Trainer Fever

Do you ever feel like you a hamster running in a wheel because you are working hard but you aren't going anywhere.  Today I have a 2 hour and 15 minute ride and I am not looking forward to it. It’s not the time I am dreading. It is the fact that I have to look at the same wall in my basement for over two hours. The only bonus to riding in the basement on my trainer is that I never ride into a head wind. The down side is that the view never changes and it just doesn’t stack up to getting out for a real ride.


I will run outside during the winter but you must be crazy if you think I am going to take my bike out on the salt covered roads. Maybe one day I will buy a winter bike but at the moment I don’t have one. I could go to the gym and spin with some friends but that is getting a little old as well. Not to mention the seats on the spin bikes look more comfortable than my seat but the comfort factor ends at how they look. After a long ride on the spin bikes at the gym I feel like the kid getting paddled in the movie Dazed and Confused.

I was going to ride this morning and talked myself out of it. I decided that if I have to ride and run today I will wait until this afternoon. The temperature outside will be about 40 so I can do my ride in the based and avoid the treadmill and head outside for my run.

I keep hearing people say that winter is almost over. I hope they are right because I am ready for spring.

Week 9 of 36

TRAINING
I am half way through week 9 of 36 of the Iron Man training program my group and I are following. I haven’t kept a very good week by week account of how the training has been going because life has been absolutely nuts. My training program started the same week my preparation to open my new business started. I have had to spend a few weeks out of town and that has affected my training some but not to the point it has set me back.

The first couple of weeks were very easy in comparison to what I had been doing and I had to keep reminding myself to slow down. The last thing I need to do is burn out before the season gets started. After we got through the first couple of weeks the training started to pick up and become more challenging. Working out inside is starting to get to me. How many hours can one spend on a trainer or treadmill without going mad! Three hours may be my limit.

I have a problem with the top of my foot at the moment. I am not sure what I did but I have not been able to run for the last week and a half. I woke up the day after having the flu and noticed that I couldn’t put much pressure on my foot. I haven’t run since my foot pain showed up in an effort to let my foot heal. It is early in the year so I am not worried about getting behind but I do miss putting in a good long run. I always feel good inside after a nice long run.

Yesterday my foot was feeling great so I decided I would try to do some of the 55 minute run that my training plan called for before I jumped in the pool for an hour. I got up at 4:30, had breakfast and headed for the gym. I wasn’t sure how much of the run my foot would let me finish but I hoped for at least 30 minutes. I started running at about a 60% effort for my warm up and new my run was done within a few steps. I tried to push through the pain for about a minute but decided to stop before I sent the healing process in reverse.

The swim went great though. This year I feel like I have made great strides with my swim. I am moving faster and maintaining that speed for the entire workout. While my foot is the dark cloud for the moment my swim is the ray of sun shine I need to keep my going. The foot will heal soon so I will add in some extra time on the bike and weights to work my legs so I am ready to jump back in to the run workouts. I am hoping I am ready by this weekend because the program does call for one long run and one medium length run and I would really like to do both of them.

TWO DOWN – ONE TO GO
Some other good news is that my wife has finally decided to get a bike this year. We are going shopping this weekend and hope to find what she is looking for. I got her running two years ago and now she is getting a bike. The next step is getting her in to the pool. That may be the biggest hurdle I face because even though my wife is in great shape she doesn’t like put on a bathing suit in front of other people. I will have to keep chipping away and eventually I get her in.

Keep training and stay healthy!