whats the freqency kenneth?

water running this morning. 5 minutes easy to warmup then 40 minutes steady state and 5 minute cooldown. The form is so good in the water i am hoping it retrains my form for when i hit land again. basically when you have nothing to push off of (the ground) the pull up is there. and there is no tendency to overstride things stay under the body. even the natural lean forward is there. if it were only this easy on land.

also hit a yoga class to continue to work out the kinks.
gotta go pack for the cross race tomorrow. it is supposed to be about 42 when i am racing. thats actually not too bad so i am not sure what i am going to wear yet.

VMO

Swim – warmup 3 rounds of 100 drill, 50 swim, 50 pull. Workout – 5 x 200 as 25 hard, 50 easy, 50 hard, 50 easy, 25 hard. I swam this around 3:30.  Workout was tougher than I expected. I was hitting the hards really hard so that the easys were basically me trying not to drown more than actually swimming.  Cooldown was 150 breaststoke, 150 backstroke.

Bike – actually did this on the trainer (boo! hiss!). 10 minutes warmup with 3 x 1 min on 1 min off.  Then 24 rounds of tabata. (Gasp!) tabata just never ever gets any easier. Its always an ass kicker.  Had a good glaze going on. I  could actually  feel yesterdays squat workout. Mostly in my vastus medialis which is what is responsible for leg extension and patellar tracking which is where my issue lies.   Stretching when possible. Water running and yoga tomorrow then packing for the bike race on Sunday.

I cancelled going for graston technique as I didn’t really feel that it did anything for me.  I went twice and I don’t think its going to be the answer to getting my knee back in line (literally).  

Wednesday – water running – 5 minutes easy to warmup, then 10 minutes as 1 minute hard 1 minute easy, 10 minutes as 40 second hard 20 seconds easy and 10 minutes as 20 seconds hard 10 second easy. 5 minute easy to cooldown. I have to say tabata even in the water it tough. So far I’m doing good with the water running.  Great weather so I took the cross bike out and did a 10 minute warmup easy and then 20 minutes with 1 minute hard 5 times 5 minute easy cooldown. Continuing to have a great time training on terrain. I found out I got into the NYC triathlon! Whoo hoo!  I didn’t expect to because of the lottery system but I guess I got lucky. I basically have all of my bigger races for next season picked out. I will be racing eagleman, then philly, the nyc, then ironman nyc! I haven’t decided if I am going to do Pocono mountains again. It is so close to me that I might. It’s a good last tri for the season but after ironman nyc I might just take some recovery time and then roll right into cross season. The are changing the swim start to a semi-time trial this year for the nyc tri. i am not sure if ironman will follow suit or not. It is going to be a great experience to race philly and nyc and they both will be great training for racing ironman nyc.

 Thursday – yoga to start the day. Then a little CF. 10 pushups, 20 squats, 30situps to warmup then a 9 minute amrap of 10 pushups, 20 squats. My knee did ok with this. It was a little achy last night. I get very upset when this happens mostly because it has been feeling better. I think I just have to watch how much biking I am doing. Not getting on the bike today was probably good for it. I am considering going to formal rehab for it if it doesn’t clear up soon. I am torn on the idea because it is a big time filler to go there at least when I have gone in the past it has been especially since most of the things I would do there I can really do by myself. The benefit it having a trainer actually watch how your moving. 

pea

Saturday – took my road bike out for a spin. 10 minutes easy then 60 minute ride climbing up 8^th st and back. Then a 10 minute easy cooldown. I froze as I didn’t dress properly. It wasn’t as bad on the bike but afterwards I was shaking for awhile because my core temp must have dropped too much. Weather wise it’s a weird place where it is too warm for winter stuff and too cold for summer stuff. I need to plan better.

Sunday – went to yoga in the morning. Then took my road bike out again for 20 minute warmup then 90 minute stead state ride. Was supposed to be around 155 HR but avg around 144. 5 minute cooldown. I rode out 92 and again I froze although not as bad this time.

