Week in review Monday 10-03-2011 to Sunday 10-09-2011

Before I get into the meat of this weeks blog I want to send out a congratulations to all Ironman World Championship finishers who competed this past Saturday morning. A huge congrats goes out to local DFW athletes Patrick Schuster, David Jones and John Morgan for completing this event.

Another week is gone and I’m one more week closer to my IM Florida event. This week was pretty uneventful. Week 32 of 36 had 15 hours and 30 minutes of training in it and was geared to be a low intensity recovery week.

I was pretty tired on Monday coming off of a huge volume week. It felt like one rest day was not enough. I’m constantly thinking about my swim and how I need to improve it. I know it’s not going to happen this year but, I’m still searching and trying new things. I was online searching for strength exercises for my swim and I stumbled upon an article which talked about the EVF (Early Vertical Forearm) technique. I read through the article and it said a lot of things that made sense. I vaguely remember seeing an EVF video earlier this year but, never really did explore it. I searched and found one which showed how several swim pros utilize EVF in their swim. I felt like I had new life again and maybe this is what will help me shave some seconds off my 100 meter pace. I look forward to blogging about the out come later this year.

I also realized that I have not lifted any type of weights for almost 3 years now. All my strength training has come from hill repeats on the run, hill climbing/low cadence on the bike and pulls on the swim. I’m already thinking ahead for next year and want to do some type of base strength training with weights. Optimally I would like to improve my strength to weight ratio in all three areas. This will make me a better athlete for next season.

This week in review is going to be a bit short. Again it was pretty uneventful. I had one highlight which was my Sunday morning run. It rained on me the entire 1 hour and 30 minutes I was out there. I loved every minute of it. My shoes were wet and heavy. I was also soaking wet but, I really did not care. The weather was cool and the water was refreshing. It was so refreshing that I actually took more hydration than I needed. I ended up not drinking close to 24 oz of fluids.

It’s now Monday evening and I’m planning out my whole week of training. I’m going to be traveling out of town and will need to incorporate my training with my travel. I have a couple of out of town events lined up for me this weekend. I have a two stage bike race/rally on Saturday and a sprint triathlon on Sunday. I will use both of these events for training. One of the reasons I signed up for the triathlon was because it was a salt water swim. I wanted to get some salt water swim experience before my IM Florida event.

I’m a bit excited that these events are back near my home town. There are not many triathlon events in that area so I’m taking this opportunity to invite family and friends to come see me race in a sprint triathlon. This will allow me to share something I truly enjoy doing with them. It’s rare that I have any family see me in any of my events so this means a lot to me. I’m looking forward to this fun filled weekend.

As always feel free to email me of you have any questions, comments or random thoughts. If you have a story to share I’d love to hear about it.

..ej
ej@trilifeblog.com
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