Sunday, April 13, 2008

Patience!!!!!

It is my instinct not to be patient. If I think about it, notice that I'm not being patient, then I can correct myself. Most of the time!

But patience can be added as another reason to why I tri! It takes patience for your health, your physical and mental ability to learn and improve. It's not just hard work, although that's certainly required. It's hard work for years (and years) to attain an ability that is so much greater than you were able to before. My AT has apparently only gone up from 157 to 162 between mid October and April 3. I think the MAP test I took at Lifetime Fitness may be off a few points. I will train as if my AT is 165. I can still somewhat talk with a heart rate of 165, breathing is a little hard but tolerable.

What I can't wrap my head around, is how I let myself not get so out of shape to begin with. No regrets though, I am 40 and while there are many 40 year olds I know that are seeing that they are slowing down, I get to improve my speed and ability for years to come.

Today, I ran 10 miles again. If you read this blog enough, you may notice that I have stayed with 10 miles for 3 weeks now. I want my body to adjust and tolerate my activity for the rest of April, then in May I will increase my long runs by a few miles. Since I am doing Fartleks and speed workouts at paces I haven't done before, I am trying to not shock my body too much. I think it's working.

Yesterday was catch up day. I had another busy week at work and home and the weather sucked. So this is what I did.

50 minute spinning while watching Ironman 70.3 championship on NBC. Cool to watch. 50 minutes may not seem much but I am learning that all these years I have been a low rpm bicycler. All 50 minutes at 90 rpm was the goal and I pretty much achieved it.

1300 yard swim. I am slowly able to handle breathing better. This is going to take a while but I'm enjoying the challenge. I'll probably be slow all year but being a good swimmer will be something that I achieve.

Quick 2 mile run on treadmill after swim.

Hey, I did a mini backwards triathlon yesterday. Sweeet!


Today I did a 10 mile run. Oh, ooops, already mentioned that. I've got more to say though. It was kind of a sweet run. The weather was sunny and (I was) beautiful. LSD is suppose to be the way, but after 7 miles of it, I looked at my Garmin. What I saw was a HR of about 156 @ 9:45 pace. I said to myself "Tim, your HR was @ 154 at about the same pace in mile 3. You, buddy, have a base. Let's pick it up a bit"

Mile 1 9:45 pace, avg HR 142
Mile 2 9:40 pace, avg HR 152
Mile 3 9:26 pace, avg HR 156
Mile 4 9:39 pace, avg HR 161
Mile 5 10:02 pace, avg HR 147
Mile 6 9:59 pace, avg HR 156
Mile 7 9:46 pace, avg HR 158
Mile 8 8:51 pace, avg HR 166
Mile 9 8:46 pace, avg HR 171
Mile 10 10:00 pace, avg HR 165

Total avg 9:35 pace, avg HR 157
Total time 1:35:57

Ok, this run is significant in a few ways.
1) 2nd 5 miles quicker than first 5 miles
2) Except for 2 miles (8th and 9th), I took it fairly easy, yet finished 16 minutes faster than my TC10 mile run last fall, which was the absolute best that I can do.
3) The first few miles, I had to keep reminding myself to pick it up a little, my HR was too low (140's)
4) My next 1/2 mary in June should be well under 2 hours, I think my goal will be 1:55.


Patience is good.

(But I wonder when (not if) I can average better than an 8 mile pace for a 10 mile or greater race)

4 comments:

  1. Very nice. Patience is good stuff. There are so many aspects to triathlon that you can only focus on a few at a time...and it's a good thing...because if I had realized how much I didn't know 3 years ago I might have panicked and given up before I got started. You are doing great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice splits!!! It is so fun to watch you getting faster and faster...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Keep it up Jumper! That looks great!

    ReplyDelete
  4. You are doing great on your training! Have you started training for pigman yet? I'm feeling stressed and behind already for it! Yikes!

    ReplyDelete