Resolidiots

Dreadmills. Luv to Hate Them.

It wasn't that cold out last night, but still. To get all bundled up for an easy recovery run that will be 'short' seemed like more hassle than it was worth. No, I wasn't going to skip it but it did call for some change. We went to the gym!

Boy did I feel stupid when we got there. I completely forgot about the Resolidiots, Resolution-Idiots, that fill the gym thinking they're going to actually lose weight this year. They'll be gone by mid-January but nontheless not soon enough!

I can't say I care much for the treadmill but it has been a looong time since I've been on one so a recovery run is as good as any to try it out again. Immediately I couldn't help but laugh. Workout? I could hardly call it that. I'm sorry, but a treadmill is absolutely nothing like the real thing. It was laughably easier, my HR barely increased. I did sweat buckets though since we were indoors, but that was not a representation of my perceived output. Outdoors I would have run 15, walked 1. On the treadmill, 50 minute run non-stop and I barely felt like I did a workout at all. Great for a recovery 'workout' but there is no way you'll find me on one of these things for serious sessions. Unless the weather is horrific outside or something.

It didn't help that I had the Marlboro man beside me. Nothing like going out to puff on a cancer stick and then come back in and jump on the treadmill when you wreak of nicotine. I had to smell that for 8 minutes. Disgusting. Luckily he didn't last long on the dreadmill cuz I was at my breaking point when he put his ipod headphones in and then started singing out loud. Seriously? What a douche. One thing I did note while on the treadmill was the screens are made for midgets. The control panel is so low that I had to look-down to read it. I 'ran' while looking down and it screwed with my posture and neck muscles. I couldn't look straight because I would lose balance. I got dizzy running on the spot like that. I had to focus on the control panel right in front of me, but it was sooo low. At least I didn't get bored which was a surprise!

Nutella on Toast -Yummay!

After the 'run' I felt fantastic! I can already feel the body repairing itself and I was on an energy high! Oh wait, maybe it was the thick layer of Nutella on a couple pieces of toast I had when I got home. Hey now, it's recovery week - I can top up my calories any way I like! However, I barely slept at all. The energy wave I was riding took me right through sunrise and I'd swear I didn't get any quality sleep whatsoever! Not  a problem though, I still woke up with plenty of get-up-and-go. Where did this energy come from? My body is probably thanking me for taking a break finally. Although I remember last recovery week that I was going nuts by the weekend. Must. Hold. Back.

I did have a GREAT laugh earlier in the day. I haven't had a good cry-laugh-help-I-cant-breathe-please-stop episode in awhile. I came across an article on the playskool slowtwitch forums about poo-boy finishing IMFL with 'stuff' running down his legs. He qualified so in the slowtwitch world he's been elevated to the level of 'God-like' status. Anyhow, burried in the thread was a link to a hilarious story with similar theme. Gross - Yes! But I laughed uncontrollably for some reason. Visit this link at your own peril. No photos, just a written story so it's safe lol.

TRAINING:

Run - 50mins Treadmill

200

               ***200***              

This is it. It is happening all too fast. Think about it. That's not very long at all!

200 days until Ironman Lake Placid!?

That's maybe 28 weeks

Which is really only 24 training weeks due to taper.
That is only 6 Sets of the training cycle!! (4 weeks per cycle, 3 Build+1 Rest = 1 Set)

6 Sets to go from 12Km runs to 40+Km runs!?
6 Sets to go from 60Km Rides to 180+Km Rides!?
6 Sets to go from 3000m swim to 3800m swims?! Ok, maybe that one ain't so bad ;)

Seriously. There's not enough time! Get to it! Get training!

OH MAI GAWD!!! HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS?!?!!

Panic. Mode. Engaged.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Mrs. LoTC



Magic Kitchen Operator

 What do you mean I have to wait?! I had just got home from a verrry long mountain bike ride and I was famished! I have no idea if I spelt that word right, you would think blogspot would get a spellchecker feature. Or maybe I would learn how to enable it if they did! Anyhow, she tells me she won't start making dinner until AFTER she goes for a run. AS IF! Like, I'm starving and exhausted yet she's making me wait for my feeding tyme?? Something has changed. Something drastic. Either it's a full moon, or the Earth's magnetic poles have swapped locations, or lunar eclipse, or aliens have abducted my wife and all I got is a hollow empty shell of a robotic chicken that doesn't know that when the hubby says I'M HUNGRY  the world stops spinning until the magic kitchen produces my meal! Something big has changed.

She started her training program.

