Couch2Boston

When I last updated this thing the world was shutting down.  Amanda and I were trying to figure out how to ethically fix up a house that was a disaster with the storm clouds of the pandemic descending on us all.  I resolved to continue chasing  The 444  but had to pause training to be an adult for a while.  Nights and weekends over 10 weeks Amanda and I logged 750 hours putting a rental house back together before turning it over to a wonderful family to make their home.  It actually made the shutdown a lot more bearable when we got to be by ourselves spread between 2 different places, but it didn't really advance any of my athletic goals for 2020.  By the time we got to May 1st it was clear that things were getting better, but I couldn't see anyway that  The 444  was going to happen.  Let me clarify that, I didn't see anyway that I was going to participate in  The 444 .  It seemed like the race would happen, but I couldn't see ...

So, the world is spiralling out of control.  How's that for obvious?  I think many of us are left wondering if there will ever be a return to normal again.  I don't know the answer.  I do know that I'm going to keep training for the 444 , but also I know that for the next few weeks training is going to be unstructured and heavily influenced by things that are going on outside of my athletic life.  It might also mean that these weekly posts start to look more like This Old House than a guy trying to transition to endurance cycling. If you are looking for swim, bike, run ruminations there will be none this week, just some navel gazing about what happens when real life needs to win out. Week 15 was dominated by work.  I did the full time job thing, but then spent every evening and long days on the weekend rehabbing a rental house that I own.  It is a long story, but let's just say everything needs to be fixed.  I tackled the bathroom first while...

I wasn't sure how to title this post.  I kept coming back to a Canadian TV show that I've seen a few times, " This Hour Has 22 Minutes ".  You see back in the old days before YouTube, a half hour TV show included about 8 minutes of commercials and much like a little kid waiting for the conclusion to a Scooby Doo cartoon the commercials seemed to redefine the concept of space and time.  Will this week ever end?  Can I actually find a way to put 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag?  No, but I'll be damned  if it didn't feel like it. Way back a lifetime ago, the end of last week on Sunday brought drama.  I hurt my Achilles.  Amanda crashed on her first bike ride and wound up in urgent care looking for broken bones.  By Monday morning my ankle had calmed down enough where it seemed clear that it was likely just a flare up of the tendinosis of my hallucis longus tendon.  Nothing to see here.  Please move along.  Not much drama, just nee...

This week started off pretty rough.  I got home at 1:30am from The Amazing Weekend .  My alarm went off at 4:10am to call me back to the pool.  I never heard it.  I woke up at 5:30 instead when my wife got up.  I bolted out of the house as quick as my tired body could handle and got in the pool anyway.  I only had time for 4,000 yards before they pulled the lane lines.  Those yards felt like 4 million instead of 4 thousand.  I was beat.  Mentally, physically and emotionally just empty.  But as coach Dori would say, I just kept swimming and tried to remember to open my eyes before I got to the wall.  Weight lifting in the afternoon was easier, but really it took about 5 days before I felt normal again.  I even pushed my Thursday hard/fast run to Friday and shortened it from the fatigue that had followed me throughout the entire work week. There were some nice highlights to this week though.  My wife has decided to take ...

This week felt like 2 weeks wrapped into one.  Monday through Friday was some well deserved and overdue rest.  The weekend was enough activity to make up for the rest. On Monday I started scaling back by shortening the planned swim and weight lifting.  Tuesday was a rest day.  A bonafide sleep in and do no exercise rest day.  It isn't that I feel like I *have* to workout everyday it is just that I do.  I'm a big fan of active recovery and I almost always feel better after a swim than I would after a day off.  So, on Tuesday after I slept in and got to work early I went ahead and updated my training log.  My old school, Excel spreadsheet of a training log.  I marked Tuesday as a "rest day".  That got me curious.  When was the last time that I had done that?  The answer was November 14th, 2019.  103 days earlier I'd taken a week off trying to heal my ankle and then later learned that rest was bad for tendinosis.  I gu...

