Progress

I made a few decent strides in training the past few weeks. As I mentioned before, I am really upping the volume this year. I did some testing in the first week of the year to set the starting point as well as see how much progress has been made over since I started out last year. I am fairly pleased with the results, but not satisfied.

Swim- Jan. 2012 Threshold Pace- 1:20 per 100 yd
           Jan. 2013 Threshold Pace- 1:15 per 100 yd

Bike- Jan. 2012 FTP- 275 Watts
          Jan 2013 FTP- 301 Watts

Run- Jan. 2012 Threshold Pace- 5:27 per mile
        Jan. 2013 Threshold Pace- 5:24 per mile

Reflecting back on the year, I am fairly happy with my progress in 2012. However, when I look back at my training logs, I see a lot of waisted efforts and missed opportunities. I focused primarily on the swim and bike in 2012. I will go to a more even focused approach for my 2013 training regimen.

I tried a few new new things with training last year, expecially in the water. I went through the Finding Freestyle series, which I am still up in the air on. I am not convinced that it was worth the money. It did get me to swim a little more and gave me a strict schedule of intervals etc to follow. I think it was too many drills and way too much kicking for my type of swimming. I was recommended the program by a few different people and didn't research it enough first. Most of the flaws in my stroke are in the catch and pull, not kick timing. I think I am made more progress recently by reading forums and talking with a few different swim coaches and just swimming longer intervals and shortening up the recovery intervals.

On the bike, I did a few The Sufferfest videos during the indoor season (which I really enjoy and will continue doing!). When I could get outside I just rode at a steady pace. The terrain is really flat around here, and I struggled quite a bit when I got to some of the hillier races like Vegas and Kansas. Racine was really flat which probly is why I was able to bike almost 15 minutes faster there than the other two 70.3's despite having a flat tire. That is also probably part of the reason I was able to run much faster at Racine than the other two races (although there were certainly other factors...). I will be working on fixing that this year by doing more hill work, interval training, fartleks, and repeats on the bike.

Run training is pretty self-explanitory. I need to increase consistency in races in 2013. Much of this will be taken care of by getting a stronger bike, then staying within my target Watts during the race. I will also be doing repeats and hill work a minimum of once per week. I will continue mixing in long and tempo runs as well. Overall, I'll be upping my mileage about 20 percent this year.

I will be implementing strength training twice each week this year as well. I am not trying to get bigger, just increase strength endurance. I know research is sitll up in the air on this, but it certainly won't hurt.

 That's all for now. I have a nutrition shipment and a few other new products on the way. I hope to be throwing a few product reviews up in the near future.