The 26 week challenge

My coach just emailed me and said that he was 26 pounds overweight and he had 26 weeks until his 'A' race which also happens to be my 'A' race.....Ironman Florida. So, I thought it would be good motivation for me to give myself the 26 pound challenge. That is 1 pound per week for 26 weeks.....I'm good at math :-)

I really believe I have the fitness to be a lot faster if I had less weight. I don't think I would sacrifice a lot of strength with less weight. I think for smaller athletes....<10% body fat, losing more weight verges on the side of losing speed.

I competed in a duathlon yesterday....the Greenwich biathlon.....a 2.5 mi run/10 mi bike/2.5 mi run. The race was over before I had a chance to warmup. I ran a 2 mile warmup at a fairly good pace. The race started and everyone went out hard. I held back some to allow myself to settle into a comfortable pace. It takes time for your HR to work up to that point. When you go out too hard, you risk tweeking a hamstring and dying because you go beyond your lactate threshold that you can recover so you crash (so to speak). I paced the first run very well, allowing myself to build into and as a result I consistently passed people all the way. Then I had a crappy transition and fumbled with my helmet and my shoes but not terrible. Getting onto the bike my legs felt terrible but then I realized that I had just run 2.5 miles all out.....that explains it. I eased into trying it to get a feel for my legs. The race was fairly spread out at this point. I was only passed by one person on the bike and he was part of a relay. I passed a half a dozen people or so but not as many as I would have liked. My second transition was much better as it always is. I came into transition with a group of people and I was the first or second out. My legs felt pretty decent and I settled into a good pace. I was passed fairly quickly by the eventual women's winner, then only one other guy who finished directly in front of me by 10 seconds or less. Overall I was pleased with my race and fitness at this point. I was 2 minutes faster this year than last. I missed breaking an hour by 30 seconds. I think my run pace was approx. 6:30/mile.

With less weight, running pace will be the biggest difference. With 20 pounds less weight, I should be able to run closer to 6 min miles. I could feel the weight as I was running. For every 5 pounds I feel a big difference.

I had some solid workouts last week. I trained with some buddies and we did a great ride one night and a really hard swim the following day. I followed that with an endurance 2:30 on the trainer on Saturday. It wasn't as bad as I expected. I rode the Wildflower course on the computrainer which is a really good course for riding on the training. Fairly flat...no steep climbs....just some gradual rises.

I have a challenging week ahead but not too bad. Looking forward to it and looking forward to losing a pound this week :-)

So, there it is....the 26 pound challenge. Anyone else want to join me?? Wish me luck :-)