A Beautiful Ride...

It was a Sunday to remember. It was so peaceful. I woke up early, rested and alert. After coffee and toast I bundled up and went for a 2 hour bike ride. I was a little concerned about it being too cold, but after 5 minutes I was nice and warm. 

The ride was so enjoyable. I didn't ride hard. I wanted to keep my heart rate under 140 bpm. I noticed with all the racing I was doing, I was loosing my aerobic base. I checked my ego at the door and just rode to enjoy, listening to 70's music on my ipod. Surprisingly there was a lot of cyclists out today. Most were riding in packs. Funny thing, everyone waved to each other 100% of the time, which is unusual. I think it is because we all felt like kindred spirits riding our bikes on a cool 4 C day. I've decided that this year I'm going to take more photo's of the landscape that I train in. Today I had to take a photo of a horse beside a barn. 

I rode 63 km and averaged 29 kph. When I got back home my tooth started to really hurt. It was a 12 on the scale of 10. It was unbearable. I couldn't believe the pain. As I was calling the dentist, Alice found some Demerol. I took it and about 45 minutes I felt much better. Although the tooth pain was gone, I felt nauseous. I spent the rest of the day photographing my old racing shirts for my book. I haven't seem most of them for so long I forgot that I had them. It was a trip down memory lane and relaxing. The Demerol probably attributed to it. We just stayed at home and took it easy, other than picking up some nice rib eye steaks for dinner. 

My ache breaky tooth...

I've scheduled Saturday's off of any training till at least February. It was strange sleeping in and not having to do any training today. My tooth is still bothering me so I went to the dentist again today. They determined that I need a root canal and scheduled me for Monday morning and gave me some antibiotics in the meantime. She says it is about a 90 minute procedure.

For most of the day I've been working on my Training Payne book. I'm about 95% complete. We went to Reid's game later in the afternoon and the mouth was 5 out of 10 in terms of pain. When we got home and I started to lie down to watch some TV it went to about 9 out of 10. It is now becoming fairly unbearable. I almost want to get drunk to mask the pain.

This week I haven't been eating the best. I'd say I've been a 4 - 5 out of 10 for the past week. Even tonight at Reid's game we had some fries and gravy. Then when I got home, I'm bored and all I want to do is go in the cupboard and look at food. I've been snacking a little and have been holding myself back from going out for ice cream or ordering a pizza. I'm not hungry, I'm just bored. 

Friday Night Training...

I was well rested this morning. Work was same old. The highlight was that I picked up my replacement iPhone and it worked properly. It's nice to now get my email. 

I scheduled my workouts a little different so that I get Saturday's off to spend with Family. In doing so my Friday's are a little heavy with a long ride and a moderate bike ride. I left work a little early to ride my bike outside before dark. The weather was an unusual 13 C and I much prefer riding outside over inside. 

I rode for 1 hour and 15 minutes and averaged 29.5 kph. Even though I started at 4:30 pm I couldn't beat the darkness. For the last 25 minutes it was dark and about 10 minutes before finishing it started to rain lightly. It was the first time ever that I've ridden my road bike in the dark. I did have my red flashing light on and I noticed drivers gave me much more room that during the day. I'm going to look for a good front headlight, not just to be seen, but so that I can see the road when I ride. It was a enjoyable ride. When I got home and had a protein drink I did a 40 minute long run. I forgot to wear my heart rate monitor, but tried to gauge my effort and keep under 140 bpm. I ended up doing just over 5 miles at a 7:55 pace. If my heart rate was in the zone, that's a great run. I'm really focusing on leg rpm's. Now I can relax, take tomorrow off and get back at it on Sunday.

I'm actually feeling a little irritable with the training. I'm really going to be careful that I don't over train or burn myself out in the off season. I'll probably only do 2 swims per week, 2 bikes per week, 2 weight sessions and 3 runs until my peak performance training plan begins in February.

Up to early...

I was up at 6 am. I was going to go to the pool and do weights before my emergency dentist appointment at 8:30 am. I woke up so tired, I hit the snooze a couple of times and then realized that I'd be too rushed and decided to do my training after work.

