A little Background Information

So I have finally started to develop the mentality needed to spend hours at the gym. I use to cringe everytime I had to be on the trainer for more than 10 min. I guess I just started to get anxious to get the next thing done and get to the race. Now I was able to keep my butt on the trainer for an hour with a 40 min. treadmill run after that. Very happy. Last week was a great training week. Didnt do my long bike on Sunday because I was studying and when I felt like studying I better do it. Got out saturday for a 6 mile run, would have went longer if it wasnt getting dark and my dog was thristy. So this week I will have 3 workouts because My exam is Friday and Saturday of this week and I am driving to Omaha on Thursday. Can't wait to go to the Zoo! I am actually really excited now to go workout at the Grubb YMCA. The people are great. Equipment still sucks, but the people there are now informed that I am doing an Ironman and they are more than willing to help me and out and give me encouragement to keep up the good work. They are working hard to keep the kids out of the swim lanes, moving spinner bikes all over and have towels ready when I walk in the door. It makes me feel like a I am a professional and a celebrity. Just waiting for the day when they want my autograph and for me to give a speech :) lol.
Since this weekend is my exam, I will not be working out and eating bad junk food. I am not thrilled about this since I have come so far in losing weight and eating good that I am scared that I will get that greasy food craving for the next month and wont be able to resist it.
Background Info: January of 2007, I weighed 175 pounds. I decided I needed to get my butt in gear. I recently got my dog and had started walking twice a day which wasnt enough for him so I started running. My friends are runners so they convinced me to do Dam to Dam. I thought ok. I finished the race, but was very sore. I think it was from the shoes I got when I was a sophomore in high school and the holes that were developing in the bottoms. Socks dont help. Little did I know, you were suppose to change your shoes 300-500 miles. I probably had 10,000 miles on them. My knowledge of shoes: they are good until a hole develops, then you get new ones, so I had about another 3 months left in them. Wrong. I bought new shoes and continued running. Then my friend told me he was training for a triathlon. How cool, I want to do that. What do I do? I had recently bought a mountain bike in April of 2007 and was doing that. I started biking to work and on the trails. Swimming...how do I do that? I took swim lessons, it cant be that hard to remember how to do it. Wrong! I thought the life guard was going to kick me out of the pool from flailling around so much and causing a distrubance. Never did make one length of the pool. I did the backstroke awhile and left while I was still alive. I left there thinking, I will never be able to do this. I need HELP. Luckily one of my friends is the aquatics director and was willing to teach me. I give her credit for my swimming. I am slow, but coming around. So now I can swim, bike, and run. So I signed up for the Walnut Creek Y tri team and the cyman triathlon. I was on my way. My boss also does triathlons and convinced me to get a tri bike. I went to rassys and bought one. One of the best purchases I have ever made. They say you should wait until you do your first tri before making any real purchases, but when you love training for it, I couldnt see any reason to wait. I think it helped to really get me loving it. The class was a great help and finished the race and loved it. I was hooked. So here I am now training for an Ironman. I am so excited. My race goals: 1st Finish, 2nd finsh under 15 hours, 3rd finish in 12 hours. I feel like I can finish in the 12 hours if I really work hard over the winter. I also really want to have a good finisher picture :) I really just want to make sure I finish and the time doesnt really matter. At the time it wont, but it will after. My half IM time this year at the Dutchman Half was 6:30. My swim was horribly slow (by 10 min), the bike was miserable (40 HUGE hills in 56 miles) and the run I felt great (should have run faster). Big problem was my nutrition, I double mixed powerade and thought I will drink half the bottle and then fill full with water. DO NOT DO THIS!!!! You will have GI problems. I think if I had not dont this I would have had a much better time. So now back to today, I weigh 130 pounds now. I still have about 5-10 more to go. Belly fat will not go away. I feel so much better about myself. On the downside, all this working out has not helped the sleeping problem, but that is what the pills are for :).
On a side note, hinking about what I am going to wear next year at the Ironman, I am trying to find a great pair of tri shorts. Anyone have suggestions? I want ones with no seams in the croch, not super sticky leg grippers and possibly a side pocket. Places around here just dont have much of a selection so I will have to order online.