Monday – warmup 100 swim, 100 kick, 100 pull, 200 swim, 200 kick, 200 pull, then 6 x 100 on 20 sec rest, 3 x 200 on 15 sec rest, 2 x 300 on 10 sec rest and a 600. I may had added some addional laps. And possibly an entire extra 300. 200 cooldown as breaststroke and backstroke.  Other workout of the day was a 30 minute recovery spin so I took out my crossbike and trained on terrain. Mostly rocks, grass and dirt. Found a little mud too I thought one of the patches was a puddle but it was ice. Also spent some time working my tight turns. Had a series of cones setup that I had to pass through. Now that the time change is here it is dark when I commute home from work. I started using my Blackburn flea head and tail lights and for how small they are they are working for me. I really like them.  And they are solar or usb chargeable.

Tuesday – yoga first thing in the morning then more fun with the crossbike. It was a gorgeous day to go and play in the park. It’s a 10 minute ride to get there so I used that as a my warmup. I was supposed to do a 15 minute TT but when your having so much fun I turned it into a 30 minute TT. I setup my own cross course through the park and I just kept riding laps around it. I included a big off camber descent, grass riding, dirt riding, a sand pit.   Didn’t have barriers but I did do a couple of mounts/dismounts. Overall I was really smoked afterwards and the 10 minute ride back to work was tiring.  Fun stuff. I registered for my first cross race on Sunday. I am do the beginners open so it will be 30 minutes of the course. I’m looking forward to the experience.

catch up

Thursday - water running - a way to start training my running again while still allowing my knee to heal up.  did the 5 minutes easy to warmup then 20 minutes of 3 minutes moderate 2 minutes easy. 5 minute easy to cool down. My form feels really good in the water! i have the forward lean, feet fell good. etc. The knee still feels a little weird but im not surprised by that.

 Thursday evening was cyclocross practice. worked some skills. starting with just repeating dismount caryy bike over barriers. remount as a continuous loop. i don't have a good running flow over the barriers yet because i am carrying the bike but i used to run hurdles so ill get there. then it was to the sandpit which is always tough. i have to keep pedaling and hoping for the best. mostly i made it. practiced most riding through but a few times ran the bike through too. then we were off to the hill. really steep hill that we would shoulder our bikes and run up then mount on top and ride down off camber.  super tired after words. really need to work the skills but so much fun.

friday - tired in the morning made it to the pool for 100 swim, 200 kick, 100 swim, 100 kick, 200 pull, 100 kick to warmup. then 30  rounds of 50s on 1 minute. i would swim them between 40  - 45 seconds.  the early ones were 40s and another of them i did with kevin were 40s. most of them were somewhere in between 40- 45. although the last few were 45 seconds and i was getting pretty tired.  200 yards as breaststroke and backstoke to cool down.

went back to the doc for my knee. my new treatment is to manually get it into full range of motions a bunch of times a day for a few days. not sure how i feel about all of this.

cd workout
warmup 20 pushups, 20 situps. 10 air squats then 10 rounds of 10 scissor kicks, 10 situps, 10 air squats! I am super pumped after i did this that I actually did air squats!!!! it's been a long time! maybe the knee really is healing up.

Saturday - water running - 5 minutes easy to warmup, then 20 minutes of 1 minute hard 1 minute easy  with a 5 minute cooldown. I felt good again in the water today.

Yoga - finally made it to yoga class today to get myself stretched out again. hope to go tomorrow too. Gonna take my bike out later today and have some fun.

Candle

Getting back to training today.  Swim in the am. Warmup was 8 x 100 alternating between swimming and kicking. Then workout was 400, 2 x 200, 4x100 on 30 sec rest. Cooldown was 350 -400 swam as 150 backstroke, 150 breaststroke, 25 free, 25 fly kick. Tomorrow I start my water running. That should be interesting! The leg is still a bit sore from being worked on but mostly ok .swim times were a few seconds slower than I would like but since im still coughing and blowing my nose I am not going to get excited about it.

Gorgeous fall day here so took my crossbike out for lunch and had a great workout. Did 10 minute warmup then 30 minutes as 3 minutes on 2 minutes off. My three minutes were spent riding the same section of dirt, grass, mud and rocks uphill the entire time. I even had one section I had to dismount and run my bike over curb.  I was huffing. It was all hard work. My 2 minutes were spent coasting down the hill back to the start of my little course. I went through this 6 times and then did a really easy 5 minute cooldown.  

