Not Months, But Days

The countdown to Ironman Louisville started when I registered back on August 31, 2010. At that moment it seemed like I had a lifetime to prepare. I found a 36 week training program (Triathlon Dominator) that I wanted to follow and it didn't even start until the week of Christmas...which felt like an eternity.

Time has flown by (this happens with two small children) and I am now just 60 days away from the big race. These next 8 weeks are very critical to my training. I've got several very long swims, rides and runs to do...along with some very important heat acclimatization and nutrition planning in the two weeks leading up to the race. 

I told someone the other day that I was getting a little burnt out from all the training. I couldn't believe the words as the came out of my mouth. I instantly thought to myself that it wasn't true. I'm not sure why I said it; maybe because I've heard of other athlete's reaching that point while training for Ironman and I thought that I should be there. Truth is, I'm still excited about all of my workouts. I'm planning a long run (19-20 miles) on Friday and a long ride (100 miles) on Saturday and I can't wait! What I'm really worried about is the low that will come when the race and training are over.

Thanks to TrainingPeaks, I'm able to take a look back at what I've done over the first 28 weeks of training for IM. Since December 21st, here's what I've been up to:

Swim - 56.66 hours / 88.75 miles

Bike - 70.81 hours / 1,318.43 miles

Run - 41.49 hours / 296.63 miles

Brick (Bike/Run combos) - 25.02 hours / 384.80 miles

Races - 13.07 hours / 134.67 miles

Crosstrain (elliptical and rowing machine) - 2.10 hours / 9.10 miles

Strength training - 10.28 hours

Grand total - 219.43 hours / 2,232.38 miles

The other thing that I like to take a glance at once in a while is my Performance Management Chart

TSB - Training Stress Balance - represents the balance of training stress or how well I've been juggling my training load and my rest periods. A positive number (see vertical axis on the right side) would mean that I have a good chance to performing well because it means that I'm both fit and fresh. A negative number means that I'm most likely tired from a high training load and will not perform well. The very low negative numbers recently have been right after my long brick workouts.

My training load can come in many ways, but this chart looks at both recent and long term training. The ATL - Acute Training Load - looks at only my training load in the most recent days. The CTL - Chronic Training Load - looks at my training over the long term and how it is impacting my performance now. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm looking for a gradual increase in CTL leading up to Ironman...so far, so good.