Weekly Weigh-in and Training Report

Week of August 29th - September 4th, 2010
This week has been draining, but in a good way. My body is tired, and I am hungry. I got in another long ride of 49 miles on Saturday with better fueling, that was a big improvement. I will be concentrating more on my nutrition during long work outs, especially bikes in the weeks to come so I can determine how to get the calories I need in preparation for the half marathon I will be running off the bike.

The numbers:
Average weight: 236.3 (down 2.6 lbs)
Swimming: 1 hour 55 minutes 33 seconds - 3800 meters
Biking: 4 hours 50 minutes 35 seconds - 82.62 Miles
Running: 3 hours 54 minutes 2 seconds - 22.65 Mi
Strength: 1 core session of 10 minutes

I think I may be running too much of a calorie deficit this week. According to my Garmin I burned 4200 calories during my long ride and I only had 2 Accel Gels (100 calories each) during the ride, and I only consumed about 2300 calories that day. Today I burned over 1800 calories on my run and I have consumed over 3000 calories, but I am still hungry. I am definitely losing weight, but I do not want to run too much of a deficit because it may be counter productive.

This upcoming week is a bike focus week, so there should be alot of big numbers for the bike. I am also going to start running at least 10 - 15 minutes off the bike every time I ride, to start acclimating my legs to it again. Bricks, how fun does that sound? I think I hear cheese cake calling my name, so that is all for now.

August 2010 in review

So, August is over. Most of the super hot days are behind us here in the South so training outside will be a little more tolerable for the new few weeks. I am getting into the meat of my training now as I have four races coming in the next few months, 2 runs and 2 triathlons. I am exited because 2 of the races will be my first races at the given distances and another, as I have mentioned previously, is the first race that I ever did, and it my first triathlon.

Here are the numbers...

August's totals:
Bike:	14h 22m 01s - 238.28 Mi
Run:	13h 21m 32s - 73.62 Mi
Swim:	4h 26m 51s - 9250 M
Strength:	1h 21m
Weight change:	-4 lbs (241lbs to 237lbs)

I ran less in August than I did in July, 73.6 miles in August versus 116.1 in July, but the paces for the runs in August were considerably faster. Most of July was running longer miles in the 11-12 minute per mile range. Where as in August I adopted the training plan for the Spinx Runfest half marathon and it is actually less miles per week than I ran before, but more structured and actually includes speed work.

I biked more in August than I did in July, 238.3 miles in August versus 133.8 in July. This is due to more consistent training in August than in July.

The same holds true for the swim, I swam more in August, though still not much overall, than in July with 9250 meters in August versus 1000 meters in July.

So the overall triathlon sport numbers definitely improved from July to August even though I took the first 4 days of August completely off. Besides those first four days of the month though, I only have three other days in the whole month that I did not do any triathlon training. Like I said August was much more consistent that July. In September I should see an improvement in performance compared to any other month this year as I am heading into the build portion of my triathlon season which has higher intensity training. This also means that I have a better chance of weight loss this month as I have also started tracking my caloric intake again meaning that I end up taking in fewer calories.

Well, we will see how September plays out, and soon I will write a post about my upcoming races and my goals for each race. So stay tuned...