Friday 31 May 2013

Big weekend

Well here we go bikes washed, chain clean everything's packed to head out in the morning. I'm at my distance right now s s don't really need to go further but in going to attempt 120 !!
Only because I love to ride !!! 
Sunday I have the 2 km zoot open water swim, should be fun then I'm doing my long run but I'm doing it on the elliptical because I don't feel like injuring my ankle this late in the game ! 
Better get to sleep its gonna be a long one !




Thursday 30 May 2013

Flat again today

Tight and flat ! 
That's what todays training was like but once again I'm just going to train through this bit of a low spot.
I think it might have to go with the junk I'm putting into my body, my age old problem of no time has really effected me these last couple weeks also I have a tender ankle so all run training this week will on the elliptical to save any damage.
 

Tuesday 28 May 2013

Changes happen

Why do they happen ? What happens when they do? Well I guess we need to really look at the big picture and make the best of it ?
For some, our lives roll along a thousand miles an hour for others life just sits still like picture ! We change every day so just make the best of it and change with it ! 
We need to adapt and move forward play every day like it means something and don't look back, don't be afraid of change !!

Monday 27 May 2013

Still no time

Busy week once again ! Tonight DRTC meeting, tomorrow track night followed by the first meet and greet social, 
  Wednesday swim Thursday brick night Friday rest Saturday big ride Sunday first race of the year, 2 km open water cold swim ! Followed by an 18 km run then start all over again ! 
Very sore legs today ! Couldn't even touch them ! I hope they feel better by tomorrow ! This will be my last push before my first race of the year, I felt real good about 2 weeks ago with my run but it went down hill a little bit!
Good news for a couple friends of mine had a new member to their family ! Barry and Liz happy to hear that !!! Enjoy the new little one ! Start training early!


Race hard race smart !




Sunday 26 May 2013

Great day for a run

Maybe??????
This will be my last long run until I start training for muskoka 70.3 ironman race, and over the last week my runs have been terrible! I'm hoping for a good run but not asking to shatter any of my own P.B speeds just average will do !!!!!
I woke up this morning a little dehydrated so I'm going to take along some extra water and try to get that into me along with my regular gatorade, gels and cliff bars. Ill practice my race nutrition strategy, something I didn't have last year, but have figured out its importance this year!
There is a lot more "from fat to fit" blogs on the Internet now these days, I'm glad to see people are trying to turn their lives around! Its quite a job but totally possible!

I'm off for my run ! 21 km here we go !

Saturday 25 May 2013

Brutal bike ride today

The wind just didn't quit and it was cold !
My areo bar arm rest broke today so I couldn't go into aero at all and now  I realize how much I'm in aero !
Today we did lots of hill climbing, that was my main goal, I didn't pedal down the hills so I had to really work to get up!
For some reason I was down in weight again this week so I just carried on s s planned.
Tomorrow is my long run and then I'm going down in mileage one week earlier than last year ! All this talk about peek and hitting the mark are for pros not 270 lb guys just out there to keep fit ! Not to many people know what it takes to keep a big athlete going, all the triathlon rules are thrown out the window for me, I need to drink more, eat more and rest more, I demolish shoes in 150 km I bust bike parts and wheels.
So basically I'm writing my own rule book for big guys doing triathlons ! I will loose weight but in the mean time ill keep chugging along!



Friday 24 May 2013

Surprise weight loss

This week with my training load increase and watching what I eat I'm down to 278 lbs. on track to obtaining my goal of 270 by August 1 so I can register for Ironman Mont Tremblant!

Thursday 23 May 2013

30 days and counting

Yet another rough day ! Had a good look at the Syracuse bike course today on u-tube and let me say it doesn't look pretty the big climbs are like the Enniskillen hill so it should be a challenge !
My legs are just trashed had to skip today again hope to get some good sleep !!


This one picture below is the wall in Syracuse ! 
Look s hard !



Wednesday 22 May 2013

Ups and downs

I've come to terms with triathlon training and its ups and downs, last night I started my run and put about 2.5 km on my shoes and pulled the plug! Now that's not like me but I'm learning !
Monday was a holiday and I worked my ass off in the garden and back yard, it was harder than training for triathlon !!!
I think that had a good part in messing up my Tuesday run! Plus the crap I ate on the weekend didn't help either, which lead to my sub-par workout Tuesday night !
With my son starting baseball on Tuesdays and Thursday I figured I would change my schedule around but it will not work! I had a talk with my son today and explained to him that I would make most games and he said that's ok I know you want to be an Ironman !!! What a great little guy ! 
Everyone on my team is doing a great job keeping me on course this summer ! This being the second serious summer leading up to my full ironman next summer it should be interesting !
A few things hit me this season, one being the mental game ! There is a lot more to this sport than just training and racing, there is the whole mental aspect and I'm no pro but Id say its 95% of this sport is mental the rest just fills in!
The other part is nutrition ! I used to just eat and drink what ever when ever and now I time everything and its working out ok but with the warmer weather my sweat rate is changing so the next few warm workouts will have to be monitored close to make sure I'm taking in enough fluids.
I had a great ride today taking on some big hills to prepare for Syracuse 70.3 Ironman in 4 weeks !




