147 Days and Counting!

Good morning to all!

This is the first post documenting our family's prep for Iroman Coeur d'Alene! This one will frame up some of the basics for my posts. Nutrition (basically, what I eat, not really scientific), training, and some of the mental prep... There is no test at the end, but this first post will give you some of the background information for interpreting the data posted.

I am currently in a build phase of training; getting my body used to training 5-6 days a week, with lower intensity and lower volume than will be found later on. My prep for this distance consists of a 20 week training plan, originally found at www.beginnertriathlete.com . The details of the training will be geared around pretty simple measurements:

-RPE, or rate of perceived exertion. This is a scale of effort during exercise, on a scale of 1-10. One being walking at a slow pace, and ten being an all out sprint that cannot be maintained for more than a couple minutes. RPE will also be tied into heart rate measurements periodically.

-Volume, measured in hours/minutes.

-Calories consumed. This is usually done combining regular diet (meals and snacks throughout the day), and engineered foods consumed during exercise (think Gatorade, and powerbars). This helps me keep track of the calorie amounts consumed and expended for keeping/losing weight, but also to find what foods sit well in my stomach over extended periods of activity. No one wants a race ruined by Gastrointestinal distress.

For an extremely interesting article on Ironman Racing nutrition, see this article: http://www.coachkp.com/tipsarticles/ironmannutrition.htm

Thank you all for reading, and I hope you find this interesting! As an easy introduction to what is to come, below is my first training post. There are no restrictions on comments, so feel free to post a response! Just be nice...



To keep things simple, here is my training log from yesterday, 1/23.

-60 minutes on the bike, indoor trainer. All small ring, easy effort. RPE 4. 16 ounces of Lemon Lime Gatorade (50 calories) and 6 Pina Colada Shot Blox (200 calories). Normally would just have the gatorade, but I got hungry on bike.

-Immediately after the bike, got on the treadmill for 10 minutes of running at 6.5mph pace (around a 9.5 minute mile). RPE 4.

-Breakfast: Whole wheat bagle with peanut butter, 2 cups coffee, and 16 ounces of blueberry pomegranate juice.
-Lunch: Large bowl of granola cereal, skim milk. Handfull of wheat thin crackers.
-Dinner: 2 pints of PBR (Thank you Todd!!), and many, many buffaloe wings (my only defense is they were my protein for the day), and cheese fries.
-Snacks: 20 ounces of vitamin water, chips and salsa, and 2 packets of instant oatmeal.