What a workout

This weekend I completely pushed myself harder than I have in the season. I did not start out thinking that I would. I thought, I will just go on this 2.5 hour bike ride and not even think about pushing myself. All way good until I was about 40 min into the ride when I came to a "T" in the road. 2 tractors and a car passed and I pulled out behind them. There was 2 more tractors coming but I figured I would make it to the next turn before they caught me. We got to the next turn and of course they were going my way so I kept following them. The other tractors never caught me and I wanted to go faster than the tractors in front of me so I passed one. I was riding with the wind so it was easy to really fly until we turned again and it was into the wind. Oh my gosh my legs and lungs were burning to stay in front of this guy. After about 30 min of super hard riding they turned and I backed off and was barely moving. I made it to Big Creek and then turned back for home. I made it back to Ankeny and that is when it hit me. I did not want to peddle and I did not want to sit on my saddle. I was moving so slow that I think I had to speed up to stop. I finally made it home and I was completely wiped out. I have never had this feeling before. No energy to even want to breathe. So I veged out on the couch the rest of the night. Sunday I went on an hour run that seemed like it lasted forever. If my dog was not pulling me, half the time, I would not have made it home. By the end both he and I were looking at each other like it is your turn to pull, lol. We made it home and I went to the beach and skipped the short bike. Monday was an awesome day for me. I had a long swim workout that I nailed and felt great. I felt so fast and smooth in the water and was actually able to complete the whole workout in the time it said by 3 min! I then went to lift for 30 min. I am getting ripped from the 3 times I have lifted, lol. I did squats for the first time ever and I hurt today. I am going to bike indoors tonight because the chance of rain and it is suppose to be windy, and then a short 30 min run. Should be a nice night to take it easy...

Training Plan

So this week of training went really good. I got a couple good swims, couple hard bikes and easy runs in. This weekend I am going to do a 2.5 hour bike ride as it will probably be the last time I will get to do it in nice weather and enjoy myself. Sunday I will finish up with an hour run and a half hour bike. This week I will have gotten in 8 hours of training, plus 2 hours and 20 min of walking, and 45 min of lifting, also I mowed my lawn last night...finally. So now this brings me to reading over my work out schedule for the next year. This thing is telling me to do this workout in the morning and do this workout in the afternoon. Now the first thing that comes in my head is: "does this morning workout have to be productive?" Last year I tried to do a run and a bike in the morning and it was not going to happen. I spent the time doing them, but I could not do anything more than go through the motions. I do walk in the mornings with my dog for 20-25 min but I dont have to try for that, he just pulls me along. I would have to get up 2 hours before I actually wanted to workout to get my body ready to workout, so now it is 4 am which means I would have to go to sleep the night before at 7pm. This is just not sounding any better. The problem is, is that I have a sleeping disorder called Idiopathic Hypersomnia where basically it is like narcalepsy but I dont have the sudden sleep attacks, but I am always tired and could sleep at anytime so I have to get 9 hours of sleep a night. Some of you probably are thinking, damn I am jealous that you get to sleep so much. Let me tell you, I am jealous of you not having to sleep as much as I have to. It is such a waste of time that I could be enjoying life, but instead I am sleeping. So back to the workout schedule. I decided that I am just going to put in the effort each night after work plus then I only have to convince myself once to go to the gym :) I am kind of looking forward to training this winter and being able to get everything done at one time instead of going to the gym to swim, then going home and changing, then getting the bike ready to go for a ride. It should be more efficient when it is all at the gym. I think running on the treadmill will be a huge relief for my legs from running on concrete all this summer and last winter. Next Monday will be 49 weeks out from Ironman Louisville. I thought about taking some time off, but feel that once I do that, I wont want to workout again, so now I am working out but not nearly as hard as I was. The "professional trainers" say to take this time to work on your weakest disipline, but I feel I did that last year and it made the other two take so much longer to come around and I feel like I have improved so much over this season that I will just keep working on all three and see where that leaves me next year. I really feel that my run has the most potential to get better, but right now my legs couldn't stand pounding out 4-5 runs a week so then that leaves me with a lot of time where I am spent recovering and not being productive. So week 49 will be easy training, week 48 will be my "recovery" week since that week will mostly be craming for my exam at the end of that week and then week 47-41 will be working on building my weekly hours easily so I am ready for week 40 when my training plan starts. I cant wait!! It is going to be hell!!!