Half-Ironman Tryout Week

Well, I'm two days into my half-Ironman tryout week and so far, so good. While my first ever tri hasn't even happened yet (it's in one week and 5 days), I'm already looking ahead to what's next. I do have some exciting marathons on the books this Fall- Des Moines with my friend Sara and the Outer Banks, NC marathon which we're turning into a family vacation. But learning how to swim to do a tri is a short-term goal with the actual long-term goal being an Ironman. So while I'll be very excited if my Chicago Sprint Triathlon goes well, I'll be more excited about what it means.....time to think about an Ironman.

To that end, I decided this week would be half-Ironman tryout week (from now on, I'll refer to this as 70.3 which is the combined distance in miles of the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run that comprise the race). What I mean is, I plan to do the Level 1 Half-Ironman training schedule week 9 training plan from Matt Fitzgerald's Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide. Why week 9 and not week 1? Some of my friends and family who know me well might have their suspicions about why I'd start at week 9, but I'm not ready to disclose that master plan yet. At least not until after tryout week.

So what will this week's workouts entail? 3 bike rides (1 of which will be two hours long which is longer that I've EVER ridden), 3 swims and 3 runs. Of course, since I'm training for an October marathon, I must increase the distance of the longest run so I'm doing a 15 mile run rather than the 6 recommended in the plan as the longest run of the week. Plus I'm doing two weight work-outs. So the bottom line is this is a lot of exercising!

Yesterday I did speedwork- 1600m x 3 @ 7:21 pace and it went very well. Then I swam 1840 yards, my longest swim to date.

Today I ran 15 miles at a pace I'm pretty happy with- 9:18 min/mile. But, man, was the last mile rough. SO rough. I'm no where near marathon shape, good thing I still have a few weeks!!

I'm excited that I finally have time to embark on this type of training. I've been waiting for years to eek out just a little bit of extra free time to make this happen. Now is my time.