Yup, Mrs. LoTC has begun her training program to prepare for her Half-Iron this year. There is a more pressing half-marathon coming up in May for her which is the first big challenge of the year. To commemorate the occasion, she started her own blog called MRS. LORD OF THE CHAINRINGS. Between spending time getting her blog configured and building her training program she forgot to feed the husband. I don't know if I like this Iron-Babe thing or not. I may not survive it?? Luckily the magic closet still works. So not all is lost! She kciked off the blog with a 'Before' picture with the intention of posting an 'After' picture to see the progress. I tell her she's mental though, the before picture is pure sex, I'd so tap that, yum yum, aroooooga, unf unf unf. Wait - what was I saying? Pic included! :)

HardK0re

Monday, finally brings the holidays to an end. With all this extra time off, I've been putting in way more mountain biking in than the training plan asked for. Luckily this week is a semi-recover-base-phase-kickoff-sorta-thing. I'm taking it easy. My body could use the rest. I keep forgetting to mention the mild pain on the lower outside part of my knee. I figure inflamation, so I'm getting lotsa stretching in and Advil.

TRAINING:

Bike: 3hrs MTB

December at a Glance

My week reviews do not end nicely at the end of each month. So I think I'll have a separate post to throw up my calendar of actual workouts. It might help someone out there. This isn't my training plan, this is the actual workout I did in the month. You can go find my actual weekly review posts for explanations.

And Since I missed Novermber's Glance, here it is:

Week 11 Review

A great way to finish the year of 2010 off! The holidays messed a bit with my training plan yet again. The holiday long ride on Tuesday was compounded by car problems on Wednesday and I had to play catch-up on workouts all week. In the end, I only missed a swim and one of my weeknight runs was replaced by a long hike on the ice and mud. Overall, I'd say I kept on track.

Now to figure out how this all fits into the grand scheme of things. Maintenance mode is over. Actually, I called it maintenance but really it was base building since I had done nothing for the 2 months post-Ironman Muskoka. Regardless, the official training program starts this week but in the scheme of my current maintenance mode routine it is actually supposed to be a recovery week. I don't want to go 6 weeks without active recovery! Soo, I am thinking I'll make this an easy Base Building week to kick off the official Ironman Lake Placid JPO training plan.

What does Base Building mean in the JPO program? Run. Lots and lots of run. Well the weeknight runs do not change much, if anything they get shorter but they get faster! The weekend runs get very long. This is because I'm leading into Around the Bay 30km run race in 12 weeks-ish time. Bike & Swim stays the same for another 8 weeks.

WEEK 11 TOTAL (Set 3, Week 3 - Maintenance Mode; skipping recovery week 4 of Set 3 to start BB program)


Swim: 0:45hrs
Bike: 6:20hrs
Run: 4:20hrs
Strength: nil

Total: 11:20hrs

Ice Tron

Fran - The 80's called, they'd like their sign back.

Saturday: I can barely remember what the original Tron was about, heck I can't even find it anywhere. I hear that the orginal sucked so bad that the filmmakers deliberately made its sparse as to not scare people away from the new one by watching it. Anyhow, the sequel was a good movie. Not great, but definitely entertaining and I feel I got my money's worth. Some big holes in the plot, so it requires a not-so-small leap of faith if you're a techno-geek that likes things to make sense. That is the only type of person that liked the original anyways, it developed a geek cult following. I'm glad we got out with our son, it was fun! The other two boys were out with friends.



Mr.s LoTC Half-Iron Preparations



Earlier in the day I slipped in a 3 2 hour bike trainer session. I was watching the 2010 TdF Prologue and I was enjoying interval sprints when my favourite riders were on screen. It was fun, but I was taken back by my heartrate. At tempo, which I sweat like a pig and feels like I'm riding against a noticable headwind-like resistance, my HR was only 120. At hefty resistance, as if I'm climbing a huge hill, my HR was no more than 135! Why is my HR so incredibly low? Usually I'm tempo 154 and climb 165-170 outdoors. I didn't push my HR any further, I just took it as it is. I'd have to apply some crazy resistance to get my HR up any higher, as if I'm weight training every pedal stroke or something. I didn't bother trying because it begins to get uncomfortable pushing hefty resistance for so long. My trainer is strange like that. I dont' want to hurt my knees.

