Obviously the posts this year have a theme: Ironman! A few people have asked for details of the training, so here is a breakdown of our week-
Monday-
A "recovery" run or bike of about an hour (An hour used to be a workout!)
Tuesday-
Team Z Swim Practice at 5:00am
-We swim between 1.5 and 2 miles during each hour or hour and a half long practice
Lifting-Lunchtime (sometimes done on Wednesdays instead)
-About 45 minutes. Super important, especially for beginners to prevent injury and get us those awesome muscles needed to survive a 140.6 mile race. Exercises include squats, calf raises, knee extensions, hamstring curls, pulldown, rows, tri dips, tri press, bicep curls, and about 20 mins of abdominal work.
Bike Intervals or Spinning-After work
We either do an hour long spin session with the Team, or in nice weather, intervals around Hains Point wth the team.
Wednesday-
Track Workout at 6:00am
-Between 3 and 5 miles of intervals, drills, strides and speedwork with Team Z. We have running coaches helping us with form.
Thursday-
Team Z Swim Practice at 5:00am
-We swim between 1.5 and 2 miles during each hour or hour and a half long practice
Lifting-Lunchtime
-About 45 minutes. Super important, especially for beginners to prevent injury and get us those awesome muscles needed to survive a 140.6 mile race. Exercises include squats, calf raises, knee extensions, hamstring curls, pulldown, rows, tri dips, tri press, bicep curls, and about 20 mins of ab work.
Bike Ride-After work
We either do an hour long ride that is steady and medium-paced.
Friday-
For us beginners, this is a blessed day off! (People trying to hit time goals or place in their age groups usually do an easy workout on this day.)
Saturday-
Long Bike Ride
Bikes rides are usually with the Team (and then Nikki has to do extra mileage afterwards because her race is sooner than the team race this year.) Rides started about 20 miles and get increasingly longer throughout the training season, peaking with a 120 mile ride.
Sunday-
Long Run
Team Z hosts long runs, but we usually do these on our own as Nikki is always running a funny distance (again, different race than the team) and Michael runs at such a blistering pace that he rarely has a person to run with at Team events. Distances started around 5 miles, and will increase to 20 miles. **Just take a minute to think about that...120 mile bike ride on Saturday, 20 mile run on Sunday!
Our favorite places to run around DC include Rock Creek Park and the Zoo, through Northwest (hello hills!) and the Mt Vernon Trail heading into Virginia.
Fuel: Michael eats about 3000 calories per day and Nikki does about 2000 in our regular meals. (We've both lost about 20 pounds in spite of the huge amount of food.) We have extra calories on Saturdays and Sundays when there are long runs/rides. Our favorite super foods are apples, peanut butter, salmon, risotto (carbs!) and pizza on Sunday nights. Workout foods include Gu, Ironman Perform, Clif Shot Blocks, Snickers, Pringles and Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwiches.
Some of our favorite training pictures from this year:
The amount of bike maintenance and preparation required is amazing. We've learned a lot, and Maya LOVES to help!
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Riding hills in Shenandoah National Park...NOT for the faint of heart.
The day Nikki did 70 miles by herself, in the freezing pouring rain, without glasses. And Michael was late to pick her up.
Running at Haines Point through the fallen Cherry Blossoms.
Peepshi (Peeps sushi) on our Easter Sunday team ride. Yes, our teammates are super-human AND creative.
The best part of training...HAPPY HOUR! (Which is almost always a fundraiser as our team is quite generous.)
Every Saturday morning at 4:00am we are up and out the door. The streets are mostly empty, except for other cars loaded with Tri bikes going the same place we are!
The fuel required (minus water which I got on along the way) for my first Century ride.
100 Miles and the Garmin proof!
The only other families out for such early morning Sunday runs along the C&O Canal in Georgetown.
Team Z tents at the Reston Lake Swim...turns out there are events that are *just* open water swimming. Our first two-miler swims! (Unfortunately the event was very poorly run and we can't recommend it.)
The W&OD bike trail is an excellent option for a bike ride if the Team Ride is cancelled or not convenient. And there are some cool views of the quarry.
