22 weeks away

Week one of base one is just about done. I’m sitting here before 6 am Sunday morning mentally preparing for a three-hour trainer ride in the basement because it’s too cold to ride outside. I’m super thrilled to report that so far week one has been a glowing success! After today’s workout, my total training volume for the week will be 18.5 hours among lifting weights, swimming, biking and running. As you can see, base one is where the real training begins, and to be quite honest, I was kind of anxious going into it because it is so much. Running has contributed the most to my anxiety because I have a history of minor issues with my right knee. Fortunately, careful attention paid to stretching and warming up have left me pain free.

Scheduling this quantity of training hours into my week has been a challenge, as right away Tuesday morning I had an hour of each sport scheduled.

I got up early and did all three before work, and then I had another three hours (not the same workout) scheduled for Wednesday. I re-iterate: I don’t know how parents with kids do this. On that note, here’s one more whole-hearted THANK YOU to all spouses, family members and friends supporting an athlete on their way to Ironman. Without all that you do behind the scenes, we athletes wouldn’t be nearly as successful as we are. Lois, my wife, on August 3^rd the world will see all the work I’ve done to prepare for this race; it won’t see the countless hours you have invested in my success behind the scenes. I truly cannot do this without you. Thank you so very much.

The penultimate day of this monstrous first week was quite the gnarly workout: I headed to the gym for a one-hour swim, which went smoothly and left me feeling excited about my next 1000-meter time trial three weeks from now. Then I went home and hopped on the trainer for an active recovery hour on the bike. That was pretty easy, as any cyclist can imagine. Next up was two hours on the treadmill. I was anxious and excited about that at the same time, and in the end, I did it—the whole two hours! I kept my heart rate in the low end of zone two and covered just over 15.3 miles. So the total for the day was four hours…22-plus weeks away from my Ironman. They’re only going to get longer, and so I’m realizing now that I will have pretty much no weekend free for most of the year in 2014. I’ll spend all morning both Saturday and Sunday every week working out and cleaning up, then it’s food prep, housework and recovery the rest of the day before I go to bed at my impressively early 6 pm bedtime. Oh, that reminds me: during this training, I’m finding that getting enough sleep is critical to successful workouts. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

I have one more thing to report about this week as I head into week two. In addition to all the training I’ve been doing since January 13^th, I’ve been really, really good about my diet. I maintain a pretty strict regimen in which I eat breakfast every single day, usually totaling about 1000 calories. Then a small healthy snack precedes lunch, which is somewhere between 600 and 1000 calories. Then another small snack before dinner at 3:30 or so. Up until this week I was following a three-hour rule where I didn’t consume calories within three hours of bedtime in order to sleep on an empty stomach. The workouts allowed that. Now that I’m in base one, I eat about 400-500 calories of mostly complex carbohydrates immediately before bed when I have more than two training hours scheduled the next morning at 2 am. I am using an application called Lose It! to track my calories, ensuring I get enough to avoid bonking in my workouts and to make sure I’m getting the right proportions of fats, carbohydrates and protein. If I look at the reports section of the application, I can see what my top foods are. Bananas, apples, blueberries, Yoplait light yogurts and oranges litter the top of my favorite foods list. I don’t eat any fried foods, no fast food, very little saturated fat and no junk food or dessert. I consume very little alcohol and at most about four peanut clusters per week for candy. I think my indulgence total during this base one week was two Girl Scout cookies.

Due to the combination of increased exercise volume and a really good diet, I’ve lost 32 pounds in the last seven weeks. I feel way more energetic. I feel light and powerful moving about in my day, and all my nice clothes fit again! I was getting questions at work these last two weeks like “Are you going somewhere for an interview today?” The answer was, of course, no, but I said I could fit into my nice clothes again. It made me feel good. My jean size has dropped in those seven weeks from a 36-waist to a 32-waist. The biggest difference? Running sans 30+ pounds is much easier, and probably part of the reason I’m not having knee issues. Yay!

August will be here soon. Can’t quit now.