Yesterday felt like Christmas morning when I found a shiny new gift sitting in my inbox waiting to be opened. Coach Charley sent me my first two weeks of training for Ironman Coeur d’Alene (CDA)

The next 8 months of my life will be dedicated to getting my body and mind ready to travel 140.6 miles all under my own power. I am excited and nervous and ready to get started.

My training will be broken into five phases to help me show up on race in top form. We are starting in the preparation phase, the preparation phase according to Charley is the first phase of training. This is a period of time from three to six weeks. It involves performing your aerobic activities at a low heart rate and it helps your body adjust to the rigors of training again. This is also the time to work on your drills for each sport. This would include many of the drills in swimming, isolated leg pedaling in cycling and/or strides in running. The workouts in the Prep Phase are usually short in duration, low in intensity, and may be frequent. The volume for this cycle is low. This period prepares you for the Base Phase.

I am guessing that our prep phase will be closer to six weeks since we wanted to start earlier than we “needed” to. Many athletes we know are starting their training for CDA in January. I wanted to start a bit earlier because I am so new to triathlon I wanted more time to work on skills before diving into high volume training.

Our training volume starts fairly low with a total of 16 hours for the fist week, and will ramp up to more than 20 hours a week. What gets me is that is only counting time moving. That does not include all the other time spent prepping, driving, packing bags, stretching or anything else that needs to happen for each of these workouts. So my goal for the first week is to nail every workout to get a feel for what 16 hours feels like and get accustomed to my new schedule.

Here is what my first week looks like:
Monday: 45 min yoga
Tuesday: am- 60 min full body strength training pm- 60 min progression run
Wednesday: am- spin class pm- pilates
Thursday: 90 min masters swim
Friday: am- 60 min fartlek run pm- full body strength training
Saturday: 3 hour bike ride
Sunday: 8 mile run, 2400 yd swim and full body strength

Totals:
Swim: 5000 yards, 3 hours
Bike: 60 miles, 4 hours
Run: 20 miles, 3.5 hours
Strength: 5.5 hours
Overall: 16 hours

As I transition into the build phase I am sure the strength hours will go down and the swim bike run will go up. My other goals for the week are to get take vitamins, get 8 hours of sleep and eat well.

what does your week look like, are you still enjoying off season?

Congrats to all who ran the NYC marathon, ironman Florida or any other race!

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More and more of my family are moving from Oregon to Colorado and I can’t be more excited about it. I love having my parents live so close, Colorado feels so much more like home with them here. The next convert is my grandma. I haven’t been able to spend much time with her in the last 10 years since I was in college a few hours away and then moved out of Oregon over 5 years ago. To help grandma move we are flying out and driving grandmas car back to Colorado.

Cory and I will literally be traveling for the next 28 hours and get nowhere. Here is how this crazy adventure breaks down:

6:45 am leave our house to catch or flight to Portland
11:00am arrive in Portland and catch a ride to my grandmas house
2:00pm leave grandma’s house pick of a few things for the road (like tire chains). Then drive for 22 hours straight. Our travels will take us across Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming before getting back into Colorado.
1:00pm Sunday if all goes well arrive back in Colorado

It will be a whirlwind weekend and I think Monday will be brutal. Here are the things I am bringing with me to survive the weekend.

We were told ahead of time to pack light because grandma is stuffing her car full of fragile things that she doesn’t want to movers to lay their hands on. As a notorious over packer I knew this would be a challenge for me. Good thing I like a challenge so I allowed myself just a backpack to pack into. A few of the necessities are cold weather clothing in case we need to put chains on the car and it’s twenty below in Wyoming. Note the hat, gloves and down jacket (not pictured but will make a great pillow in the car).

Other items include toiletries, vitamins, tylenol and allergy meds. I made sure to bring toothpaste and a toothbrush. Nothing like brushing your teeth at a rest stop at 2am!

I also make sure. To bring a water bottle (empty to get through security), a coffee mug, and a cloth napkin along. I always to reduce as much waste as possible even when traveling. I also brought emergen-c and pure via sweetner.

I also packed my trusty phone, ipad, all of their cords and I converter so I can charge my electronics on the road. Not pictured is my ipod because we were busy filling it full of audio books for the ride. It’s seriously sad that I need three kinds of entertainment at all times, I should really see someone about that.

Please forgive my blue fleeced wrist, I know it’s hideous and from 2001 but it’s laundry day.

What is a must have for you when traveling?

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I finally jumped on the twitter bandwagon.

