Category: Triathlon

Training Day #22

The plan for Monday was an open water swim session. However, I haven’t been swimming for long and turned this session into a pool swim at my university. In this session, I focused on my technique instead of distance. Since I haven’t swum regularly in the past few years, the focus is to get comfortable in the water and improve my breathing technique. The gear I have been using is just an ordinary pair of swim trunks and swim goggles. The university has paddles and kickboards that are free to use, and I did a few laps with each of them to improve my form and practice my leg kicks. Since I have started swimming, my leg kicks have always been the weakest portion of my swimming. I like to use my upper body to swim!

The actual workout was 200 meters of freestyle swimming followed by 200 meters laps repeated twice.  Then a cool down swim of 200 meters  mixed swimming (i.e. any stroke) this is the point I used the paddles and kickboard. This workout totals to 1000 meters of swimming.

Key Learning Points:

1. Slow swimming helps improve form and increases distance with less fatigue
2. I need to improve my swimming kicks

 

(Credit to the featured image is NCSU Health and Wellness Center)

Training Day #21

So, I’m not sure how I want to do my updates for my triathlon training. For now, I am going to post daily or close to daily training updates.  Bear with me as I try to figure out the best way to structure these updates. This is the first week I’m posting my training sessions, but it is the 4th week of my training. That explains why my training day begin on day 21 instead of day 1.

I started the week with a brick session on Sunday. A brick is two back-to-back workouts. This is to train for the transition that occurs in a triathlon.  I started with an 8.9-kilometer bike ride around my local area and then moved to a 3-kilometer run. I learned a lot from this training day.

During my bike ride, I noticed that shifting to my lower gears during steep hill climbs resulted in my chain skipping and the chain rubbing on the derailers. The last time I got the bike tuned has been at least four years (mainly because I haven’t ridden consistently since 2014). After the bike ride, I changed my cycling shorts for pair of running shorts and shoes because I didn’t own any tri-shorts to practice the transition. This type of transition made my workout a bit long and unrealistic. It took me about 5-7 minutes to change, and my running motivation began to wane. Nevertheless, I pushed through this inconvenience and completed the 3k run. The run felt ok; I didn’t push myself too hard and focused on the feeling of my legs to get a baseline of my performance.

Key Learning Points:

  1. A tuned Bike is vital to maximizing performance.
  2. Tri-shorts are essential gear for training.
  3. Practicing the bike to run transition to get familiar with your performance

Triathlon Training: The Beginning

I started this section of my blog as a timeline for my training for my first Triathlon. Competing in a Triathlon has been a goal of mine for the last seven years. However, due to many unforeseen circumstances and ever-growing work requirements, I haven’t been able to compete in a triathlon. Now I am at a point in my professional career that I now have a little bit of free time to train again. So, I am currently training for the Sandling Beach Triathlon held in North Carolina at the beginning of October!

To start this blog series, I have recapped how I became interested in the sport of Triathlons and how I got to this point. If you aren’t interested in my story below, no hard feelings, and take a look at my latest post!

The Beginning

It started when I was learning how to fly helicopters in Enterprise, Alabama. The local Army base was hosting a Sprint Triathlon in the Fall of 2014. So my friend and I started to train for the event a couple of months out. I bought my bike, which was a Trek 1.1 road bike, in 2013, and we hit the pool about twice a week.

However, due to work requirements, we were unable to compete. The goal of completing a Triathlon was still in my sights. Unfortunately, my new work requirements began to pile up, and my responsibilities as an adult did not leave much time for triathlon training. In 2015, I was given another opportunity to compete in a Reserve Sprint Triathlon in South Korea. The timing and structure of the course were perfect. A reserve triathlon is a run, bike, and swim. Whereas a traditional triathlon is a swim, bike, and run. The night of the Triathlon, I gathered all my gear near the door and excitedly tried to sleep!

Around 1 AM, I was abruptly awoken by the phone going off. My supervisor informed me that one of my subordinates was picked up by the police and hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. As the manager, my weekend was ruined by ensuring he was in good health and completing a mountain of paperwork. Once again, another triathlon attempt was foiled by unforeseen circumstances.

At this point, my hopes for completing a triathlon was dwindling, and my motivation was waning. However, during my work performance reviews, I always put completing a triathlon as one of my personal goals. Fast forward to today, I am currently in a position where my free time has dramatically increased, and my motivation to compete in the upcoming Sandling Beach Triathlon is at an all-time high!

As of writing this article, I have been training steadily for about three weeks. My fitness is not where it was seven years ago, but I think that will be the best part of the challenge to get back to the point I was fitness-wise.

This series will chronicle my journey through training, dieting, and finally completing a triathlon!

Let’s see how it goes!