March Madness & Mayhem

Well, not really, but it was one of my busier training months, especially compared to previous months. Honestly, though, I'm just putting in all the swimming, cycling, and running demanded of me by my coach so that I may meet my goal of seeing the finish line at Ironman Canada in August. I'm also seriously hoping to meet her goal for me of finishing the New Balance Half Ironman in 7:15 or under. Last year, I was one of the last finishers with a time of around 7:39 (or so). I can tell you now, I won't be making up any of my time on the swim, but on the bike, as that is where I am spending most of my training time.

You may or may not have noticed, I've started posting my monthly goals and progress on my sidebar. I belong to WeightWatchers and am part of their on-line community. In particular, I participate in an on-line forum called "Fitness Challenge." It was on this forum, back in 2002, that I found the support and encouragement I needed to pursue my athletic goals. No one laughed at me or thought I was silly for wanting to do a triathlon. In fact, the thread I started on that board, appropriately named "Tri-ers Day-of-the-Week" (as it is re-started every day), has been going on for almost 4 years now. During that time, many dozens of triathletes have come and gone, though there is a core few of us that are still there, IronAyla included. Some of us even got together one year and did the Accenture Triathlon in Chicago.

My point is that one of our number, SpeedLeopard (awesome young woman, go read her story), suggested we start an Ironman Fitness Challenge. Each month, we encourage others to complete the distance of an ironman triathlon. For many, this is a great motivator and gets them out the door and on their bike or in the pool in order to post their totals to the thread. For others, they are using it to add variety and cross-training to their regular routines. For some, doing the ironman distance is too much and they opt, instead, to do a half ironman distance. We aren't too picky on this as long as they are moving their bodies (getting some form of exercise as many were/are former couch potatoes).

Well, because of my training, doing an ironman distance in a month doesn't present any particular challenge, so I started doubling and tripling the distances. In March, I chose to triple the distance. By the end of the month, my totals looked like this:

	Goals for March	Total to date	Total Hours
Swim	12600 y	18000 y	8:41
Bike	336 m	319.1 m	21:34
Run	72.6 m	62.7 m	11:33

While I did fall short of my goals, I did so only barely. Now that April is upon us, and their are FIVE whole weekends in the month and, for me, April only holds ONE rest week, I'm opting to quadruple the distances. Even with my long runs, though, I'm thinking I may fall a little short in that department. My coach only has me running 3x a week, and two of those runs are typically very short, only 30-40 minutes each. I may start upping those to an hour as that was what I was used to doing before. She is probably concerned with over-taxing me and wants to make sure I can get my long runs, and especially my long rides, in on the weekends. Now that Daylight Saving (not Saving"s") time is here, I may start doing my long runs in the middle of the week, thus saving most of my energy for my long rides.

So, that's it for the month of March. April should prove very interesting.