My dentist is a marathon runner, his name is Bruce Gardner. He has done 60 marathons and is in his early 50's. My pain was coming from a cavity and as he was putting in the filling all we did was talk about running and triathlons. It's amazing how fun it is. I'm sure his assistant thought we were crazy and had no idea of what the times were were saying meant.

Work was busy. I had a couple of very important meetings. When I got home I did my 35 minute easy run at an 8:05 pace and I had to really hold myself back to keep my heart rate under 134 bpm. Afterwards I drove to the YMCA in Oakville to do my weights and swim. I did the weights, but when I looked in the pool area it was really full with lap swimmers. I was feeling tired and didn't want to share a lane with someone, so I decided to miss the workout. I know so long as I do two swims a week I won't loose any fitness, plus I keep reminding myself that this is the off season and not to worry about missing sessions. I was looking forward to doing a quick blog entry and going to lie down and watch TV. I don't even have any energy to work on the layout of my book. I guess that last three nights I've been up to late and it's catching up on me.

Great Weather...

I was going to go for an hour ride this morning but couldn't get out of bed. I was so tired from spending the night working to make last year's Training Payne blog entries into a book. Right now it is up to 438 pages of all color. I bring my extremist mentality to everything and end up staying up way to late and then when I go to bed my mind is racing and I can't get to sleep. 

I ended up power working today and clearing everything off my desk so I could leave early and get a ride in before dark. I had an awesome ride. It was a tempo ride, under 140 bpm and it felt effortless, it was so enjoyable. I ended up averaging 32.5 kph for an hour. The weather was 19 C, it was awesome. The only downside is that I have a tooth ache during the ride the cool air hit the tooth and hurt big time. When I got home I made an appointment to see the dentist tomorrow morning. 

After stretching and eating, I spent around 3 hours working on the book layout. I forced myself to shut it down at 9:30 pm in order to rest my mind. I have a busy work tomorrow and also need to fit in 3 workouts. Still "pigging out" on candy.

I'm getting faster...

This maintenance program is pretty tame compared to the peak performance program. Tonight I did a 30 minute tempo run. I was supposed to keep the heart rate no more than 140 bpm, but because I want to do a 10 KM road race at the end of November I decided to make it a speed work session and I didn't care about my heart rate. I ended up doing 4.31 miles and averaged a 6:46 pace. The heart rate got up to around 161 bpm. I was focusing on high leg turnover and maintaining form. I could have went harder but didn't want to lose form. I did feel great. No calf or lower calf knots or pulls. It felt good. It was also a seasonally unusual 18 C this evening. 

I can hardly wait until the Halloween candy is gone from work and home. I'm good until around 3 pm, then I get the munchies and go for the chocolate. I've been eating really well, but started to add one daily cup of coffee into my diet. I've decided that where ever I go from now on I'm not going to order a large of anything. Portion control. 

I'mmm baaaccckkk.....

I've decided that my season starts and ends the first week of November. Today is the start of the 2009 season. 

This year my focus is to get faster. I've decided that I'm only going to do Ironman 70.3 races and not do a full Ironman this year. Training takes to much time away from family on the weekends and it wouldn't be fair to my family for me to do an Ironman again this year. I want to be able to spend at least one day of the weekend with the family. I also want to get a motorcycle and go with Alice on weekend rides. My goal for next year is to qualify for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Florida. It turned out that I had the chance to go last year based on my time at the Muskoka Ironman 70.3, but because I wasn't there to take it, they rolled it down to the next person. My plan to get there is to eat healthier, drink less beer, loose 15 lbs, training according to Mark Allen's plan and try not to get injured.

I started my Mark Allen maintenance program today. I did a weight lifting session followed by a 2000 meter swim. The swim was one of the toughest I've ever done. I decided I'm going to focus on technique, so I was trying to keep my strokes long and do 19 strokes per 25 meters. It was hard. For the first time I found myself breathing hard at the end of a set. Afterwards I had a bit of a sore stomach. I think it was from eating fairly well and then having some Halloween candy before I went to the pool.