Big Month of July

The last full calendar month before Ironman always contains the biggest volume of training. Or at least it BETTER!! :)

This July I got in a good amount of training time even with a week of vacation tossed in the middle of it. Fortunately the va-kay was condusive to swim, bike, run... I hit nearly all of the prescribed workouts for the month and come into the last two big weekends and final week of real volume feeling good and in decent shape.

Hopefully it will payoff with a good race day performance come August 30th in Louisville.

July Totals:

• Swim: 39,800 meters, 12:01:54
• Bike: 561 miles, 31:05:05
• Run: 148 miles, 20:37:30

Keystone, CO Pics

A few pics I took with the iPhone during my long rides last week while on vacation with the family. On Sunday I rode from my dad's condo in Keystone - to Dillon - over to Frisco - up to Copper Mtn - up to Vail Pass - down to Vail - and back the same way to Keystone. 82 miles total.


Then on Friday, I added a trip up to Breckenridge once I got back from Vail and Copper Mtn. So... Keystone to Dillon to Frisco to Copper to Vail Pass to Vail... back to Vail Pass to Copper to Frisco to Breckenridge back to Frisco to Dillon. Whew!! Met A, Kels, my pops and family friends the Rimels for lunch in Dillon. 94 miles this trip. Awesome training in the altitude.



Lake Dillon is just beautiful. It's safe to say this is one of my most favorite places. See the rock cut out? That's where I'm headed to get to Frisco. Notice the reddish pine trees? Looks like smog or smoke against the mountains in the pic. But these are all dead trees from beatles. Thousand's of acres wiped out. (Buffalo Mtn on the left side and the Gore Range on the right)

From Dillon I rode over to Frisco then on up to Copper Mtn ski resort. Hard stretch as it appears you are on flat ground but it's uphill for 6+ miles. It is cool though as it runs between the mountains and the river.



The pic above was taken on the Frisco side of Lake Dillon looking back to the east. That's Frisco marina. The easy part of the ride is over. Time for some climbing!

Up to Copper Mtn from Frisco then the 6 mile climb up to Vail Pass. Elevation 10,660. It's not a terribly hard climb from the Copper Mtn side.



Looking back to the south from Vail Pass. You can see the slopes of Copper Mtn on the left side of the range. That's I-70 going down the hill.

So on to Vail about 15 miles from the summit here. All downhill to Vail which only means it's all back UP hill to get back here!



Pic above is the north side of Vail Pass heading for Vail. Black Lake 1 there. Once over the hill past the lake it's 6% grade to the bottom! 30-40 mph going down. 8-10 mph coming back! Still beautiful. The iPhone pic doesn't do it any justice. One note... NO RED TREES on this side of the pass! :)



This last pic is from the Tiki-Bar where we had lunch after Friday's 94 mile ride. Got in some good training up here considering it's over 9000 ft up here and almost zero oxygen.

Extending the Brick

Wednesday night is brick night... This week the time increased 15 minutes for the bike and stayed at 30 minutes for the run. I've been reading lately that most pro's / coaches recommend doing a transition run after every ride. I don't know if I'll be doing a run after "every" bike ride, but I do really like my Wednesday brick. Actually I look forward to it...

It's been very humid, as we all know who live and train in the midwest. However from here on out I am not going to complain about the weather. I was the one who signed up for an Ironman in Louisville, KY in August after all.

Let's just say last night was much lower in humidity than it's been lately and made for a much better workout... Better pace, lower heart rate. Still sweatin' like crazy while stretching after the run though. :)

Brick: 3 laps around Lakewood loop on the bike. Plus mile out and back to get in 1 hour. Then one lap around 4 mile loop. Legs pretty heavy and fatigued from Tuesday's run.

• Bike: 1:01:05, 20.12 miles (19.8mph), 128 avg hr
• Run: 32:28, 4.14 miles (7:51/mi), 152 avg hr

4th of July Weekend

Great weekend so far. Friday morning was one of the most fun workouts I've ever done. Hugh put it together for us and several of us who had the day off got together for the fun. Andrea even came out and provided support for us and get in a couple miles running herself!

Here was the plan...
At 5:45 am, Hugh, Jared, Brian and I loaded our running stuff into our car and then we took off on our bikes for Lee’s Summit West high school. It’s about 11 miles to the school from my house. We met Eric, Scott, David and Clark who came out from Eric’s house to meet us at West. Andrea was already there with our running shoes etc.

The plan for this track was 2 x 1 mile repeats. Planned to run 8:00 then 7:50 but you get several triathletes together and the pace will always be faster. We ended up running them both back to back at 7:17.

So done there, put our running stuff back in the car, and headed to Lee’s Summit high school. Here we ran 4 x 800’s with a 200 recovery. Ran these pretty hard and each one faster than the last, but still felt pretty good.

Okay, running shoes back in the car, us back on the bikes. Now a short ride over to Lee’s Summit North. Here we ran 4 x 400 with 200 recoveries. These got a bit painful as the legs were getting toasty from this TRIPLE BRICK workout!

It was looking like rain and pretty dark in the west so we grabbed a couple cookies Andrea had made for us and got back on the bikes to head for home. We made it almost all the way back when the rain started.

Rounding a sharp turn, Hugh went down hard bending his rear derailer and came away with a good bit of road rash on his arm and a bruised hip. Jared narrowly missed him and did a 180 in the road skidding around him. Brian and I were lucky enough to slow and stay upright.

We all limped back home in a pretty steady rain. Aside from Hugh crashing, it was a great morning and a really fun workout. We’ll be doing that one again soon I hope.

Logged about 25 miles of riding and 6.6 miles of running for the workout.

Saturday I’d planned to meet Jared, Brian and some other Bike Stop guys at 6am for a ride to Lexington and back then get in a 45 minute transition run. However it was pouring down rain when I got up and so we decided to wait until 7:30 to meet up. The roads were still very wet when I got moving at 6:30 so I decided to just wait a bit longer for the roads to dry out and ride local.

By 8:30 it was drying up so I headed out about 9am and road 12 loops around Lakewood with one of the loops going down behind the golf course. Got in my 4 hours (76 miles) then transitioned to the run. What a difference a week and 25 degrees makes. Last week I barely made it a mile on the run. Today I was able to get the full 45 minutes in. Felt good the entire time. It was still a bit warm, so when I got back to my street, I walked on down and jumped in the lake to cool off. Wow did that feel awesome!

Sunday, I met Jared, Troy and Eric on the little blue trace for the weekends long run. I'd set out water and gatorade on the south end and Jared set water at the 78 hwy shelter to the north so we wouldn't have to carry fluid on the run. We ran rather easy again this week for the first 12 miles then Jared started to pick it up. Once I figured out he wasn't going to slow down I picked up my pace to catch up to him and we really pushed it the last 2.5 to 3 miles.

Considering we both had long rides and trans runs the day before it was good to see we could push the pace at the end.

Run Stats: 15.1 miles, 2:04:03 (8:13/mi), 134 avg HR/ 172 max