Tuesday 21 May 2013

Not every workout is great

Bad day bad workout = frustration here is a good article I found 


Not every workout goes well. Your most challenging high-intensity runs are especially likely to be harder than expected, because they challenge your performance limits and thus require a level of mental and physical readiness that you don’t have every day. You can limit the number of bad workouts you experience by developing a training routine that balances training stress and relative rest in a way that works for you. But you will still have the occasional bad day.

How should you respond when you start a planned hard workout only to discover that you feel lousy and are perhaps unable to meet your performance goals for the session? Should you grind it out? Go easy instead? Just go home? The answer to all of these questions is yes. In other words, you have to treat each case independently and base your decision on the specific nature and degree of your bad day.

As a general rule, you should try to complete the workout as planned, but this is not always wise or even possible. When this is the case, there are four other options to consider. Let’s take a quick look at the five ways to respond to a bad training day.

Option #1: Grind It Out
If, after completing your warmup and starting the main portion of your workout, you discover that you feel “flat” but no worse, it is probably best to complete the workout as planned. Although it will be a little unpleasant and you might not hit your target pace or power numbers for the session, you will still get a good training stimulus. Also, I find that when I go ahead and grind through a workout that I was tempted to abandon, I feel really good about myself afterward and my next key workout is always much better.

Option #2: Ignore Your Watch
Some days your body just cannot perform at the same level you know it could on just about any other day. There’s nothing particularly wrong; you just lack the usual snap in your legs. It can be frustrating to perform key workouts in this condition and see pace or heart-rate numbers that are far off your targets. So why not just ignore the numbers and complete the planned workout by effort instead? You will get a stronger training effect than you would get from abandoning the workout, but without the frustration of measuring your subpar performance. Choose this option if, after warming up and beginning the main portion of your workout, you feel overwhelmed by the planned pace/heart rate but still able to do the workout if you just dial back the throttle a bit.

Option #3: Cut It Short
Suppose you warm up for a high-intensity workout and feel so flat that you can’t even face the planned session, yet you know that you will feel even worse mentally if you simply stop and go home. On these occasions, consider replacing your planned workout with a few very short, very high-intensity intervals. For example, replace a set of 5 x 3:00 intervals at VO2max intensity with 8 x 30-second relaxed sprints (95% of full speed). The reason this works is that fatigue tends to be compartmentalized within energy systems, and often fatigue that prevents you from performing well aerobically does not prevent you from performing well anaerobically. This phenomenon offers another possibility to salvage some kind of training stimulus and prevent a blow to your confidence even on those days when your body is less capable than expected.

Option #4: Go Easy
While fatigue is sometimes specific to the aerobic system, other times it is generalized, taking option three off the table. In these instances, your best choice is to perform a relatively short, low-intensity recovery workout. As you gain experience in training you will learn the difference between how your body feels when it is not ready for high-intensity aerobic training but still able to handle a few sprints and when it is not ready for any high-intensity training. Until you have that experience, default to option three on days when you feel flat, yet not so bad that taking the day off seems like the most sensible option. On some of these occasions you will discover that even your warmup don’t go well. Connecting this experience with how your body felt before you tried the workout will enable you to decide when you just need to go easy in future workouts.

Option #5: Go Home
On days when you feel lousy even at warmup intensity, or your muscles are extremely sore from previous training, or you feel the pain of an incipient injury somewhere in your body, let distrcretion be the better part of valor and take the day off. Know that it is the right decision and don’t let that paranoid inner voice tell you that you will lose fitness irretrievably unless you do some kind of workout. Live to fight another day!



I decided to go home ! Picked up after 3 km

Monday 20 May 2013

Good long weekend

Well it started good then Sunday rolled along, I was a little grumpy and not sure why but I think it was due to my time crunched life ! Sunday morning I ran 18 km and felt good, now it s not a speed thing but I was consistent, then it was onto the yard work and still behind the schedule I was wanting when a wheel-barrow fell over and hit my wife's ankle and it instantly puffed up bad!
We went to ermerg and let me tell you that was a treat, every idiot in Oshawa was there !!!
It turns out after the X-ray at the hospital Erin turned out ok just a little swelling and  internal bleeding which has stopped.
Today I made up for yesterday and just killed the yard work !!!
One problem was I ran out of time now I have no lunch for tomorrow !

We will figure it out!



