Week 3 Training (March 10-16) - aka: You Might Want to Unclip That Foot Before Getting Off Your Bike

Week 3 of 36. Thirty-four weeks until the race.

What this week's scheduled training looked like (Mar 10-16):

Total hours scheduled: 8:00

Total hours logged: 7:50

Total running miles this week/total: 16.43 / 37.07

Total biking miles this week/total: 42.7 / 122.15

Total swimming yards this week/total: 5000/ 15000

Weight: X (still. Seriously, no change? I'm eating too much. Will need to really start thinking about my diet soon.)

Level of IM enthusiasm: 6/10. A decidedly harder week for me, mostly because of work deadlines (but I got Book 2 in my series finished -- yay!). 8 hours of workout in a week is making me dread when I'm going to have 15-20 hours training in a week around Aug-Oct. Note to self: get my schedule clear as much as possible for those months. Duh.

Nutrition elements: Still nothing, really. I had one 1:45 bike ride that required some nutrition, but just grabbed my normal pack of shot bloks. I have these Liquid Shot EFS by 1st Endurance that I've heard really good things about, but those bottles have 400 calories. That's equivalent to two packs of shot bloks.

I generally don't do any nutrition for under an hour. After that I try to take in 200 calories an hour. So unless I break up the EFS bottle across a week's worth of workouts (a sip here and a sip there), I probably won't get to try these until close to June.

General notes: Had a couple of important newbie IM Milestones this week! First, I swam 2500 yards without stopping. That's 1.42 miles, or roughly 60% of the overall IM swim. It was in a pool, but still helped boost my confidence that I was able to get that distance completed, this early in the training season. Took 54 minutes, so if I kept that same pace at IMFL I would finish the swim in less than 90 minutes, well short of the 2:20 cut off.

Second milestone was on my bike. I do most of my rides on the trainer because there's nowhere nearby I can ride without fear for my life in all the traffic. But I had a 1:45 ride scheduled this week, so I took Shane West out to a local no-cars-allowed 16-mile bike loop.

But unfortunately, because I'm so used to being on the trainer (where my back wheel is held steady no matter what), as I was stopping I forgot that I was clipped into the pedals, then unclipped the wrong foot. Which all resulted in a pretty hilarious fall to the ground. I was going very slowly and nothing was really hurt but my pride (and a little skinned knee). Fortunately, no one else was around, or they could've heard me yell "Ohhhhh nooooooooooo!" as I fell. (Cue Ke$ha song: It's going down... I'm yelling timber!!)

I reported about my fall in one of my IMFL groups. They quickly asked the important question: was your bike okay?  I'm happy to report Shane West is just fine.

Now (for any newbies who might be reading), as I stop, you can hear me repeating my bike-stopping mantra: Butt off seat, unclip bent-knee leg. Butt off seat, unclip bent-knee leg.  If you don't do both of those, you're going to end up on the ground, looking kinda like this:

Seriously, this is exactly how I looked, but without anyone to laugh at me. And Shane West isn't pink.