Training Tuesday: One Year Later

I can't believe it's been a year

I've been thinking a lot this week about where I was a year ago. The Vermont City Marathon was my best race to date, hands down. I bested my personal record by more than 20 minutes, removing a total of 41 minutes from my first marathon time. It was magical, the perfect day. And I have no idea how to recreate it again.

I set out to run a half marathon Sunday morning and could not hack it. Granted, it was after a 42-mile bike ride on the Ironman Wisconsin course (it's famously challenging) and a 1.2-mile pool swim. But still. It was all I could take to run to mile 10 before run/walking back to the car. I'm ahead of my training plan, sure, but some days I think about how I used to be fast.

The only picture I took in Madison

What buoys my spirits (see what I did there?) is my swim performance. Thanks to the Garmin, I can tangibly quantify my improvements. I only got the Garmin 910 last summer, well into my Ironman training. Now, I'm getting obsessed with the swim data. It's easy to see how much time each 50-yard sprint takes, how many strokes it took and what your swim efficiency was. Last cycle, I sort of did swim workouts. But without a watch or pace clock, I had to improvise. Now, it's reassuring to see that I can complete the workouts as written and am actually seeing improvements.


Also, my love of biking was renewed over the weekend while biking the IMWI course from Verona. After riding the 62-mile Arlington 500, I was totally wiped out and pissed off. My eyeballs hurt from my contacts, my legs were sad and I was just spent. I felt completely different post ride this weekend. Maybe it was the nostalgia, or perhaps remembering that I am in fact an Ironman, regardless of how I feel today, but it was awesome. There is no better ride out there. It's well-marked, you get hills and 35 MPH decents, there are farms and historic sites - Madison has it all.

I know what's required to get back to fast. Less beer, more veggies, more intervals and fewer excuses. So here's to making it count. Pigman or bust.