We went for pizza after the ride. While we waited for it to cook, Mrs. LoTC and I went next door to get her a much needed training necessity. She will be doing a Half-Iron this year so I had her pick out the headstone she liked most just in case. Necessities :)

Friday: So I thought I would rechedule my rescheduled run for Friday since I had the day off. It was supposed to be a rest day but I need to get these runs in. The plan was a new route that takes me up to the top of the peak in Dundas. The route is all trail, about 5km worth of hill and then I would tuck some road run in to get over the 10km limit. The day was a balmy 7 Celsius, I didn't even need a jacket! Surprisingly, I didn't like this. I'm so accumstomed to the cold weather, that I almost prefer the cold. What the heck is wrong with me??? Anyhow, as soon as I hit the trail I knew I was doomed. It was covered with a thick layer of ice. I pushed on and then gave up. I had to turn back, there was no way to run on this. The Bruce trail up the side of the 'mountain' was clean so I ran up that. Once on top the run was over. I did not anticipate a quick thaw and the trails were horribly muddy. It's now an official Hike, not run. I had fun with it, took lots of pics at the watefalls. I even took the ice trail back out of the ravine since there was little to no running happening. I'll chalk this up as an easy easy 'run'. I still got a workout, my muscles are sore from tensing up on slippery ice and mud slopes.

The Peak

 

Ice Trail - Walk, Dont Run!!

 

Summit View - Dundas



Summit View - Hamilton



U Can See Ice Trail Along River through the Trees



Our Engagement Photos were Taken Here



More Engage Photo Locale

 

 

Top of Falls





That is the ICE TRAIL on the right.
Extremely slippery and sloped towards the river.

There were some close calls!

TRAINING:

Run (Recreation) - 1.5hrs

Bike Trainer Moderate Intervals - 2hrs

Sleep Training

 

We've all heard of sleep walking and sleep sexing but have you ever seen sleep training?? It goes something like this...

....Onto the bike I sprint out a decent lead on the pack. I make a quick dismount off the bike and run it into transition. One of the first here in transition I don't rush changing my shoes, I even sit down to do it. I grab my hammer-gel squeeze bottle and powerade bottle and instead of eating them before leaving transition I just shove them in my back pocket. On the way out of transition, I see my competition. Rodney has just left T2 with only 10 seconds in front of me. The key is that he doesn't see me. I take the moment to fuel on the run, I grab my flask of hammer-gel to find out it's HAND LOTION? WTF?? Mrs. LoTC prepared a bottle of hand lotion instead of hammer-gel for me?? Don't panic, I just stuff it back in my jersey pocket. I reach for my powerade bottle in the other pocket to find it's only WATER?? Wait, she messed that up too? Wonderful. It's only a sprint distance race so I don't need the calories anyways. I see Rodney up ahead filling his face with feed station schtuff, so I take this moment to toss the Hand-Lotion to the side and drink up the water and pour it over my head to cool down. The plan is to creep up on Rodney and convincingly blow by him so he cannot react.

I reach him and as he sees me he matches my pace. Fast forward to the last couple kilometers and we shake hands and I say 'its just like the Iron-War'. Stride for stride we come up on the last feed station and Rodney reaches for some water and gel and wait - didn't he see all the videos? The guy that uses the last feed station ALWAYS loses. I seize the moment and surge ahead and while it's too far a distance to sprint I suck it up and concentrate on technique and just run as hard as I can and not look back and...."

poke poke poke

Me: "Wait. Wait, Wut??", as I wake up.

Her: "You are dreaming."

Me: "Ohhh.."

Her: "By any chance were you dreaming about running?"

Me: "uhhh maybe. Why do you ask?"

Her: "You were running in your sleep. Your legs were moving and ankles were going a mile a minute and you were breathing hard too..."

Yes. I was sleep training.

Sooooo this could explain why my muscles are sore and I got a huge bruise on the side of my knee. I suspect while doing the 'bicycle-ish' movent laying on my side I was rubbing my knees together and could explain this bruising. Damn, I got issues. lol

A quick analysis of this dream says

• I have underlying anger issues with Mrs. LoTC for screwing up my Nutella on Ironman Muskoka race day. This explains the substitute nutrition issue.
• I need to stop sitting down to put my shoes on in T2. That cost me precious seconds when I got passed.
• Obviously I shouldn't have attacked so early, I need to work out a better strategy.
• I watch too many Ironman videos. Or maybe I shouldn't watch them 1000 times over and over
• There is nothing more disturbing than having Rodney show up in your dream. I think I need counselling.
• Seriously that's just f*cked up. Rodney SHOULD NOT be in my dreams.
• Must. Wear. Knee pads. To. Bed. Ow.
• Sleep on the couch. The wife interrupted my workout. That's gotta be worth some cardio and calories and she interrupted a good session ugghh...

All kidding aside, this is disturbing! What does this mean?!!??


TRAINING:

Sleep Running: 30mins, 0 Km