Changes Update

So part of the changes I've made include my diet. I joined a new gym recently and with it get two free sessions with a trainer/nutritionist I can use how I want. We talked about nutrition mainly and made the decision to cut down to 2000 calories/day based on 5 meals of 400 calories each. Since I'm adding muscle now that I'll shed once my endurance activites pick up more, we're looking at 160-170g or protein per day and each meal generally not having more than 10g of fat. Keeping sugars low which means no pop or Starbucks; no white breads (not a real problem for me), not much of things like orange juice, etc.

My initial thoughts? So far I've been able to stick to it but I had a follow-up discussion and asked how the hell they expect people to stick to a diet of water and whey protein shakes. I understand the science of it but disagree with the practicality of it. That said, I'll stick to it for a bit, see if I get some results and re-evaluate.

One other thing I've realized is that with only 400 calories/meal, I'm always hungry. There may be a 30 minute window after a workout that I'm satisfied, but otherwise I'm hungry. To be fair, I was probably over-eating before and my body needs to adjust, but I also think what I've been told is more of a gym rat approach and less of an endurance approach. I owe a visit to my old coach who is very "up" on all things nutrition so I'm gonna run it by him sometime soon.

Other updates? Well, I went to yoga the day after a really hard workout (with weights) and my arms were shaking doing the simplest things. Needless to say it made for a long session. It was also a pretty hard session, but I enjoyed that aspect of it. New things I hadn't done before, including a headstand. That was going well until my arms gave out and I came tumbling down. Good thing it wasn't a crowded class!

Spent the day today up at Keystone skiing on my teles. Doing a thousand lunges down the side of the mountain two days removed from a solid legs workout isn't the smartest thing, but I felt as good on the teles as I ever had. Pretty happy with the day.

Some Changes Comin'

After going back and forth for the first half of January I've finally decided to make some changes in how I train. Since this is kind of an experimental season I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want. That could mean my new plan with either be a good idea or a bust but either way I'm going to stick it out.

Let me set the stage first. At the end of last tri season when I was riding my MTB a lot more and then throughout CX season I realized I don't have a lot of explosive power on the bike. Being able to make sudden bursts with a lot of power is fairly important in those races, particularly in cyclocross since they say how you get off the line at the start is about 25% of the race. Guess where my position was coming off the line? Ready? Yep, close to last. I'd go hard but there wasn't enough power there to make a difference. That's gonna change.

I've decided to start a dedicated weight program that incorporates plyometrics, building up my core strength, and gaining some explosive power. It doesn't need to last long, but it needs to be there when I need it. I'm not getting overly carried away as I'm going to do it twice each week through March. And of course I'll still be swimming, cycling and running on every other day. I have no idea what the end result will be but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens just the same.

Along the same lines I'm making some changes to my diet. Better foods, less sugars and crap. I'm also going to start with aiming for 2,000 calories/day and adjust from there. I have a feeling that's going to leave me feeling hungry and weak but I'd rather start under than over. I'm certain this plan will by no means be executed with perfection but I'm still going to give it a real shot. Hopefully I'll have some good results to show for it once the season gets underway.

Tentative Schedule

Here we go. I'm not committed to any of these races yet since I haven't registered for any of them, but it's a good idea of how my racing season will shape up. There are a couple races out there right now that aren't sure if they're able to be held this year or not so they may get added. At the same time, life happens and if something needs to get scratched I'm not going to worry about it.

Like I've said before, this season has a heavy concentration on mountain bike racing and I'm currently working on building up my new mountain bike which I'm pretty excited about. More on that some other time, but it's a Yeti ASR (alloy) with SRAM X.O. It'll be a good deal lighter than my Yeti 575, but again, more on that later.

Tentative Schedule:

• 5/2/10 - Lookout Mountain Hill Climb (road bike)
• 5/29/10 - Pelicanfest Sprint Tri (road)
• 6/12/10 - Winter Park Hill Climb Kick-Off (MTB)
• 6/26/10 - XC Super Loop (MTB)
• 7/4/10 - Firecracker 50 (50-mile MTB race)
• 7/17/10 - Xterra Mountain Cup - Beaver Creek
• 7/31/10 - Crankworx CO XC (MTB)
• 8/8/10 - Xterra Indian Peaks
• 8/29/10 - Xterra Lory

And oh yeah, just for the hell of it I threw my name in the lottery for Leadville 100. I'm sure they'll have record entries this year and I won't get in but it's worth a shot. If I do get in you can bet your ass I'll do everything I can to come in under 12 hours and get that belt buckle!

I like this schedule since it's a little more rear-end loaded which means I'll be starting out a little slower and starting to come around somewhere in mid-June. I'm hoping it will also set me up nicely for a solid cyclocross season and I'll post that schedule later on in the Fall.