I was going to go to yoga tonight but I always get myself in trouble when I do 3 session in a day so I think im going to skip it and just do some stretching at home. Maybe make some soup too. I ordered the candle 79 cookbook today. Candle Café and Candle 79 are some of my fav restaurants in NYC. I’ve had the candle café cookbook for years and the food in it is top notch. Im really looking forward to the 79 version.

back in the saddle

ah finally got to ride my bike again after a couple of weeks off of it and it was AWESOME!

 I took my cross bike out for a 30 minute ish ride at lunch. got it off road and into the grass, mud, dirt and rocks whenever possible. even found a few patches of snow left. 

After work I took my road bike out. did a 10 minute warmup, 20 rounds of 40 on 20 off. I found a 200 meter hill (approimately) and it takes me about 40 second to get up it and 20 to get back down so i did that. it gets  a harder grade the higher up you get too. then a 5 minute cooldown.

i basically refuse to ride my bike inside on the trainer unless i absolutely have to. i still have some daylight left to play with and the temps arn't bad yet so i am taking advantage of it.

i feel better than i did the last few days. still snotty and a little coughy but i felt ok to train. why do i do things like that. because I am a strong believer that the body goes where the mind takes it. if you get your mind set on doing something your body will follow you there.  sometimes your going to be sick on race day. it happens. most people will just pack it in but i am not one of those people. you can both train and race through it most of the time without ill effects.

my knee was sore last night when i was sleeping and my legs is tender where he worked on it yesterday. sounds about right.

Today I entered the lottery for the NYC Tri.  Ill found out in 2 weeks or so if i get in. I also registered for the philadelphia triathlon. That is june 24th so just a couple of weeks after eagleman. But it will be good to have the feel of a city race under my belt before i do imnyc. philly will have a downstream river swim which is similar to im nyc. the bike course in philly is supposed to be great. it's through fairmont part but it has hills, technical turns, some flats. a little bit of everything. then the run is through fairmount park and mlk drive. I'm very happy to do this race this year. should be a blast. http://phillytri.com/

Graston

Didn't do too much training this weekend. I came down with a sinus infection becasue I had some mildew growing in my bedroom. Got it cleaned up and hoping the symptoms go again soon too. I just did yoga on saturday and sunday. And today I totally took the day off from training. I did however go to see a new Dr. about my knee. I gave it a few weeks off recently and it hasn't progressed as much as I would like it to so I decided the time is now to start testing out treatments. Instead of waiting another few weeks and not getting any further. So I went to a Doctor that uses the Graston technique.  http://grastontechnique.com/

it is basically breaks down scar tissue and promotes healthy soft tissue. They uses medal rods to scrape down the affected areas. The pain level is probably the same as Active release therapy. I was also given a few rehab things to do. Mostly focusing on my tibialis. The usual comments came up about my lower legs being really tight.  I have been working on that so much in the last few weeks and honestly they are probably the best they have ever been!  We discussed treatment going forward and in addition to this he is going to want me to do some rehab because i do have a disfuction. This is mostly what i want cleared up. My pain is lessened from not using it but i know if i went out and ran a long enough distance today it would be bothering me afterward so i need to get this thing functional over the offseason. Because even if the pains goes away if the disfunction is still there it will just be a problem again when i start training hard again. Doc is fine with me swimming, biking and water running. He said no real running obviously and if something on the bike becomes as issue we will have to remove that too. It's too soon to tell if this is going to be the solution but it can't hurt to try it out at this point. 

Right On Time

Thursday - swim - 10 x 50 yds of drilling then 10 x 50 building on 1 minute to warmup. Drills were switch, catch, drag, shark and hesitate.  I swam the 50s starting around 50 seconds and finished them with 45s.  Then enlisted jeff to swim the 20 x 50s on 1 minute with me.  The first five or so I did in 40 seconds. The next ten or so were closer to 45 seconds. the final 5 were between 40 and 45 seconds. I wasn't feeling great in the pool today I just felt like i couldn't swim any faster. it was a rough day but i hung in there. Then did  400 as 100 crawl, 100breast, 100 crawl, 100 backstroke,100 fly kick (stroking through breathe).

cf wod  - 10 pushups and 10 situps to warmup. then 10 - 9 - 8 -7-6-5-4-3-2-1 pushups and situps. Situps are always easy for me. The pushups are not as easy as they used to be. It took me 5 minutes to complete.

