Productivity and Ice

Monday was my first day off since January 1st, as I mentioned in my last post. I decided to make it a productive day. I did lots of things that I've been meaning to do for weeks. I woke up and taught my three classes. In between classes, I was doing some reading for the class that I'm taking, and getting work done for the classes that I'm teaching. I had been putting all of that stuff off for at least a week or two. When I was done teaching, I dropped by the bank to make a deposit and went to get a haircut. After the haircut, I went to Best Buy and bought a new laptop. My old laptop crashed about 3 weeks ago and I managed without a laptop for a while, but it's just so much easier with one. I got tired of hoping my roommates weren't home so I could use their computers. This post is my first post from my new laptop, and I love it. I then dropped some clothes off at Goodwill, which had been in my car for over a month, and then I headed to Eric's to play some Halo 3.

I woke up at 6 am yesterday morning to the sound of my phone ringing. It was the UK alert system alerting everyone that is signed up for the alert system that class had been cancelled before 11 am. So I slept in until about 9 and then I walked to the pool to teach my class at 11. I got in a swim and then decided that I didn't need to go to class at 3:30 so I could ride the trainer. I found out later that classes after 3:30 got cancelled anyways. We got a lot of ice/snow Monday night and all day Tuesday. It is now snowing and classes were cancelled all day today. This is the first day that UK has cancelled a full day of class in about 2 - 3 years. There is a bunch of snow on the ground with a sheet of ice overtop of the snow. It makes for great weather to go outside and bike/run in, hahaha. The pool is closed today so I won't be able to swim and the Johnson Center is closed so I won't be able to run, so I guess it's another day on the trainer. Luckily, it's my recovery week and I don't have a lot to do this week anyways. I'll just make up the workouts tomorrow and Sunday.

As Febuary gets closer, I am preparing for the Febuary Fitness Challenge. Our Master's Swim team always competes in this, and the goal is to swim as much as possible within the month of Febuary. I hit around 120,000 yards last year, and I would like to swim more this year. I didn't realize I swam that much until just now. Maybe I'll aim for 130,000??? We'll see. Last year was a leap year so I had an extra day of training last year. Maybe I'll swim some 2-a-days.

I guess I'll play some Wii until it's time to ride the trainer at Eric's and then play Halo 3. I'll get in my nintendo playing time today.

T-Bird

Holy Moly

Yesterday was the dreaded 1 hour swim that our Master's swim team does every January. This was the third year that that I've competed in the hr swim. Two years ago I swam about 4,400 - 4,500 yards. Last year I swam somewhere around 4,800 yards. This year my goal was to finish more than 5,000 yards. I knew this was a big goal considering I did a 30 minute swim about 2 weeks before this and I wasn't able to complete 2,500 yards in 30 minutes. But I jumped in the water yesterday and I felt great. I knew every 500 yards had to be completed in 6 minutes. So off of my flipturns, I would take a breath to the left and glance at the clock to see where I was at. I held almost the exact same pace the whole swim. But needless to say, I'm smoked today. Today is going to be my first day off since January 1st. I had another huge week of training this past week.

Bike: 6:30 hours
Swim: 7:20 hours
Run: 5:15 hours

And I'll give a shout out to my girlfriend who broke the UK school record for the 200 IM. She set a new personal best by almost 5 seconds and broke the school record by 1/2 second going 2:00.52 in the 200 IM. She also set personal bests in the 200 freestyle (missing the school record by .2 seconds) and the 200 fly this past weekend against the University of Louisville.

Off to teach.

Tony

BIG TIME

This early in the year, I never really put together a huge training week together; until this past week. Not that it was a HUGE week but I had 18:50 totals hours of workouts. That is more like a middle of the summer type of week, not an early January week of training.

Swim: 7:45 hrs
Bike: 6:00 hrs
Run: 5:00 hrs

I have actually started to feel a little better in the water. I had a pretty good swim on Friday and I just goofed around in the water yesterday. My last workout of the week was a long, hard run with a couple of my buddies who are a little faster than me. I ended up running 13.5 miles around 6:30 pace. We started slow, but progressively got faster throughout the run. But I guess that is what I should have expected running with 3 ex-collegiate athletes, one of which ran in the Olympics this past summer, and two other guys that are about my speed.

Today is going to be an active recovery day, and then I'll hit it hard again tomorrow. This week is going to look about the same as last week, just with an additional hour of biking, and maybe an extra 30 minutes of running or so. The swim will probably be about the same.

Stay Warm. It probably won't be hard now that the super cold front has already passed through.