Saturday 18 May 2013

100km Birthday Day Ride

Had another great ride today ! The my family took me to wild wing for supper !
It's my last weekend to eat crappy food ! Time to turn the dial to race mode and get ready for a fun summer of travel s s racing! 
18 km run tomorrow morning I hope the chicken wings don't mess it up! 


Great turnout at the Drtc ride today !

Friday 17 May 2013

First lake swim

Jumped in the lake today to check our new club swim location at a chilly 56* it wasn't too bad just on the feet and hands, nice to get in the water with the wetsuit ! 
I have a 100 km ride to do tomorrow then over to wild wing for my birthday dinner ! The only problem with that is it sure wont fuel my Sunday morning long run s s good as I'd like but is my last meal before my final attempt at fat loss !
We had a good turn-out from the board tonight to go over our plan for the first swim and I feel confident things are in order ! 
This is kind-of a sad weekend for me because for  a big part of my life this was my most favourite weekend of the year, the official weekend of the summer party season! But now I have a different kind of party, still with good friends and bikes but the bikes don't have motors and the friends are drinking Gatorade and gels instead of beers and bacon!
I'm still happy with my current life style and will see that even more when I hit the road in the morning with my friend Liz to meet the club in Brooklin. 
I will try for some pictures tomorrow morning for our club newsletter !

Have a great long weekend !

Thursday 16 May 2013

Trouble keeps adding up

So we signed my son JJ up for baseball and go figure, games twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday, two of the busiest weekdays of training for me.
I was thinking things over to try to switch my training days but we have already set the clubs days and completed the schedule.
Still training must go on so it will just be early in the morning s s later at night!
More ironman mountains to climb !!
My ankle has been acting up over the last week but I think it might be the shoes again I can't really get more than 100km out of my shoes because I'm to heavy !
(Think that s a sign)?
That's another reason why I didn't post for so long was I was thinking about tapping out, this being my third season and I'm still battling a weight problem, it s very frustrating to be addicted to food its just like a drug !!
I'm down 20 from Christmas but I should be at my goal weight long ago !
I have set a realistic goal for the season and a lot it depending on me reaching my goal !
I have 10 weeks to the first of August were I must loose 10 more lbs or I cancel my reservations in Mont Tremblant For volunteering and signing up for next years full Mont Tremblant Ironman.
If I don't have the discipline to drop ten more lbs I don't have the discipline for full ironman training.
I really want to be at my race weight of 220 lbs for the beginning of December when I start my full ironman training. I'm only setting small goals to start then getting bigger as I go!
Training is going very well for me right now I'm were I expected I would be and maybe even further, my cardio is way up and injuries are light, just that nagging ankle but I'm sure my weight isn't helping.


My battle continues!

New shoes again

So yes I've accepted I must buy new shoes once a month ! Well just until I get some weight off ! I have given myself a goal of ten less lbs by August 1 so I will weigh Monday morning and go from there ! 
I thought long and hard about making it twenty lbs but I'd like to keep things realistic, once I hit my ten lb goal I will rethink the time frame !
This topic along with my time crunched life is a regular topic that I have beat to death but this is it ! If I can't pull this one off I'm tapping out ! over and done with, which is sad but I'm not waiting my or my familys time or our money ! 
So I better make this one count ! 
I had a brutal ride tonight, wicked winds but I managed to stay out and stuff a 8 km run In after it, also with 45 minutes of cardio this morn I did pretty good !

Off to bed for an early morning swim tomorrow !!

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Monday 13 May 2013

Time to turn up the dial

Well 5 weeks till race day ! My "A" race, after Syracuse it s time to prepare for Ironman Mont Tremblant!
I'm very excited to start this part of my life and I know it will be hard but I'm sure ill be able to pull it off. I have an amazing team behind me and I have the motivation to train I just hope I can get the weight off ! 
I have almost thirty weeks before I start my ironman training and I would like to be at my lightest s s most fit time of my life for that!

I have come to the conclusion that I must buy a pair of shoes every month in order to keep my feet in good shape, and I'm hoping that my eating will get much easier s s the summer goes on and in can drop the weight for the race !

So my leafs lost but I'm still proud to be a leafs fan !!


Go leafs go !

Maple leafs

Good job team 

Sunday 12 May 2013

Heavy training weekend

100 km bike 14 km walk!
I decided to walk today instead of run due to the fact that my right ankle is a little tender and I want to nurse it to race day, so I will walk my distance until it feels better or race day comes.
Today it actually started to snow on us! I think we are crazy !!!!!
Welcome to Canada !
I'm still currently taking methotrexate and still hoping to get off it, next doctors appointment July 4 so ill stay on it until I hear otherwise, most weekends it doesn't effect me to bad as long as I drink plenty of fluids.
I see lots of people training through injuries and the best thing I can say is take it easy and listen to what your body is telling you !!!
Slow down ! Heal up and live to train another day !
I was training with my friend John today he hit the nail on the head when he said the hardest part is getting to the starting line happy and injury free.
I always listen to the veterans who have done what I'm attempting to do !