I'm tired and I don't think it is just the 3 hour run today talking.  Last week was a little over 18 hours.  This week was just over 19 hours.  Work was intense with some long hours and lack of sleep.  Fatigue started to kick in by the end of the week but I had become determined to hit that 19+ hour mark.  I don't know why that was important but it was.  The hours are in the books and now my butt is glued to the couch. I made the decision a few weeks ago to schedule some downtime before I break and next week is that week.  I'm relieved it is here.  Very relieved.  There are some niggles starting to creep up, but I think I need the mental break as much as some physical downtime.  With that in mind, the only activities on deck are a morning swim with afternoon heavy lift session on Monday.  Body Pump on Wednesday with my wife and several days of sleeping in.  At least, that will be all until the fun starts on Saturday February ...

Well, since this is supposed to be a blog about getting ready for a 444 mile bike race, I guess it is about time that I start a weekly progress post talking about something that is more directly related to the 2020 goal race.  Training volume was significant this week at more than 18 hours and while it was really hard to find the time I think I stumbled onto a training methodology that is going to help get me ready for a race that takes 24+ hours. I went into this week shooting for 18+ hours and there were plenty of reasons not to get there.  Work was busy.  I actually went back into the office on Tuesday at 7pm expecting to pull an all nighter.  A friend was moving on Saturday which was going to interfere with the normal 3 1/2 hour session at the Y.  I've been having some stiffness in my right knee that caused me to bail out halfway through the Wednesday night Body Pump class for fear that I was going to take a warning sign past the point of no return. O...

This was a cutback week so volume was about 2/3rds normal which gave me a chance to recover and also mix things up a bit.  The big change for the week was to the weight lifting routine but first I need to do some more shameless bragging about a Thursday tempo run even if the treadmill and I are having a squabble.  The treadmill revolted on this run.  The hard/fast run was only 5 miles and it was inspired by all of the articles the last few weeks about the IAAF banning the Nike Alphafly and/or Vaporfly.  I broke out the original Vaporflys and decided to swing for the fences.  With about 0.6 miles to go in the 5 mile run the screen on the treadmill changed as if I touched it.  It showed the distance for a few seconds and then went back to normal.  This happens all of the time from the sweat I'm throwing around.  A minute later when I would have had less than a half mile to go I tried to change the screen so I could watch the distance on the way into...

This week has gone pretty well.  I'm back enjoying lifting heavy things, or at least heavy for me things.  After finishing last week with some missed PT sessions I learned that PT is like swimming.  If you don't do it for a few days the first day back feels like you have lost 90% of the skill.  I got to break 16 hours of training for the first time so far this cycle, which is pretty cool, but I did start to toy with the idea of taking a dramatic cut back in training.  I was on the bike Wednesday morning soft pedaling for 30 minutes after a spin class and I started wondering at what point is it better to take a week off and do nothing rather than get hurt and be forced to take the time off anyway?  I don't have any particular aches and pains that worry me, I'm just starting to contemplate the magnitude of a 43 week training plan and whether or not it would make sense to take a very low volume week every once in a while to make sure that I stay fresh over t...

One week closer to the race and I haven't fallen apart yet.  That's a relief :-)  Actually this week has gone pretty well.  It was a reminder of why it took so long to start blogging.  I always figured I had time to do the things or write about the things, but I've always feared that there wouldn't be enough time to do the things and write about the things. This week was the most hours had a somewhat unexpected drop in the hours I've spent on Swim/Bike/Run/Strength.  There were two missed workouts.  One was a "miss" because I substituted a VO2Max test at a local college for the Wednesday morning spin class.  The second one was out of my control.  My Friday lunch easy spin didn't happen because of a lunch meeting scheduled that I couldn't avoid.  I tried to get out of work early to sneak in a ride on the way home but I had to be an adult and see through my work responsibilities instead. The VO2Max test went very well .  I maxed out a...