Monday, February 23, 2009

My training is going Okay. I put in quite a bit of time in the water last week due to the various different injuries I have. I did however put in 2 short runs and a short bike ride. The runs were not too painful and the ride was good. The best part of last week was the swimming. I did two open water swims and in total put in almost 3000 meters. The water has been real cold but it has been great to get back in the open water.

Yesterday despite a very upset stomach I put in a 7 mile run at Memorial. It was the first pain free run I've had in weeks. My knee, hip and ankle feel much better and I think dialing back the mileage really helped. I'm hoping to start slowly increasing the mileage this week so I can stay on track.

Later

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I have been pretty banged up the last couple of weeks and it is really affecting my sleep and my training. I have several nagging and a few painful injuries. First of all my lower back is in a lot of pain and my right hip keeps shifting and is causing me some knee pain. Also, my left ankle and Achilles tendon are very tender and lastly I am going in for an X-ray on Friday to see if I have a stress fracture in my right shin. Oh, and I have had a headache for about a week. Sound fun, right? So due to all of these injuries I have decided not to run the Cowtown Marathon and focus on my Half Ironman races for the time being. The swimming and biking do not seem to aggravate these injuries and I have enough of a running base that I should be ready for my first race in April.

One final update. My diet is back on schedule. I've lost about 8 pounds which puts me at 175 and heading in the right direction. I would like to get down to 170 by the end of the month and I really feel on track to hit my mark. I would like to be at my normal race weight of 165 by the end of March and 160 by the time hit I Cozumel in November. 160 had been a tough weight for me to hit. I have reached it a couple times over the last couple of years but I have not been able to maintain it. My fear is that I would have to take off a lot of muscle to reach that weight and that is not how I want to get there. I'll work on the details of the diet, perhaps with a Nutritionist, to get this all worked out.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Gym

I haven't been to the gym to lift in over a week. I was supposed to go last Friday but I didn't make it. So last night I reverted back to the days when I primarily weight lifted and I hit the gym late in the evening. I must say things have changed a bit since my days of working out at 10 pm. Now, I like to throw around the "F" word as much as the next guy but even I was starting to feel uncomfortable. There were dudes having conversations from one end of the gym to the other saying "F" this and "F" that. It was strange.

The other thing that was funny about going so late to the gym was the way people were dressed. I like sunglasses as much as the next guy but in the gym at night. Whatever? The workout gear people wore was inappropriate and I must say the whole thing was just bizarre. I'm going to try and avoid the late night gym workouts from now on.