Go leafs Go !!!!!


Saturday 11 May 2013

Keep motivated

What to do when your motivation level goes down?
As needed a rest week rolls along, mine was scheduled to start tomorrow but it made it s own mind up and came this week, it s only another one of the hundreds of lessons learned as a new triathlete !
These are some of the valuable lessons learned to bring me to my next year of success in 2014 for my full ironman!
The rest week that made a surprise visit came from a lesson learned last year !!! It was the listen to your body lesson also a very important lesson because if you don't listen your body can shut things down for you, stopping any dreams of Ironman in its tracks! 
So make sure of a few things! Listen to your spouse! Listen to your doctor! Listen to your coach! Listen to your boss! 

AND 

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!!!!!!!

Have a great day ! 




Friday 10 May 2013

The long road

So entering into my third season, still strapped for time and tired (that will never change) with a strong support system put into place things are still trucking along!
I'm not one to usually miss a workout but this week I missed a couple, I've been tired and worn out and having a rest week, or just a little less week is still ok in my books !
I also had my third infusion of remicade a drug I'm taking in place of humira, the one that didnt work last season. This drug is $8700.00 per infusion and luckily I have good health care that take care of it. This drug has completely taken away my psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, I still have some pain in my ankle but I'm sure that's from running.
I'm going to see how it feels Sunday and I might do my long run inside on the elliptical and my running next week on it as well, but ill check after my long ride tomorrow with some good stretching and a hot tub if it feels ok ill run outside.
I'm going to take my 2nd brick away and do a 40 km ride Thursday instead of a 30 km and 8 km brick for the rest of my training then ill through a hour Lon elliptical Friday morning with a swim Friday evening.
We have our second club ride tomorrow morning, and hope another huge turnout. 
We are already at record numbers this year and hope to break 100 members !! That would be great!!!!!!

Better get to sleep big ride tomorrow



Just remember its ok to miss a workout if your sick and tired !!! 

You will get stronger !




Thursday 9 May 2013

Thoughts about my full Ironman

So I've talked to lots of Ironman athletes, and yes I'm a tiny bit nervous, Ironman training is very demanding as is race day, but I'm thinking the whole year leading up to it might be the overwhelming part.

 I'm working on my training plan for next year and I'd like to have it completed, at least the outer shell by next month.
I'm going to use a 38 week plan for my full ironman training, I know some people use 20 some 13, but for me I'm going to use 36. Why 38 you ask? Well I'm having 2 weeks of easy work back into it training followed by 22 weeks of winter off season training, capped off with 12 weeks of competitive training, then 2 weeks of taper.

From my tiny bit of experience, listening to ironman friends and being coached for two years along with attending my coaches clinic for two days I know I can pull this one off. 

I'm using my Syracuse 70.3 Ironman race as my "A" race in June then train for my bike race in July, then follow it up with a fun Muskoka 70.3 Ironman with my sister-in-law. After that I'm taking two weeks off then hitting the gym for cardio and weight training with no running till November to save my joints.

Then we have weight loss !!! What the heck am I going to do about that? Food to me is like a drug, very hard to isolate the issue but I'm close! More organization and planning is required to have food available at the right times to avoid snacking on junk.

Have a great day !! More excitement to come 

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Skip a work-out

Today I had to skip a workout because I'm just too tired ! I feel it's better to take a break than have a crappy workout !
I get real upset when I have a bad workout !
I also have some honking big blisters on my feet but that happens !!!
I have my remicade infusion tomorrow I hope it goes well, I usually feel crappy after that!
Off to bed have to train early tomorrow before the infusion !

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Welcome back

I have decided to post again, why did I stop? I felt there was enough people on the planet blogging about there ironman journey, but I really lost touch with why I was doing it ..... for me ! myself --- it kept my motivation up and helped keep me on track. So here we go again the next break I will take is after my ironman in 2014. 
Things are progressing well for my Syracuse 70.3 Ironman in 6 weeks my body is holding up, I have all good equipment, all the support in the world, I belong to an amazing club and my arthritis is 88% under control.
My races this summer are the Syracuse 70.3 ironman, 100km granfondo Ottawa my wife myself and my friend Liz are going to volunteer at this summers full Ironman Mont Tremblant so we can sign up for next years events.
To finish up my summer I'm going to try Ironman muskoka 70.3 again just to try for a better time that 8:10 minutes, although its just a fun race I'd like to do well!
Our club is growing with leaps and bounds with new routes and swim locations things are looking up although its lots of work it's very rewarding up carry on such a great club!

Monday 6 May 2013

You can bet I'm training hard

I don't have a good excuse for not posting lately but I'm planning on keeping things up to speed !