I'm excited about that progress. With my increased devotion of swimming I've found it much tougher to put in the big bike weeks as I did in past years. I knew something would have to give if I was going to be spending 2-3 more hours a week in the water and it has been a few bike miles. I continue to put in 2-3 real quality rides each week to make sure I am still making progress with my cycling as well as my swimming and running. In addition to the swim, bike, and run totals this week I also lifted weights and did plyometrics twice, speed drills, strides, lunges, jump rope, and pushups all three times, and core work 12 times.We had another great swim clinic at Augustana on Sunday. We had 14 people in attendance. All the attendees were entered in a raffle to win some awesome products donated by Xterra Wetsuits. At every clinic from now until June the attendees will be entered into the raffle. If you are thinking about ordering a wetsuit for the 2012 season you are welcome to use my pro discount code of SA-JPAUL to save 55% off the retail prices at http://www.xterrawetsuits.com/ We will give away all the prizes at the June clinic. Quad Cities Triathlon race director Eric Sarno threw in a free entry into the QC Triathlon that will also be drawn at the June raffle.
The next clinic will be on Sunday, March 25th at 11:00 a.m. I hope to see another big crowd. It's really fun for me to watch how much the guys and gals at the clinic improve from one time to the next.I had a few workouts I was really excited about last week. On Friday I did 2x3 miles of progressive tempo work. I ran my first on in 17:22. I ran 1 mile easy recovery and then did the 2nd one at 16:58. I couldn't believe how easy they felt. It felt like I was jogging until I got down to 5:40 mile pace. I like doing the tempo runs progressively where I get a little bit faster each mile. I had 2 very quality bike workouts where I did some hard intervals. I've been doing a lot of high watt/low cadence work where I pedal for 5 minutes at 290 watts with a cadence of no more than 55. These are great strength builders. By pedaling so slowly your legs recruit all the muscle groups to help with the effort. I repeat the 5 minute period 5 times in the workout. I also stepped up my long run this week. I'm now at 13 miles after beginning the year at 8.5. I'm pretty careful about how quickly I increase the long run. I typically add 5 minutes every 2 weeks. This year I don't plan on going above 15 miles until the summer because I'm not racing an Ironman until November when I'll be back at Ironman Arizona trying to break the 9 hour barrier that eluded my by 5 minutes last November.
I'm 95% confident I'll be on a new bike next year. I got the word this week from Healthy Habits about some really exciting options and I'll be trying to hammer out the finer details of this over the next week so I can begin training on it and getting my fit dialed in.
Jen and I signed up for the Live Uncommon race team this week. If you are unfamiliar with it Live Uncommon has picked 7 races that give back to charitable organizations. Anyone who wants can sign up for the race team to be entered in all seven events for $150.00. Along with the entry each person also pledges to raise $700.00 that will go straight back to the charities these races support. I don't plan on actually racing many of them hard since the triathlon season is where I like to put most of my hard efforts but this is a cause I care deeply about and I wanted to be part of the "Revolution" of making health and fitness an important part of our community. I love the idea of giving back to worthy causes that make a difference in our community and the world we live in. Between the 2 of us we have pledged to raise $1,500.00 which kind of terrified me because I hate asking people for money. We decided to take this leap of faith in hopes that we can do this. If you would like to make a tax deductible donation to our Live Uncommon campaign you can do so by clicking here. We would be honored and humbled.The training will be a little less in week 11 as I prepare for a big week of training over our spring break next week. The weather is turning nicer and it's a great time to get outside for a bike ride, a run, maybe even a swim within the next couple months...If that's not your thing get outside with your kids and walk around the neighborhood, take them to the park...do whatever it is that you enjoy doing while being active. People will notice. YOU will feel great. You will inspire others. Thanks for reading! DREAM BIG!!
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