I’ve got training on my mind- only 31 days to go until the Beach2Battleship race.  My crowdrise fundraising for the race has been pretty meager- I just haven’t gotten comfortable asking for money (for charity). Whether or not things pick up there, I am happy I put together the page.

Last week was my ‘peak week’ for training- my planned training time eclipsed 17 hours.  Up front I have to say that all of my training hours couldn’t happen without the support of my wife, who is usually tasked with watching the kids solo while I am out for my long rides and long runs on the weekends.

In retrospect July seemed pretty easy-going; my training accelerated in August and hit some long hours by September.  Having only completed my first century in August, my training plan called for five more 6-7 hour rides before the late October race.  To compare my training load, in 2012 I felt like I had a good year; I logged almost 200 hours and 2140 miles swimming, cycling, and running.   This year- just 9 months- I have logged over 309 hours (12+ days) and traveled over 3000 miles swimming, biking, and running.  For comparison, traveling from Wilmington, North Carolina to Los Angeles, California, is a mere 2588 miles on the interstate.

Through September, an odd, surprising feeling has crept in from time to time- for some of the longer workouts I experience a small amount of pre-workout anxiety.  In part I am anxious about the sheer amount of time I am scheduled to spend jogging on a weekday before work (half of which comes before sunrise), or cycling on the weekend away from the family out on the bike.  Regarding the latter, I have increasingly noticed stories about cycling fatalities which weigh on me as I tuck in my kids the night before a long ride.  For this reason alone I am looking forward to getting back to a ‘normal’ exercise regimen after the race- spending less time on ‘myself’ and asking less of my family.

This weekend I have my first race rehearsal planned- 112+ miles on on the bike, followed by a one hour run.  I am pretty excited to see how that goes.  Admittedly I am just interested to see what pace I will be able to maintain at ‘zone 2’, i.e. at a purely aerobic workout pace on the bike.  Leading up to this ride, my previous long cycling workouts have combined some higher-intensity interval work (up to the highest heartrate zone 5), so this rehearsal may actually be easier than those workouts in some respects.

Finally, over the past year I have hit the wall a few times. But I don’t think I ever had the energy to actually mentally imagine a physical wall in front of me- that would require too much energy.

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