Mid-Month Report

Other than a few "odds and ends" there really isn't much to report, so this entry is probably more for my records than anything else.  Basically I want to document my overall fitness level and weight right now.  

Fitness wise, I haven't been doing much.  Ironically, my main source of exercise is coming in the form of running.  Wow, that's odd for me to even think about.  In fact, no longer do I dread lacing up the kicks and going for a jog.  Maybe it's because I don't have to answer to a coach and worry about my results when I report them.  Maybe it's because I'm not worrying about hitting a certain pace for a certain period of time.  My runs now consist of me heading out the door and settling into a comfortable pace and going for between 3 miles and 6.2 miles.  If, on a particular day, my comfortable pace is 9 min/mile, than so be it.  If my next run produces an 8:15 min/mile pace, great.  Right now, my PR for a 10K is that 52:48 (8:30 pace) I did back on 09/23/2012 in the Nathan's Olympic triathlon.  This last Friday, I did an out and back (OAB) on a trail system near my house called "Reach 11."  Again, I set out with no particular pace in mind.  In fact, I was only planning on running for about 4 miles, but at mile 2, instead of turning around, I kept going.  Ultimately, I ended up just missing my PR by a mere 7 seconds (52:55 ~ 8:32 pace).  Believe me, had I known I was that close, I would have pushed it a bit more. (Reach 11 Run)  I have yet to ride my bike in January and today saw my first swim workout.  The swim was a 3950 with plenty of speed built in.  Speaking of swimming, it seems as though Frank and I have had a tough time connecting to officially start my swim training for those three big meets this year.  The USMS Spring National Championships in May are rapidly approaching.  I wouldn't say that I'm in danger yet, but I am losing training time and am getting rather antsy.  Finally, I was able to secure a nice 25% discount on some laser etched, fully customizable, goggles for ONE Multisport athletes.  I had a chance to wear them this morning and they are fantastic!  The mirrored lenses weren't quite appropriate for the darkness (we swim from 5:30AM - 6:30AM on Wednesdays), but they were super comfortable.  Here is a pic:

In my previous post, I sarcastically used the Schrodinger Equation to tell you that I gained about nine pounds since Ironman.  I say "sarcastically" because it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that a gain in weight always happens after an Ironman.  It's just the nature of things as the training decreases dramatically.  That being said, there must have been something wrong with the scale, or I just ate, or whatever, because that 9 pound increase seems to be an anomaly.  I've weighed myself 7 different times since then with the following results:

• 01/03/2013 = 160 lbs
• 01/04/2013 = 159 lbs
• 01/08/2013 = 159 lbs
• 01/11/2013 = 159.5 lbs
• 01/13/2013 = 161.5 lbs
• 01/14/2013 = 158 lbs
• 01/16/2013 = 157.5 lbs

If you recall, my race day weight, on 11/18/2012, was around 155, so in reality, I'm not far off that at all.  In fact, looking back during my training, I fluctuated primarily between 154 and 158.  Oh sure, there were a bunch of times where I checked in at 153 or 154 (I had one random day where 3 different attempts at the scale showed 150), but based on the recent data, and the fact that I'm still sticking to Eric's diet about 90%, I'm happy to see that I haven't really gained much at all in the last 2 months.