First off, we're all fine from Helene. We lost a gate and some tree branches, water in the house again, but other than that we had minimal impact. We didn't really lose power and we were already aware of the foundation problems. The area we live in was hit pretty badly by the storm surge and people who live in a flood zone got crushed. I can only imagine what would have happened if we took a direct hit. I hope I never have to find out, but it definitely changed my opinion on riding one out. I think both Merinda and I decided we'll just get the fuck out of Dodge with the dogs and spend a comfy night elsewhere. I say this as there's another "disturbance" in the gulf. It's looking pretty mild, but everyone is on edge after Helene. Just hope all those people up in NC get the help they need. That looks insane.
Now let's talk about September. Overall a good month. I really can't call it excellent because I feel like I came up short on a couple of things, yes I expected some of it, but not all. As a reminder here are the goals I set:
- Maintain weight
- Ride 500 miles - Need to get outdoors
- At least one more 5k tuneup this week. Then the Triathalon and we can take a little break from running.
- At least one more swim before the race, preferrably two and ideally one in the ocean.
- Resume after workout stretching.
- Continue bootcamp workouts.
- Perfect Month in Apple
- Apple September exercise challenge
- Gold in my Septmber challenges
- All the bonuses in #mc44 and start #mc45
- Finish at least one, if not both, of the virtual 5k's I signed up for.
Weight Results:
- Starting Weight: 214.10
- Ending Weight: 216.9
Exercise info:
- Number of rides: 70
- Time on exercise: 50:28:42
- Distance on rides: 367.60
- Number of runs: 3
- Distance running: 9.16mi
- Number of walks: 2
- Time walking: 1:05:30
- Distance walking: 2.69mi
- Number of rows: 0
- Time rowing: 0
- Number of swims: 2
- Distance swimming: 1600yd
Results:
I always like to start with the misses, so lets get that out of the way. I badly missed my mileage target. I took six days off the bike, which to be fair I mostly needed, but the week up in VA made a big difference, and to be honest, I wasn't trying to track miles, but get ready for the tri. I did not get the Apple exercise challenge. As soon as I realized what it was I knew I'd fall short because it had a really high calorie burn, and in a month where I was going to spend a week tapering and a week resting it was going to be almost impossible. It really wasn't until this week that my legs began to feel better after the race, so I knew I would probably miss that. I also missed my gold in two challenges. I was overly ambitious because the non team focused ones are harder. I was close in one, and missed by a mile in the other. Oh well, there's next month :)
I talked about the bad, now let's talk about the good. I ran a good race in Tarpon. I really did. Yes, of course there's room for improvement, but I am 56, almost 57 for those of you keeping score, and I have bad joints. Other than some cramping I didn't feel that bad although I was pretty worn out for a week or so. I suspect the 90 minutes I did on the bike on Sunday didn't help there. Weight is good, I'm stretching more than I ever have, even if I don't feel like it's helping as much as I want. Ran my pre-race 5k's and I'm taking bootcamp's twice a week now. I don't know why I avoided them before, and I finished MC44. I've even begun to do standalone weight training on my rest days. It's a good way to keep moving and work on getting stronger.
Ok, so what are we going to do in October?
- Maintain weight
- Ride 550 miles - Ideally get outdoors once/week for at least 25 miles.
- Run at least one, maybe two 5k's this month.
- Swim once, maybe twice this month. Gentle pace for 500-1000 yards
- Continue weight training
- Continue bootcamp workouts.
- Perfect Month in Apple
- Apple October exercise challenge
- Gold in my Septmber challenges
- All the bonuses in #mc45 and start #mc46
- Start MDC3!
This should look familar again, but I need to get a little more focused on the bike. I have a metric century ride coming up in November, so I need to be ready to ride for 62 miles, which is about twice as far as I've ridden so far. I'm estimating 4-5 hours, closer to 4, but it's going to take some work on my endurance, since I'm not used to working for that long. That will tie in nicely to the distance challenge and an uptick in my monthly output.
I did take some downtime both before and after the race, and I'm glad I did. I've been overtraining, and that can be a real problem. I feel like I did this 30 years ago and it's why I burned out. It's also why I like the challenges and other minor goals. I won't be racing in another tri this year, at least I don't see that happening, but I don't want to lose the fitness I've worked at, so I need somethign to keep me moving. I'll have to be a little more judicious in allocating rest time through the next few months. I still want to take "rest" days, so I will be swimming and running and weight training on those days. Obviously, not all at once, but I worked to build swimming endurance and I don't want to throw it away. Same goes for running, especially since I have some races I'm planning to do throughout the fall. Other than that, it's "typical" goals for me. The last thing I wanted to mention is I'm trying to do more zone 2 training, so I can build up more endurance.
All in all, I'm excited for this month, assuming we don't have another hurricane. I'm looking forward to the distance challenge and getting back to some semblence of normal exercise routine even if I'm not looking forward to getting older shortly. Regardless, have a great day and we'll talk soon!
