Winter is here!

Winter is hitting Pocatello...finally! That makes it tough to get up in the morning because it's dark and cold. I solve that problem by getting up Baby Paul at 0530 almost every morning. I normally can't get up early on my own, so that works out great!

This weekend I did some more cross training in the snow. I wanted to spend all day Saturday skiing, but I stayed home to give Tera some free time. Sunday after church, I headed out for some backcountry skiing at Pebble. I hiked up the Canyon and took two runs south of the saddles (not sure what they're called). The snow up top was great! I was really rusty on the downhill, though. Oh well, it was a lot of fun. For the workout stats, I got a good aerobic workout for three hours. The fact that I biked hard for 60 minutes Friday and moderate for 60 minutes on Saturday made it more interesting because my legs were tired at the start. I had a really good sweat going on the uphills, and the heavy winds froze the sweat in my hair (one more reason to keep a short haircut). I was pretty tired at the end of the day.

I took Monday off for my legs but lifted weights on upper body. Reed Gym has reduced hours for the Christmas break. The shortened pool hours put everyone in there at the same time; lunch time was packed, so I bailed and shoveled snow; shovelling heavy snow counts as aero if you ask me). In fact, I shoveled snow in the morning before going to work, too.

I was supposed to get 13.5 hours of training last week but ended up with 11.5. I'm realizing that I can do 9-11 hours of training each week easily, but anything above 12 gets really hard, at least during the winter months. I don't have far to travel to the gym (5 minutes!) and to work (5 minutes), but the extra time adds up and shortens available time. My work has a shower now, so that's good for running at lunch, which I couldn't do before. That will really help in the spring and summer.

This week is an R/R week, nicely coinciding with the Christmas week. But next week begins a new Base 3 week, but the gym is closed the entire week. So, no pool, no weights, and if the weather sucks, no running/stairmaster/ellipictacle. I guess I'll do lots of biking and see if my legs can take it.

I'm not too worried about missing my training hour goals. Number one, I don't want to burn out. Number 2, I can get my swim in shape quickly in about 6-8 weeks. The run takes a bit longer to get into shape, but I can start that in earnest in March when Spring breaks. My focus is to build a good foundation of cycling, with additional speed and endurance (duh!). I can tell my legs are getting stronger already from consistent biking and weight training (leg extensions, leg curls, and leg presses).

I'm really shooting for being at about 80% at the end of March, at which time I plan to begin all outside training, at least running and most biking. The weather here can be really tricky, so the biking in March and April is 'hopeful.' In any case, I want to be doing two bricks a week beginning the end of March, with full 40k bikes and 3-4 mile runs.

Two more things I want to do soon ("soon" actually began in November!) is get a video of me swimming and running to review my form. I have an underwater case for a camer that takes decent video, but I just haven't found somebody to do the video. I guess I'll just take it to the pool one day and ask somebody to video it (lifeguard could do deck shots easily, somebody else would hopefully want to see a video of themselves in exchange, right?). The run portion could be a bit more difficult because of all the clothes we'd wear outside, so I'll have to do that inside on the ISU track. I've done a video analysis of my bike on a trainer, and it revealed some interesting things about ankle position that I would have never known otherwise. I'm sure the swim and run analysis will be just as interesting.

Until then, I'll focus on the bike, lift weights consistently but not build any more mass, swim when I can, and run as consistently as possible. Backcountry skiing will be my endurance builder via 3-4 hour adventures on a Saturday or Sunday.

Keeping a focus without burning out in the winter is going to be difficult for me. I use the training hour goals as a starting point for each week and try to hit them, but it's not the end of the world if I miss a few hours.