easy morning run followed by a weight lifting session of 2 sets of 10 on all my lifts. As I reduce the reps I increase the weight so this was my heavy weight day. In the late afternoon I went to the pool for 3,100 yards of swimming with a hard set of 4x (75, 50, 25). I take 20 seconds rest after the 75, 10 after the 50, and 1 minute after the 25 before repeating the set. I've done this a number of times but this was by far the fastest I've done it. I hit my last 75 in 52 which is very good for me. My new swim technique has me excited about my potential in Chicago. I'm not going to be out of the water with the leaders but I plan on reducing the gap over Hy-Vee and Minneapolis. After swimming I did a running workout with a 2.5 mile warm up including my speed drills and strides. I then did 5x 600 meters on the track with 90 seconds rest between each. I hit them all in 1:59 (5:20 mile pace). I wanted to see how I would feel in a workout at the end of this tough block of training. I did a short cooldown and then got on the bike for a semi-hard 19 mile ride. It was getting really dark and I had to go quick. I averaged 240 watts on the ride. Following that I finished camp with lunges, core work and the claw drill.
1. 4 mile run
2. Weight Lifting- 2 sets of 10
3. 3,100 yards swimming
4. 4.5 miles of running with 5x 600 meters
5. 19 mile bike ride
6. Core, Lunges, Claw drill
Total training time for day 10 was 4 hours even.

For the 10 Days and 10 Nights I hit 520 miles on the bike, 106 miles running, and 26,000 yards swimming. In addition to those totals I lifted weights 5 times, did lunges, speed drills, and the claw drill all 5 times each, and core work 7 times. My total training time through the "10 Days and 10 Nights" was 51 hours and 25 minutes. It is now time for me to focus on some race specific workouts for Chicago the next 10 days and then get a really good taper so I can achieve a peak performance. My goals are to go under 2 hours for the first time in an Olympic Distance race and to place in the top 10. I began camp without any specific goals but after the first couple days I decided I wanted my volume to total 4 Full Ironman Races through the 10 days. I was able to achieve that as 4 Ironman events would total about 17,000 swim yards, 448 bike miles, and 105 running miles. I was able to surpass all of those totals. This camp leaves me with great confidence that I will be able to reach my goals in Chicago on August 30th. Thanks for following the camp. DREAM BIG!