I have resisted it for a while now but the turning point came while following all the Kona action. I can follow Chrissie and Miranda on a day basis? Score! Plus many of my favorite bloggers have twitter accounts. I have a lot to learn about how to use twitter and what it’s all about. Any tips? What’s your favorite thing about twitter?

In other news I was given the green light by my physical therapist to run longer and do speed work as long as I don’t have stabbing pain. I am elated and can’t wait to get back to hours spent on the trails.

Unfortunately the trails will have to wait until next weekend since I will be traveling all weekend. It’s going to be a long weekend and nothing is going to get done other than driving my grandma’s car out to Colorado. Cory and I fly out of Denver to Portland tomorrow morning. We arrive in Portland at 11am and will head directly to my grandma’s house where we will help her with a few projects and try to get on the road by 2 or 3 pm. We will drive straight through about 20 hours and be back in Colorado by mid day on Sunday. So no big trail run or bike ride this weekend (or laundry or grocery shopping, etc) Next week will be a long week. Hoping for good weather!

What are you up to this weekend?

Tomorrow Cory and I will be participating in the Denver Gorilla Run. This is a super fun event where your registration gets you a full gorilla suit!

Check out the bananas on bicycles, too funny!

I am not sure about running in a gorilla mask but I am sure that the cause it great and it will be a good time!
The Denver Gorilla Run is a charity fun run with a difference. Everyone who takes part wears a full gorilla costume – from fluffy head to furry toe – and helps raise funds for the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund, the international charity working to save the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas and keeping Dian Fossey’s dream alive for the past 26 years.

This cause is near and dear to my heart, Mountain gorillas are critically endangered and in need of help! From the race website you can read more about Mountain Gorillas and what the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund is doing to help:

In 1987, only 248 Mountain Gorillas lived in the wild. Because of projects coordinated by the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund, there are now about 790 living in the wild. The Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund is dedicated to ensuring the future of the Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By providing a partnership of business, wildlife conservation, and community development, MGCF addresses the single biggest challenge facing preservation of these animals today; how do we help communities in developing areas grow and prosper without destroying precious habitat or the Mountain Gorillas, who call it home.

Source

If you live in the Denver area you can still sign up! It’s going to be so much fun, but if you don’t feel like running in a gorilla suit you can watch all the gorillas run and join the silverback after party between 17th and 18th at Wynkoop.

What’s not to love here? This event combines my favorite things, running, conservation and beer….it’s going to be a good day.

A storm is rolling into denver that promises to dump 3 to 10 inches of snow before tomorrow night. Weird given that this was my view down my street this morning:

At about 4:30 it started to rain and has been raining lightly all night. Cory got home fairly early tonight so we grabbed our headlamps and rain jackets before heading out the door. I am SO excited that we got in six miles and I had NO knee pain, I felt strong (not to be confused with fast) and happy to be running in the rain, it felt just like home.

For dinner tonight Cory cooked up some pulled pork in the slow cooker for the first time. I decided I would do my part by trying out a new recipe for Butternut Squash Cheesy bake. Sounds good and supposed to be good for you. Here are the stats:

PER SERVING (1/4th of casserole): 101 calories, 1g fat, 457mg sodium, 20g carbs, 3g fiber, 5g sugars, 4g protein

The original recipe can be found here from Hungry Girl. I used it as a base and put my own spin on it.

Ingredients:
1 butternut squash
2 wedges The Laughing Cow cheese, Light Original Swiss
2 wedges The Laughing Cow cheese, Garlic and Herb
1 diced onions
1/4 cup fat-free liquid egg substitute (like Egg Beaters Original)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. garlic Salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut squash in half, remove seeds and rub with a little bit of oil. Place in shallow baking pan and bake at 350 degrees until soft (usually about 30-45 minutes). Remove from oven and allow squash to cool. Use a spoon to peel skin away and place in a bowl. Set aside. Place onion (and next time I would add garlic too) in a pan with a little oil and cook until lightly caramelized. Set aside. Place all other ingredients except for the onions in the bowl with the squash.

Use an immersion mixer to blend until thoroughly mixed (but not liquefied) you can also use a blender but be very carful as it will be hot. Stir in the onions. Transfer squash mixture to a small casserole dish sprayed with nonstick spray.

Place in the oven, and bake for 35 – 40 minutes (until edges begin to brown).

We think both are winners, the squash is a nice change from our normal baked sweet potato. But that plate needs some greens stat!

Have you tried a great recipe lately? Care to share, I love trying new foods!