This was my first official week with training with the Wolfpack, and though I wasn’t physically with them most of the time, there is an extended network of messages and support and accountability that has kept me in place. I realize how much I was missing that.
One of the things I was asked to do was to hone down my goals. Of course I have interim broad goals such as riding up Sugar Loaf as part of Under Armour’s What’s Beautiful Campaign, and there’s a half ironman in Portugal I am doing in July. But they are all stepping stones to my “A” race: IronMan Florida.So I had to look at that race in more detail, and wrote my goal was to finish IronMan Florida in under 14 hours.
That took little thought: “14” was pretty arbitrary. My rockstar friends try to finish under 12, so I figured why not 14? Then, I was led to this calculator and had to begin putting more meaning behind 14 hours.
To me it means a 1:21 swim (2.4 miles), a 7:12 bike (112 miles), and a 5:05 run (26.2 miles) and 20 minutes of transitions. Other than the latter, I can’t do any of those things, at that speed, for that long …. yet.
I then had to refine my goals even further by saying I will swim 30 x 100meters at 2:00, I will bike 100 miles at 18mph, and run 14 miles at 10mph by a certain date. Those I am still defining, but breaking things down this way has given me purpose and inspiration to get out there and do each session.
A procrastinator like me tends to look at a long term goal and think “I have time”. These goals will help keep me honest during the process.
However, and there is always a however, I still don’t know if I am going to go for 14. From the moment I signed up, and as you can see in this video, I promised myself the actual IronMan race will be a celebration of a journey that got me that far. I’ve come so far already, by the time November comes I will have changed even more. I want to “enjoy” it, to take in the environment, to smile, to be inspired by what I see and tackle my own inner demons which will surely appear. In a way, I don’t want to “race” IronMan but I want to experience it.
Might be a cop out. Who knows? I do know, that if I get to the point that I think I can actually do this thing in 14 hours I will feel incredibly accomplished regardless of what happens on November 2. And therefore my training now has specific goals and I am going to wholeheartedly go for them. If I weren’t going to put my best effort forward, I would’ve never shared them here!
So this week was better than last week, but I do believe once school finishes May 31 things will calm down and I will have more time and less missed sessions. Here is how it went:
Monday: BIKE: Spinning. A VO2Max like with lots of sprinting, and I did a swim workout in the afternoon.
Tuesday: RUN: Bridge repeats with the Wolfpack.
Wednesday: RUN: I missed spinning so went for the second part of my training which was a one hour tempo run.
Thursday: BIKE: heavy heavy “hill” workout. Joe was travelling and I was stuck inside! Days like that the trainer is my only option.
Friday: OFF. Not intentionally but babysitter cancelled at the last minute and I couldn’t go for my scheduled swim in the afternoon.
Saturday: SWIM, BIKE, RUN. 40 mile ride, followed by 30 minute run, followed by mile OWS.
Sunday: RUN. Hard and hot 10 miles.
How about you? What are your goals? How did you set them?
