My Training Plan

First off – don’t you just love the new McDonalds Filet-o-Fish commercial where the guy gets a message on his blackberry from the singing fish? I do. It cracks me up every time I see it. We DVR all our shows and actually rewind every time the commercial comes on. It has both my boys wanting to try fish for the first time ever. The jingle would make a great ring tone too.

Filet-O-Fish commercial 2010

Anyway, I just got back from my second chiropractor visit this week. I originally was seeing her 3 times a week for two weeks, then 2 times a week. That was supposed to last for 3-4 weeks but I’m progressing well and have been dropped down to one visit a week. This is great news. This means I am getting stronger and am able to hold the adjustments she makes for longer periods of time. She did a review of my progress today. My pain is almost 100% gone and the mobility in my neck is greatly improved. I was able to do so much more than I could just 4 weeks ago.

This past week I have been working on setting up my training schedule for the 26 weeks prior to September 12th. Eric sent me a blank template to get me started. I have been staring at it for the last couple of weeks hoping it would fill itself in. When that didn’t work, I decided to fill it in myself. I got a book from the library a while ago called “Triathlete Magazine’s Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide: Plans, Scheduling Tips, and Workout Goals for Triathletes of All Levels.” It is a simple book in that it really only just provides you with training plans. There are 10-12 levels for each distance – Sprint, Olympic, Half-ironman and Ironman. I chose Half-ironman Level 2. It says it will give me a little more than the bare bones minimum for a half-ironman finish. I definitely want to do more than the minimum but also don’t want to over do it either. If (when) I make it through this one, I can bump up the intensity next time. Right now my main goal is to finish.

Training includes nine workouts per week and starts with 4,300 yards of swimming, 3hours 5 minutes of cycling and 2 hours of running the first week. It peaks with 7,050 yards of swimming, 5hours 55 minutes of cycling and 2 hours 20 minutes of running three weeks before the race. Scary. Scary.