If you have the time...read this guys blog

http://www.jeremysartain.com/

This is a MN guy that was in a bad motorcycle accident in May (go back to May 2008 post for the accident info) and completed the IronMan World Championships in Kona in 2008. (He qualified in 2007.) Pretty amazing!

I found my name confirmed in the participant list! I noticed my credit card cleared but this really makes it official. Now if I could start training again... I'm hoping to spin on Saturday and swim at Masters on Sunday. I HOPE! Fingers crossed!

Still Down...

I'm still having issues. How frustrating this is! I have been swimming and going to yoga and doing lots of stretching and foam rollering. I'm going to have to step this up so I can get better. I'm going to try Advil everyday, wear my knee brace around the house and start MSM to help the cells in my joint. I thought I would be back working out by now. There is some swelling under my knee I noticed last night. I should probably be icing this as well. I should have waited longer to start this - one week after the marathon was too soon now. . . I know that for sure.

First Injury : (

I went to Masters Swimming on Sunday morning and by the time I was done I limped out of the pool very slightly. My coach noticed and I told her my left knee is sore and has been since the marathon and politely told her that she is breaking me! She told me to use my foam roller and showed me what to do. I was literally foam rolling around on a slippery pool floor in my swimsuit with an audience. I felt like a fish floundering around. I first rolled over my hips, ouch. Then the front of my quads and 3/4 side of my leg (really hurt). She then told me that since it's my left IT band then my right side under my arm will hurt. Boy was she right. When I rolled on that area I got tears in my eyes. I went home and caused myself a lot more pain but I wasn't limping anymore. I even foam rollered before I went to work. I'm supposed to lay my injured area on the roller with all my weight holding me down and stay that way until the pay is gone and the muscles relaxes. Imagine being really tight and sore and getting a massage and having the therapist press into that area as hard as they can without letting up until the pain is gone...that's what the foam roller does for you. I was supposed to run 45 minutes on Sunday but I skipped it. I just didn't feel good about it with my knee as sore as it is.

Take it Day by Day, Month by Month

I'm on a rest day today! I made it three whole days of work-outs. My bike is still the toughest for me. The swim was just fine except I didn't do any of the paddle/pull buoy workouts because my shoulder is still sore. The run was the most frustrating because I wanted to 'run'. In order to keep my heart rate 134 - 145 (zone 2) I basically had to run 80 steps, walk 30. I thought the run would maybe take an hour since it was 6 miles and I knew it would be slower. Once I started and realized how slow going this would be I didn't check the clock when I finished. I would just get going and have to walk. A speedy walk wouldn't keep me in the zone I needed and running how I normally run was too high. Despite the slow run

I was thinking about all this and how to keep myself motivated...

I decided that once a month I will get a massage on my rest day (something to look forward to). I scheduled my first one on Oct 28. I'm lucky enough to work at a place where I can just go to the fitness center and sign up for a massage during work hours. : )

I'm just going to take it one week at a time, basically rest period to rest period.

At the end of each month I'll total up how many miles I swam, biked and ran. That should be motivating!

One down and 395 more to go!

As I was doing my very first workout, which in theory should be the easiest, I figured out that I have 396 of these workouts to do in the next 11 months. The countdown begins! I think in my last post I said biking for 1 hour would be 'snore city' but actually I found myself checking the clock quite a bit to see when I was done because I was dripping sweat (now I know why they sell sweat aprons for on your bike, I might need to get one of those). Olaf asked what tomorrow was and I said "swimming, fun"...then I totaled up the yards. My first swim is 1.2 miles of "fun". Really?? The first swim is half the IronMan distance of a swim. What will I be doing in April if this is my first and second day of training.

"Oh my gosh, I haven't seen this in a long time"

That was the words from my trainer on Saturday when she read my Vo2 numbers. I guess my base heart rate should be about 30 beats less then my threshold for starting a training plan. Mine is only 20. That means I'm race ready and she called me "reved up". She asked how I have trained and I told her I just bike 30 miles one day and go 16 MPH and the next week I bike 45 miles and try to go 16.5 MPH, etc. Not great base building at all. I just go harder, faster and farther each time I swim, bike or run. It's not a bad thing that I have done to myself it's just that I'm a little too geared up. Olaf agreed without any hesitation when I asked him if I seem reved up. My life has always been Go-Go-Go.

I'm starting my training today and I have to keep my heart rate down and go slow to build a base. This would be a good time to take Chilly running again. Maybe she would actually be able to keep up if I kept a 'normal' pace and jogged/walked instead of running.

My first day of training is biking for 1 hour at about 135 heart rate - snore city!

The Bag Lady

I ran the very wet and cold Medtronic TC Marathon on Sunday....my final marathon before hitting it hard in training. I didn't mind the forecast talking about spotty showers because I thought it would be good training to run in the rain. I have gotten caught in the rain for maybe 45 minutes while running in the summer. That's relaxing and fun in the warm rain. I have never ran in cold driving rain coming off the lakes and sneaking under your poncho rain. Luckily I bought an 'emergency rain poncho' at the marathon expo and secured it in the pocket of my running shirt with a safety pin so it didn't bounce out along the way. I actually put it on before I hit mile 1 and left it on for 2 hours and 40 minutes, but who's counting? I wore a visor to hold the hood in place and a race belt to keep the poncho from blowing up but I was still rain soaked. Oh yea, I even rang out my visor twice while running and you would think it wouldn't hold much water. Here's a pic of my cool running outfit. I did have a guy yell out "Go bag lady" to me. I looked around for the bag lady and realized it was me. I yelled back "It's a poncho. It has a hood!"

I'm Superior - that's what it says!

I did my final Vo2 test yesterday. If you are wondering it measures the volume of oxygen that your body can take in and process . It will give you a base heart rate of where you should be training and your threshold of when you cross into the lactic acid filling your muscles zone. The more oxygen you can take and process the better you are because it helps clear the lactic acid from your system. You don't want that building up because it slows you down. The ultimate goal is to increase your VO2 while moving your base heart rate up as high to your threshold as possible. You wear a mask while you are being measured with a tube attached to a machine. I felt like an anteater, not that I know what they feel like, but I'm guessing they feel that way.

A VO2 test usually tells you a lot more than just your max VO2. Aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, calories burned at various intensities, and energy system development are also quantified.

I thought it would have been terrible since I haven't been running. It turns out that I did extremely well. I don't want to brag but I'm in the Superior category. A highly trained athlete category! Apparently I can run and run at a pretty good fast pace and won't build up lactic acid for quite sometime. This means I'll be spending a lot more time on my bike during base training. I'm really excited to see where I will be in 4 months after base training. Now I know why I like running marathons and the longer the race the better for me. I feel like I'm just getting warmed up during sprint tris - probably because I am.