YOA Weekend Kickoff

What is YOA? Year Of Awesome. It's been so long since I've updated this that I don't remember if I've mentioned this or not. Not my idea, but one of my friends, Brant. It sounds pretty self-explanatory but that just may be because we've been repeating it for a while now. Anyway, to celebrate we headed up to Breckenridge and got a condo for the weekend. I'm sure there were plenty of highlights to go around, but in a nutshell, I still suck at beerpong. Both nights. Fortunately for me Brant does not and that's what saved us on the first night, and kept us in the running the second night. However, there is something I am good at and apparently it's choking out someone that weighs about 40 pounds more than me. Being the mature people we are, sometimes we wrestle when we drink and OG (Nate) was the instigator. Having not learned his lesson when Brant (a much more fair weight class match-up) almost choked him out earlier, I sunk it in and forced the tap. However, I think he got his revenge when we got back to the beerpong table.....

We did ski as well and were able to hit up Vail. Aside from seeing my friends Ben and Jamie who I went to Marquette with, the actual skiing was uneventful since the snow wasn't that good. Still, it was good to see them.

Workouts are still chugging along. I have a tentative schedule for my races that I'll probably firm up sometime this week. In preparation for it I'll keep sticking with yoga and the cross-training class that I do. I've mentioned it before but I really think that even though I may give up some speed by kicking out a swim/bike/run a couple times a week, I'll gain some valuable strength that will make my body more durable. I've already done a good job of neglecting the swim so maybe it's time I get in there a bit more consistently. I was hoping that the pool at my new gym would be opening up soon but it looks like that will be delayed for a few months unfortunately. It will be much easier to get in a quick swim over lunch than it is before work!

So Far So Good

So far the year's started off pretty good on the workout front. Slowly working on getting back into it and getting into a rhythm again. It's a bit different without a set plan to follow but I also kind of like that. Even though I probably have a good running base from the December challenge, I've kept my runs short and around the half hour mark. One of the reasons is that I hate running on the treadmill and a half hour is about my limit on there. On the bike I've hit a couple sessions on the trainer doing some repeats of watt-based workouts I did last year. I haven't done a test just yet to see what my FTP is so I used the same zones I started with last year. The good news is it's felt easier than I remembered. Hopefully some of the CX season paying off. Also, with the weather being pretty nice this weekend I was able to get outside on my bike both days. The cross bike was perfect for those rides with some snow patches still on the sidewalks. Finally, I'm not sure which is more shocking - that I went to yoga for the first time or that I got back in the pool.

The pool was pretty uneventful. Since I haven't been in the water since August I started nice and easy. Actually, Chad and Rick probably both have more yards in one swim session than I've done in two but I'm completely fine with that. I figured I'd go until my form was really starting to suck and not surprisingly, it wore me out. I was more tired than I should have been the next day but it felt good to be that tired from a workout even if it was pretty damn short.

On the yoga front, it wasn't all that bad. I went to a place that started out with a one-on-one which was perfect since I didn't know anything. A few days later I went to a class and it went well. I can see why people get into it since, if nothing else, it makes you focus on yourself for an hour. With that in mind I'll probably go back. Besides, I'm 100% convinced that yoga pants make all girls butts look fantastic.

New Year, New Goals

Happy New Year! New year, new job, new beginnings, new outlook. And somewhere in there is new goals but I haven't quite gotten around to figuring out what those might be just yet. The new job I'm excited about. It's interesting and there's a lot of information there that can complement and build on the foundation I have right now, and hopefully set me up for more in the future.

I ended December on an decent note, getting sick notwithstanding. The running challenge went okay, though I missed more days than I intended. I'm not sure of my final mileage but I think it's fair to say it was somewhere around 90 miles. To put it in perspective, that's closer to the mileage I was running when I was peaking last year, and right around the same as what I was running when I was training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene. From a pace perspective, depending on the day, I'm somewhere in the low 8s or high 7s which is more of an April/May pace from 2009. Point being, my running has a good start for 2010 and now it's time to get my swimming and cycling in gear too.

So what's in store for 2010? Good question. My outlook is a little different. I'm not really making any resolutions or anything like that, and at this point I don't have any concrete goals. What I'm going on right now is 1) to be open to new things in all facets; and 2) enjoy myself more. I'm sure #1 can take on a lot of forms, but for starters, since Rick (Lapinski, not my dad), and likely Susan as well, have talked about how much they like yoga for so long I finally decided to give it a try. Haven't gone yet but it's on the way. All I'm hoping for is some help in tuning up some core strength and seeing what it's all about. As for #2, it's really about having less structure in training. I'm still planning on training hard but if something comes up and friends want to go ride on a day I was planning on running/swimming, or go fly-fishing instead, I'm not going to stress about a missed workout here and there so I can enjoy myself more.

The real change will be that I'm racing off-road tris more this year and only expect to be on my tri-bike in a couple races. I'll also be racing my mountain bike and am looking forward to that. I think in the long term it will add some good strength to my cycling and set me up better for cyclocross season and future seasons with road tris.

In the two quick runs I've done so far this year I've done the same route. Yesterday was at an 8:11 pace and today was at a 7:51 pace. No idea what the difference was but I definitely felt better today and could've kept going for a while. I like that feeling.