The Numbers....

My side of the story...hmmm...I think correcting some of Trent's untruths would be more accurate. Not knowing what a blog is and being sensitive to the swim, well one of these is correct. Perhaps I will go into further detail in a later blog posting.

Where to begin. I could start when I set a goal to someday do an Ironman. That would take me back to 1982, watching Julie Moss, punch drunk staggering across the finish line on ABC's Wide World of Sports and thinking to myself, that looks like fun! But if I started there, that would leave Trent out since he was probably still in diapers.

I could fast forward to 1987 when I did my first triathlon sprint in Franklin Lakes, NJ. I wish I kept a record of how I did but blogs didn't exist then. I do remember swimming side stroke, backstroke, maybe some modified freestyle and getting yelled at by a lot of annoyed swimmers. Hmmm, I might just have given away what truth Trent spoke of earlier.

No...I think I will begin with the end, the end of the 2009 racing season and talk about some of the numbers. Since race organizers typically like to stick a marathon at the end of most ironman races I decided that it would make good sense to run my first marathon without having to swim 2.4 miles and ride 112 miles first.

On a cold and rainy Sunday, October 18th if was off to Lowell for the Bay State Marathon. I won't bore you with a full race report but at mile 21 I was running with, at the time the 2nd place women and another runner when up in the distance we saw, at the time, the 1st place women. For the next 2 miles I got to witness a race within a race which took my mind off of the last 5 miles. The pass was quick and decisive giving the eventual second place female finisher no hope of retaking the lead. I actually ended up finishing 46th, finishing right after the first female and right before the second female in a time of 2:52:27. So yes I got "chicked" but it wasn't by Raelyn so I could live with it. I discovered that marathon racing is not like shorter races (1/2 marathon or less) where your lungs feel ready to explode at the next turn. Marathons are more of a grind, more of a mental race. Good to know.

So as Trent mentioned earlier the training is getting tough, difficult to hit those heart rates, difficult to even think about getting on the bike at times. So just what went into preparing for Ironman Utah. As I mentioned earlier, the beginning of training started with the marathon followed by 4 weeks of no swimming, biking or running of any kind. The goal for the next 4 weeks was to add some fat in order to add muscle down the road.

On November 16th, 2009 24 weeks of training began. Eight(8) base weeks, eight(8) build weeks, four(4) peak weeks, finishing with a three(3) taper weeks and race week. That adds up to a total of 396 hours of training or an average of 16.5 hours per week. The hours peaked at 23.75 hours during an overload week. Total miles: Swim 99, Bike 3,963 (3,800 of those miles were in my basement) and Run 742.

Officially...my first blog posting is in the books, and we even have our first follower so we must be doing something right even if we had to beg Molly.