Friday - wasn't feeling the greatest this morning. either i am getting sick or my allergies are flared up from the heating systems kicking in. i've got a sore throat from some sinus drainage.   overall i don't feel bad at least not yet anyway.

Swim - 10 minute warmup mix, 100 breaststroke, 100 backstroke then alternated between crawl and butterfly. still swiming in the fly mostly as kick with stroking to breathe to work on the rhythm. there are moments were i feel like i have the timing back and moments of uglyness.  then hooked up with kevin my official pacer and split recorder. for my main set.  2 x 400 pull 2nd 400. 3 x 300 pulling the 3rd 300, 3 x 200, pulling the third 200. 3 x 100 pulling the 3rd 100.  I am not a fan of swimming with the pull buoy as it significantly slows me down. Overall kevin said we were averaging about 1:30 per 100 for all the swimming ones. The pulling ones he was blowing me out of the water. I would finish almost an entire lap behind him. He tried to keep the pace consistent throught the interval and the workout so he will swim right by you and be like a pacer.  100 yard breaststroke to cooldown.

cf wod - 20 situps, 10 squats (slow) 10 pushups to warmup then 4 x 20 pushups with 1 minute isometric squat hold. (below parallel) I actually felt better than I expected to on the isometrics. I think it was becuase i wasn't coming off of a leg intense session  like riding my bike. My legs were wrecked coming out of the squat for a few seconds but I was able to hold them for a 1 without any threat of having to come out of it.

now that i am finally cleared to get on my bike we got a ton of rain yesterday so we didn't have cross practice and were supposed to get accumulating snow tomorrow. I am not sure if i will just do my bike wods on the trainer or if i will just give the knee a little more time off the bike to recover this weekend. I'll have to see how I feel tomorrow.  I talked to jay about adding water running into my programming so i can start trying to train all 3 sports to some level again. I was unhappy with my running situtation last season and while it is understandable considering the knee injury I would like to improve on that this season. My knee is much better than it was but I can't say 100 percent yet but all of the yoga has been incredible for it and lots of other things in my body.  Ill start testing the knee with some riding and water running and see how it is.

Drunken Butterfly

Tuesday

Tired getting up this morning but better once I got in the water. Warmup – 100 swim, 200 kick, 10 x 50 drills – switch, catch, fingertip drag, shark and hesitate for 2 rounds. Then 15 rounds of 100s on 2 minutes. I swam every 100 as 1:30 or slightly less.  I was happy with being able to keep that time through the entire workout. I didn’t get slower as I got tired but it did take more effort to keep meeting that pace at least mentally. Kevin showed up when I had 7 left so he did those with me which might have helped.  Cooldown 300 as 50 free, 50 back, 50 free, 50 breast, 50 free, 50 back.  

Yoga – kundalini class! This was my first time take a strict kundalini class. I’ve done some of their breathing technique before. This was good practice since your hold the asanas for minutes. It even had squats involved. Ok it was only 25 but we had to do them fast. My knee did ok with it. I probably only went to parallel on the depth. The series of postures was to work on back flexibility primarily. 

Wednesday

Swim – 300 warmup, 8x 75 pull. 300 kick,  1 x 300 easy, 3 x 75 fast on 30 sec rest, 1 x 75 easy, 20 sec rest, 2 x 75 fast, 30 sec rest, 1 x 75 easy, 20 sec rest, 1 x 75 fast 30 sec rest. Cooldown – was supposed to be 100 yards easy but I decided I wanted to start working on my butterfly technique.  I did 25 yards then took a break and did another 25 yards. My timing is off on the stroke so then I did a 100 of fly kick only stroking when I needed to breathe. I am going to work on it like that for a bit.  Why am I choosing to do this since I’ll never use fly for anything other than a warmup or cooldown. It is the most technically demanding stroke to swim. Meaning you can’t cheat the technique on it. You can not just use strength to get though it. It is the alsmot as fast as freestyle and when the technique is right easy like the breaststroke to do. If I can get the technique down for it it can only improve my body awareness and technique in the less demanding strokes.And of course let us not forget the sexyness factor is super high with it, nice shoulders!

 Yoga – vinyasa flow class tonight.