45 and less than a month to go till IMAZ

OK, just two days ago I turned 45. So, I am officially my age group. I don't know what I feel about this, probaly not much at all. True, when I look in the mirror in the morning I see a man clearly in his middle age, but, nothing wrong with that. Life has been very good to me the last few years, no need to wish back the days of youth and unfocused confusion.

So, 45 and only four weeks away from my biggest physical challenge thus far, my first Ironman. The weather in New York is now colder, a headcold is slowing me down, my bike was in repair for some days, and I am not close to training enough. My regimen seems more in line with preparations for an Olympic distance event. Whenever I tell other triathletes about my training volume, I almost sense pity and fear, for my sake. And still I feel an odd sense of confidence creeping up. Hopefully not unfounded. I will try to make this week count one more time with a few mid distance runs and a long bike ride. Lets hope it'll be enough.

Travel, A few Boo Boos and a broken Spoke

With only five weeks to go until Ironman Arizona, this is supposed to be the time to rev it up one last time. But not quite. Frequent, but short business trips keep me a bit off balance regarding my workout schedule. But more importantly, I have had a nagging skin infection on my inner thigh that has really slowed me down last week. I am also a bit hampered by tight hamstrings and on top of it, I broke a spoke on an early morning ride on Friday, keeping me bike less for the planned Saturday long ride. On the plus side, I had a great swim workout Friday night with a solid 4000 yards of hard intervals and an 18 mile long run in Prospect Park on Saturday morning. I am now giving myself two more weeks of solid training before starting my taper.

A week of coming back and Grete's Great Gallop

After the Nutmegman Half Ironman I dashed off to Austria for a week of business meetings. Unfortunately I caught both a bit of a cold and a nagging eye infection, and that, on top of a busy schedule basically set me back my training a full week. So last week my goal was basically to ramp up my training again. The first two easy runs of 4 miles each were anything but easy though. I felt like crap, pardon my expression. My midweek swim workout did not feel much better. Sluggish would best describe it. So I decided to add another swim workout Friday evening, this one a vast improvement already.



And this morning I ran my first New York Road Runners Race in months, Grete's Great Gallop, named after the great Grete Waitz, part of the Norwegian Festival. Actually I ran a bit more than this Half Marathon on the hilly course of Central Park, adding 5 miles after the race to finally get another long run in. The Half Marathon itself was fine, I ran more or less race pace but without pushing my limits towards the end. The 5 mile add-on however, felt rather tough. Guess my pace was a bit too ambitious during the race and my legs more or less gave in. My hamstring started to bug me quite a bit and my fee started hurting. Still, it was a proper ending to a fairly full week of training.