Ironman World Championship This Weekend

The Ironman World Championship is this weekend in Kona, Hawaii.  I know at least one person from home that is competing and one person from the coast.  I will be keeping up with them on ironmanlive.com and wishing them luck.  And wishing I were there of course!  Hawaii was great!  I did Hawaii 70.3 in June and the bike course was part of the full ironman course.  The lava fields may be hot, but they are really amazing too.  

I ran 13 miles today and now I have this pain in my groin area.  Not good!  I hope I didn't pull anything.  I don't have time for injuries.  I am training for Pensacola Marathon which is mid-November and I haven't even done a 20 miler for it yet.   Last 20+ mile run I did was training for Ironman Canada summer 2010.  I told the Murph I wish I was in Hawaii right now getting ready to do the race and he looked at me like I was crazy and pointed out that I can barely walk right now how can I finish an ironman race.  That is true!

I still have 4 years to qualify for Kona. That's plenty of time to get tougher and faster! (and older so I will be in a different hopefully slower age group).  I don't know if I am going to last that long though.  It's going to bug me until I get a slot.  I am already thinking that this would be a great year to try to qualify since I'm not working right now.  I can swim, bike and run 24/7!  Yeah!

First I have to be able to walk from the chair to the bathroom without this pain shooting up my leg...

Lava Field- Kona

Triathlon Training

I had a great workout Sunday morning in preparation for the sprint triathlon coming up this Saturday.  I rode 20 miles on my bike as hard as I could and then got off and ran a mile and half.  It was hot and tough! My legs were still a little sore from Saturday's lower body weight workout and a 4 1/2 mile interval run on the treadmill. I need to increase my bike average to at least 2mph for the race.  It's going to be tough.

Today I did weights (upper body only), then ran a mile on the treadmill as hard as I could and then I got in the pool and did some fast 50's and a timed 600 for a total 30 minute workout.  My 600 was slower than what I wanted.  It was about 15 minutes instead of 12 minutes, but what can I expect when I haven't been swimming much since last summer.

I haven't done a long run in almost two weeks so I will probably wait until after the triathlon Saturday to do a 13 mile run.  I'm not doing a run longer than 8 miles this week.

I feel like I am ready for the race this weekend, but don't know if I will improve my speed much more than what I did in 2009, which was the last time I did the race.  It is a 600 yd swim, 18 mile bike, 3.2 mile run.  My time to beat is 1 hr 37 minutes.  I am hoping to get in under 1 hr 30 minutes.  Fingers crossed!

Bike training with the Babysitter

Rode 20 miles with the Babysitter today.  She and I both are getting back into some sort of consistent training schedule again.  I have been on again, off again.  She has been off her training schedule for a couple of years now, but is ready to get back.  It won't take her long to get back into competitive race mode.  She's pretty tough!  She's done several ironman triathlons and marathons.

We were a little late getting started because I was a little hung over from going out with her group last night.  A little Advil and I was good as new.

We rode along the road next to the ocean.  Going out, the head wind was brutal.  We crept along under 15 mph.  Heading back we were flying with the wind at our backs.  That was the fun part of the ride!  It was a great work out.

I have gotten better and have been consistent in my run training with the Running Nazi the past two years. I did Memphis Marathon two years ago, Ironman Canada last August and Hawaii 70.3 this past June.  Now, I just need to stick with it.  Get faster.  Keep up the long stuff.  Running is always easier for me to keep doing than biking and swimming.  I'm a LONG way from being fast enough to qualify for Kona.  Gotta start somewhere though.

Spinervals without "Sylvester"

Today was Spinervals with J.  I was surprised last week at how sore my legs were after doing this workout.   It involves getting on the spin bike for about 15 to 20 minutes and then getting off to do weights, lunges whatever and then getting back on the spin bike for 15 minutes then off again for weights, etc. for about a 50 minute total workout with three sets of weights/lunges.

The Murph said he was going to start doing more cardio and I thought he might do Spinervals today since he didn't do it last week.  He even told the spin instructor last week that he was going to start doing the spin class.  But just not today...  The closest the Murph got to the spin bikes was to give me a kiss goodbye and then he was off to the weight room.  It was probably a wise decision because for somebody who doesn't do a lot of intense cardio, that class will KILL you.  I told the Murph he would breeze through the weights part, but there's absolutely no way he would last through the spinning part.  Instead of considering that a challenge, the Murph said he would just come in and do the weights with us and go back out when we get back on the bikes.  Then he laughed and said "the dumbbells we use were just paper weights for girls and wimps."  (He said this followed by a Sylvester Stallone he man kind of laugh.)

After the class, the spin instructor came up to the Murph as we were doing crunches and in a deep, Sylvester Stallone voice, mocking the Murph,  said she thought the Murph  had said "I'm going to start doing spin class.  I need more cardio".  The Murph's mouth dropped open and he said "Hey, do I really sound like that??  That's what Kristy always does!  I don't really sound like that, do I??"

We just laughed.  Yes, he does sound like that!   I'd love to see his ass in that Spinervals class!  He'd never make it all the way through!