Training while traveling

This week, I had my first experience maintaining my training while on business travel. Although it took a little more logistical planning, it ended up being successful. Work brought me to midtown Atlanta from Monday through Thursday this week. On Monday, I completed my morning swim in Birmingham before getting on the road for a noon appointment in Atlanta. I completed my next swim with the Dynamo Masters Wednesday evening. With a variety of swimmers, including a couple with Olympic Trial cuts, the 3600 meter long course practice provided an excellent workout. I returned to Birmingham Thursday night, just in time to get a good nights rest for my normal Friday morning swim. Since my hotel was right in the middle of downtown, I decided to bring my indoor rollers instead of braving the Atlanta traffic on my bike. I maintained my cycling fitness with two one hour sessions on the rollers. Finally, I made great use of the hotel treadmill with two run sessions totaling about 10 miles. Although it wasn’t a tough training week for me, it was enough to maintain my fitness while traveling.

Proper Rest

The switch from daylight savings reminded me of another crucial part of training: PROPER REST. As a general rule, I try to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night. This means getting to bed before 10:00 pm on nights where I intend to work out in the morning. For reasons I have yet to determine, my body seems to be taking much longer to adjust to the time change than in years past. Since I haven’t been falling to sleep until 11pm to 12am lately, I have been skipping morning workouts and trying to make up for it in the evening. Rather than trying to work out on 5 or 6 hours of sleep, I feel that it is far more important to get a proper night of sleep and get the most out of one evening workout rather than two-a-day. Medical studies have shown how the body can break down very quickly without proper rest. Since day jobs and emergencies tend to interrupt evening workouts far more than morning workouts, I am looking forward to getting over the time change soon.

Training update

Originally, I planned to run the Perseverance 5k this past Saturday. I like to run occasional 5k races as a speed gauge. For the 10k run in Xterra, 5k runs are a useful tool to determine how much speed work I need. Unfortunately, the freezing temperatures and slick roads kept me indoors for the day. Instead of lying around the house, I did find the motivation to get a good two hour “brick” workout in. For those new to triathlon, a brick workout is basically just a workout that includes at least two tri sports back to back. The idea is to acclimate your body to using the different muscle groups required for different sports back to back. Anyway, my indoor workout on Saturday included 40 minutes on my rollers followed by a 20 minute run at 10mph. I repeated this twice. With daylight savings ending, race season is just around the corner. It’s crucial to stay healthy and consistent with training, despite what mother -nature decides to do.

Final Snake Creek Gap

This past weekend marked the final Snake Creek Gap Time Trial for the year. I went into the final event feeling very strong and confident. The excitement of the final race caused me to start out much faster than usual. Unfortunately, this left my energy reserves depleted before the last 4 miles. The extreme technical difficulty and climbing in last 4 miles of this event will make or break your time. Unfortunately, it broke me this time. I ended up about 3 minutes slower than my fastest time trial on this course. However, considering all of the variables of mountain biking, that is pretty insignificant for a 34 mile mountain bike ride that takes around 3.5 hours. I hoped to take another 5-10 minutes off of my time from the last event. However, it was still a strong showing and I even won my class. In the end, this event will go a long way to ensuring a successful triathlon season. Since this ride was much more difficult than anything I will encounter during the cycling portion of triathlon races, it will serve as a great mental edge.