Tony

BBUUURRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

The temperature here in Lexington at the moment is 0 degrees with a wind chill of -14. Yesterday the high was around 12 with a wind chill of only -3. I have not exercised outside since Tuesday and it's killing me. I have ran on the treadmill the past 2 days, and have decided to delay my run today until tomorrow, hoping that it will be "warm" enough to go outside. But so far, the week is going pretty good. I already have in 18,000 y swimming and that used to be a full week of swimming for me. And school wise, I only have two more classes to teach today, and I'll be finished with my first 3 days of school.

I've got big plans tomorrow. Maybe start the day off with a trainer ride while watching some Scrubs. Then head to the pool for the UK swim meet against Alabama tomorrow at noon. After that, go to the UK indoor track meet that starts around 1 or 1:30. Then maybe go for a run during the indoor meet considering there are a lot of sprint events that have 10+ heats. Drop back by to watch the 3k race and then go to dinner with the fam. Maybe go to Outback for a little steak, who knows.

That's about all of the exciting stuff that is going on here in Lexington. Off to teach some kiddies how to swim.

T-Bird

Update

After my first week of training, I only skipped two workouts, haha. And they both happened to be biking workouts on the trainer. It is miserably cold here in Lexington, and only getting colder this weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to muster the motivation to sit on the trainer a few more times this week. My totals for last week were:

Running: 4:45 hrs
Biking: 3 hrs
Swimming: 6:50 hrs

So my week last week was a little swim heavy, but I just feel horrible in the water. I'm hoping that ends soon. I feel like I'm swimming slower and trying harder to go the same speed as before Clearwater. I've already swam twice this week, and will probably end up swimming 6 days this week. I actually felt decent on the trainer considering I hadn't touched my bike since Clearwater. I averaged close to 19 mph (not that hard to do on the trainer) for my first trainer ride and last year at this time I was riding hard to average 17.5 on the same trainer. So I feel like I haven't lost much from the race. But I guess there is a bid difference from 2 months and almost 4.5 months of time off.

I had a great weekend with all of my friends and family sending me birthday wishes. I have eaten my body weight in candy and I still have some to eat. My mom brought up one of my favorite jello salads, Beth baked me some brownies, and another close friend baked me a cake today since she was out of town this past weekend.

I'm currently just sitting around waiting for school to begin. I really do not want it to, but I am only taking one class this semester since that is all I need to graduate. I am teaching the same four classes I taught last semester which is a relief considering some of the TA's get stuck in classes they're not sure how to teach. School starts up tomorrow, but it shouldn't be too crazy since it's the first day. And I'm really looking forward to the three day weekend, haha.

Thanks to all of the birthday wishes.

Tony

Let's Do This

Today starts the day of my base phase training. I have enjoyed my down time but it's time to kick it into gear. I'm headed to the pool in about an hour to get in my first swim in about 2 weeks and I'll be on the trainer for the first time since before Clearwater. I'm taking today off from running because I had my biggest week of running last week since October of 2007.
This is when I was training for my last marathon and I hit 80 miles that second week of October before I started to taper. I hit 57 miles this past week, and that included a day off.
Maybe I'll just focus on running. I could run 80+ miles a week and still be under 10 hours for the week. This whole triathlon training takes up way more time. An easy week could be 15+ hours of training. If only I were capable of running professionally. I would only need to drop about 5 minutes off of my 10k PR. Maybe 6 minutes. HAHA

UK won their third straight bowl game for the first time in history. We defeated East Carolina in the Liberty Bowl thanks to our defense. We returned a fumble for a TD for the go ahead score. And tonight is the big Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. If all goes to plan, Texas will win by 56. I'm not really a Texas fan. My two favorite teams in college football is UK and whoever is playing Ohio State. So needless to say, I'm rooting for the Longhorns baby.

Happy New Year

New Year's day is always a wonderful day to lay around and watch tv all day. With almost 6 bowl games on, and the Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi, I watch more tv in one day since last new yr's day.
Today is the biggest bowl game of them all.... The Liberty Bowl!!! Kentucky v. East Carolina
Hopefully we can pull out a win, but with most of our "good" guys hurt, it might be hard to do. Expecially with our QB/WR Randall Cobb who hurt his knee in the last game of the season.

Since I've been home for the holidays, there has been only running in my training. I will hopefully hit 50+ this week. I'm doing a long run today and then two easy runs over the weekend. Then I'm headed back to Lexington to start up the Base phase of my training. I think my first week back is around 15 hrs. of training.
I had an amazing Christmas. I got all kinds of good clothes including pj pants, running clothes/shoes, some nice underwear and socks, and a few other goodies. I got a Garmin 405 forerunner. It a nice GPS watch with a HR monitor. I've worn it on almost all of my runs since Christmas. It shows: time, distance, pace, avg. HR, calories burned, and elevation. And the info uploads on my computer automatically when the watch is within 3 meters of my computer, I don't even have to hook it up. It's fun to play with.

There really isn't much to update. Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year.

Go CATS!!!!!!

Tony