March Meeting Minutes-Junk Miles or Strength Miles?
Another month has whirled right past us. I think it flew by me somewhere on Shadow Mountain... or maybe it was on Epic; I'm not really sure where it went to be honest. But we are all here sitting around the dinner table again, which proves we are another month closer to Canada, talking about what has been accomplished and what we want the future to look like. Sonja made great pizza dough and brought delicious fixings, including pesto, for us to make 3 homemade pizzas and Anthony brought the beer!
One of the big topics of discussion this evening was about junk miles. What are junk miles? We decided on 4 things that prove we are not doing junk miles:
1. What is our goal and what are we willing to do to accomplish our goal? Think about professional athletes. Why can they ride hundred mile rides back to back to back to back to back and not have people call their mileage junk? It is their goal. It is what they are willing to do to win races or stages. Our goal is to race Ironman Canada and to participate in this over distance training experiment. We set out to run 50 mile runs, ride 225 mile bike rides, and swim a 10K and have a 17 hour training day.
2. Know and understand the objective of our workouts. In this type of training it is not all about speed and high intensity. Understanding there are going to be days to call workouts; calling a workout because of pain or lack of recovery is par for course. We are discovering that our mental tenacity and strength is improving from all of the long distance training. We can hold our abs a little tighter, turn our legs over a little better, push a little harder when needed, and understand when we are in a compromised position (fatigue vs pain) to make the right choice for the moment.
3. Are we seeing improvements? Sonja and Andrea had a personal best 10K's last weekend, Steve ran 10 miles to a race, held a 6:06/mile pace for a 15k race, and ran a 3 mile cool down, and Anthony rode Shadow Mountain faster than he ever has. These things are coming with really no speed training. We believe we are improving because we are more fit and mentally stronger from this training.
Our progress has encouraged us to keep moving forward! The big joke of the evening was that one of us thought we were not actually going to do a 17 hour training day. The 3 in the group who believed we named our blog "How About a 17 Hour Training Day" because we were going to do a 17 hour training day decided we were indeed doing a 17 hour training day. MARK YOUR CALENDARS....JULY 4 2009 is the actual 17 hour training day! 2.5 hours of swimming, 8.5 hours of biking, and 6 hours of running!
With that decision made we moved on to planning key workouts for April:
1. Rage in the Sage-Saturday April 18th- Tony, Sonja, and Steve are doing the half and I am doing the Olympic (because I need to qualify for Nationals). Monday the 20th we are running from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and back to the South Rim; it is called Rim to Rim to Rim. We are looking at Spot to keep tabs on everyone in the canyon because some will be on their own for the 47 mile journey.
2. Epic Bike Loop X2- Ride will go all the way back to Deer Creek and Wadsworth to ensure a good mental challenge.
3. 9K Swim- We are going to look into setting up the pool with buoys instead of lane lines to circle swim with no flip turns. Anthony is going to measure the pool this weekend and do the math on distance in CAD.
Everyone is paying attention to recovery and nutrition for every day life as well as for staying healthy for training and racing. We all agreed we need our own NormaTec MVP so we can sit in the pants and arms whenever we want. (An athlete version is coming out soon and is slated to be a little more cost friendly to the average athlete. More details on that later.)
We wish you the best in your training and racing-See you out there!
AW
One of the big topics of discussion this evening was about junk miles. What are junk miles? We decided on 4 things that prove we are not doing junk miles:1. What is our goal and what are we willing to do to accomplish our goal? Think about professional athletes. Why can they ride hundred mile rides back to back to back to back to back and not have people call their mileage junk? It is their goal. It is what they are willing to do to win races or stages. Our goal is to race Ironman Canada and to participate in this over distance training experiment. We set out to run 50 mile runs, ride 225 mile bike rides, and swim a 10K and have a 17 hour training day.
2. Know and understand the objective of our workouts. In this type of training it is not all about speed and high intensity. Understanding there are going to be days to call workouts; calling a workout because of pain or lack of recovery is par for course. We are discovering that our mental tenacity and strength is improving from all of the long distance training. We can hold our abs a little tighter, turn our legs over a little better, push a little harder when needed, and understand when we are in a compromised position (fatigue vs pain) to make the right choice for the moment.
3. Are we seeing improvements? Sonja and Andrea had a personal best 10K's last weekend, Steve ran 10 miles to a race, held a 6:06/mile pace for a 15k race, and ran a 3 mile cool down, and Anthony rode Shadow Mountain faster than he ever has. These things are coming with really no speed training. We believe we are improving because we are more fit and mentally stronger from this training.
Our progress has encouraged us to keep moving forward! The big joke of the evening was that one of us thought we were not actually going to do a 17 hour training day. The 3 in the group who believed we named our blog "How About a 17 Hour Training Day" because we were going to do a 17 hour training day decided we were indeed doing a 17 hour training day. MARK YOUR CALENDARS....JULY 4 2009 is the actual 17 hour training day! 2.5 hours of swimming, 8.5 hours of biking, and 6 hours of running!
With that decision made we moved on to planning key workouts for April:
1. Rage in the Sage-Saturday April 18th- Tony, Sonja, and Steve are doing the half and I am doing the Olympic (because I need to qualify for Nationals). Monday the 20th we are running from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and back to the South Rim; it is called Rim to Rim to Rim. We are looking at Spot to keep tabs on everyone in the canyon because some will be on their own for the 47 mile journey.
2. Epic Bike Loop X2- Ride will go all the way back to Deer Creek and Wadsworth to ensure a good mental challenge.
3. 9K Swim- We are going to look into setting up the pool with buoys instead of lane lines to circle swim with no flip turns. Anthony is going to measure the pool this weekend and do the math on distance in CAD.
Everyone is paying attention to recovery and nutrition for every day life as well as for staying healthy for training and racing. We all agreed we need our own NormaTec MVP so we can sit in the pants and arms whenever we want. (An athlete version is coming out soon and is slated to be a little more cost friendly to the average athlete. More details on that later.)
We wish you the best in your training and racing-See you out there!
AW
