IM Date: 6/30/10 - Week 10

We are past the half-way point now and the biggest change we will see over the next month is in our cycle training. Our "long rides' get longer and longer, building up to our 7+ hour ride at the end of July.

Speaking of cycling, last weekend we rode in the inaugural LifeTime Gran Fondo ride. It was a 100k (62 mile) ride that started and ended in Mound, MN and wound around through towns like Delano, Watertown and Minnetrista. It was long, it was hot and it was VERY hilly. It was a great training ride.

This weekend is the 4th of July and we have a race coming up...more on that soon!

IM Date: 6/21/10 - Week 9

Week #9 is upon on and all I can say is: "...holy crap am I tired!" I feel like I'm still kind of recovering from running Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. This past weekend's long run (Saturday) and ride (Sunday) were tougher than they really should have been and I felt it again when we ran and lifted lifted this morning. This week we up our long ride to 5 hours, which we will do as part of the Lifetime Fitness "Gran Fondo" (which I believe is Italian for "big ride") ride on Sunday. It will be nice to do a long ride in a new place...the trails of Elm Creek are starting to get boring. But starting this week the time/mileage increase and we will start having to travel to find longer trails for the next month or so anyway.

So hopefully I'll shake this fatigue this week and things will get back to normal! After this week we'll be at the half-way point of training. It's going fast!

More to come...

Bri

IM Date: 6/15/10 - Week 8

Week #8 of 18...almost half way through training...yikes! The legs are finally starting to almost feel normal again after the marathon. This week our long ride is only 3 hours on Sunday, but we add an additional 2 hour ride during the week.

I'll be curious to see how lifting all the way through the training program affects my performance in August. Last year I stopped lifting a few months out, partly due to injury and part to just not having the time. But this year I plan to lift all the way through.

The weather has kind of sucked as of late, which has forced me to do more indoor training, but hopefully that will change soon. Riding the trainer is fine...but it doesn't really compare to attacking a real hill at the end of a long ride.

Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

Back soon,

Bri

IM Date: 6/8/10 - Week 7

Lucky #7...and back to "normal" training this week. The race Sunday went well, I broke my PR by 14 seconds, and the 3:50:00 mark, which was nice. Jodee and I ran the entire race together (aside from my 'pit-stop' at mile 5) and felt pretty good. It was a bit hotter than I expected, and even more hilly than Jodee warned me about. But again, it was a good race and I look forward to going out even more aggressive at the Twin Cities Marathon in October.

But like I said it's "back to normal" now for Iron Man training. We'll lay off the running until the weekend (I think), and Sunday we'll do a 4 - 5 hour ride. I'd like to get in the pool twice this week and we'll start lifting again on mid-week.

That's all for now...back soon!

IM Date: 6/4/10 - This thing is amazingly cool!

Wow...this thing is cool! No headphones or ear buds of any kind...just these things that clip on your goggles and WHAM!!! Great sounding music! I have to say I was very skeptical of how these were going to work and how they would sound. But it's cool. Very cool. And they will make long swim training just a little easier.

Rock on!!!

IM Date: 6/1/10 - Week 6 - Race Week

It's RACE WEEK!!! I can't believe it's taken until June for us to do our first official "event" of the season! So this week, being a week in which we need to taper down, will see us straying away from the IronMan program a bit. I'll still do all of the different kinds of workouts, just nothing very long or hard this week.

The Minneapolis Course this year looks pretty tough...lots and lots of hills, along with the chance of it being a very warm and humid day. So comparatively I will take it "easy" this week and try to rest as much as I can. Later this week we'll start to get more carbs in each day...hopefully close to 500 grams.

I'm also excited to try out our new mp3 player we got for swimming...no headphones, it works through the bones in your face. Freaky, huh?!?!? I plan to swim in the morning and will give a full review ASAP!

Until then...have a good one!

Bri