147 days left

Another week of training down! It was an interesting week for sure. We started the week off with a long and boring swim workout on Monday, 3000 yards. We followed that up with about a 5 mile run, a fun day to say the least. Tuesday was a solid 40 minute run followed by an hour long spinning class. Wednesday we hit the pool for a nice recovery swim. It was a much needed workout to get the body moving and relieve the sore muscles from the previous couple of days spent running. Thursday we hit the pool again, this time to do some sprints to work on swimming fast. After our swim we went straight up to the endurance spinning class, which the gym puts on once a week. The class is catered for the triathletes with its much higher pace and the extended time. It was definitely a tough class, but very helpful and you can count on me being there every Thursday! Friday we went on an eight mile run. I was expecting to be pretty worn out after this one. However, it was exactly the opposite, I felt refreshed and energetic. It was a beautiful run on the centennial trail out around the lake and back into downtown. With the weekend came a crazy idea to ride outside! So at about noon we took off on another ride around the lake. The temperature was 25 degrees, but with the wind chill it was about 12-13 degrees. That was not the greatest idea we have ever had! 12 degrees is cold enough as it is, then think about traveling at about 20 mph on a bike in 12 degree weather. It was about as fun as it sounds. This week is our recovery week in the cycle of 4 week phases, it is the final week of preparation training and then next week the workouts really start to increase and become intense. The highlight of the week, our biking jerseys that we plan on wearing for the race finally arrived!

Thanks everybody for all the support you are giving all of us during our training. Especially my mom who keeps our workout clothes clean and ready to go, and my sister who is also there for moral support....even though she is 3000 miles away!

(Planning out our training schedule)

"The crime is not to avoid failure, the crime is to not give triumph a chance." —H. Weldon

Some Background Info

This blog is to keep everyone updated with how our ironman training is going. For those of you that don't know, my dad (Randy), my brother (Brandon), and myself have all signed up to compete in Ironman Coeur d'Alene 2009! Joining us in this madness are my best friend and neighbor Sam, and a good family friend Trey. Sam and I are graduating high school this year.Trey is in his second year of college after just returning from his mission. Brandon is in his third year of college, and Randy...well he is the old man of the group ;). Call us crazy....many people are... but we got the ironfever after volunteering the past couple of years at the race. None of us had even competed in a triathlon before signing up and we committing ourselves to the ultimate triathlon! So throughout the summer we trained a little bit competing in some local tri's. Soccer season came around so that meant basically no training for my dad and me. Trey and Brandon headed back off to college. Trey was busy with soccer in the fall. Brandon had a swimming class in the fall but I don't think a whole lot of training happened outside of that class. Sam....well Sam showed us all up and was working out and training all fall. Overall the fall of 2008 was a time spent studying the race, doing research on training and nutrition, and just getting mentally prepared for a physically and mentally tiring 2009. Brandon, Randy, Sam and myself kicked off the year with the annual 5 mile new years morning race, in the snow, a perfect start to a year of training. The run went great even though it was cold and snowing, like expected Sam smoked us!

(I think you can guess who Sam is)January 5th kicked off our official training regime. We decided to use the 20 week plan on beginnertriathlete.com, this gave us a couple of extra weeks because we also signed up to do a 1/2 ironman in Vegas in April so it gave us a couple of weeks of light workout to recover from that race. The blog will mainly be covering the training that Sam, my dad, and I are doing since we are all basically working out together. We are now 3 weeks into our training plan. Unlike Sam, my dad and I are not experienced swimmers. Swimming is something we picked up just this last summer so that we could compete in triathlons. With the help of Sam and his dad, who is an awesome swimmer and a swim coach, we can see our swim times and form getting better and better every time we hit the pool. The running hasn't been to bad, its been better now that the snow has somewhat cleared off the road so we finally got off the treadmill. Biking has just been horribly boring on the indoor training. I dont see us getting out on the road for at least another couple of weeks. For that reason we have turned to spinning classes at the gym, they are much better than riding by yourself on the trainer, but still doesn't compare to being out on the open road. We are all looking forward to getting out on our sweet new bikes! None of us have had many distance rides on our bikes cause we all got new ones near the end of the summer, so we are kinda itching to get out and ride! Well that is a little background information and a quick glimpse for ya, make sure to check back and keep updated with our pain... I mean training! I'm looking forward to this opportunity that I have to work towards my goal of completing Ironman 2009. Thanks to all those who read this and are supporting our madness!

"Life, to me, is a series of false limits and my challenge as an athlete is to explore those limits."—Lance Armstrong