... AND I FINISHED

Yeah! 11:43h and i reached with some stomach problems the finish line in roth!! :)
(1:13, 5:55, 4:23)

training time last 3 1/2 months

13.5 hours of training last week

my current method to get enough time for training despite of taking care of our seven month old baby is to do 3-4hours of sport on two arbitrarely chosen days from monday to friday. on satuday or sunday 4 hour session with the bike is planned when it's good weather.
this makes it possible to manage all housework as there are now three 'training-free' days from monday to friday. :)

on saturday i made a bike session of 81km below three hours. only at the end i got a bonk. so i feel very nice right now even on longer running (>2.5h) and biking (>3h) sessions.

:)

Training each week

The following is the amount of training i spend on swimming, biking and running each week in january and february. What i get out of this is that i have to do much more. Hence this week i'll do 15hours overall.

training schedule download

very nice training schedules for the ironman distance available for download ...
four different versions meaning 12h avg or 18h avg each week and for people having much more time at the weekend or within the week.

swimming 3km

Today i swam 3km in 1:05h which was slow but good to loose respect of the ironman swimming part. Hence this makes me very optimistic in swimming my 1:15h or even better with a neo during the ironman in roth

:)

training with children (in german)

Nice stuff about how to manage ironman training with challenging full-time job and lot's of children:
funkfamily

my current irrational ironman finishing time

with the current straight development of my speed in running and swimming i have new irrational goals for the ironman in roth this year. and this will be the following.

swimming: 1:15h
bike: 5:15h
run: 3:30

Yes, very irrational. But where a will is ... ;)

checkpoint 5k

Again i made a very fast run around our quarter: 5km in 20min40sec
Describing my body feeling, i think it was 95% or even more of what i could manage - really very hard at the limit. And it was hard to motivate to go for a run at 9:30pm in the evening. But nevertheless very motivating because my 5k time at the 4th of january was 21:40.
YEAAAAAH! it's going on and on!

drained ...

Yesterday i made a 7km run around our quarter feeling very drained after 40minutes. I planned to go for a 1h run but i couldn't motivate.
hence today i only do 1h of swimming as my legs are very tired.

daily routine

as i mentioned that i've some kids to take care of, i put my daily 'work' here, so that one can have an expression of what i'm doing right now.

By the way, i'm in my leave. so i take care of our fourth sun (five months old) for six months while my wife is working from 9am to 8pm.

6:oo-7:3o get up, dress our three 'bigger' boys and let them drink a warm milk,
7:3o-8:3o dress our baby and clean the appartment a little bit and do the laundry,
8:3o-9:oo eat breakfast with my wife
9:oo-9:30 doing housework
9:30-11:30 when the baby is awake, i do some entertainment or when it's sleeping i go running/ biking with the baby in the pushchair
11:3o-14:oo i go with the bike 15minutes to the work of my wife for nursing the baby and after that having lunch together
14:oo-15:45 housework and/or baby entertainment
16:oo-17:3o driving to the kindergarden for our three big sons and after that going with all the kids back to the work of my wife for nursing the baby
17:3o-19:oo doing the evening meal for the kids
19:oo-20:3o reading books for every of the three bigger sons (wife comes back from work at 8pm)
2o:3o-21:oo housework
21:oo-22:oo couch-potatoe or running/biking
22:3o go to bed

...

that's it. it's really hard motivating after 9pm for training. sometimes i feel very drained. calculating it: it's nearly a >70h work week with all housework to do and some sport in between. and everybody having one or more children knows how tired one's feeling when all kids are in bed and how hard motivation for hard sport sessions is in the late evening.
But on the other side motivation comes very much directly from the existence of my nice little boys.

long and easy 2 1/2h run

On saturday i made a long run again. With easy speed i had ~24km behind me. It's really amazing: it was only the third time ever for me doing such a run longer than one hour without having any knee problems. i like that!

yes, running two hours is very boring but i've my mobile phone with me to hear "Der Schwarm" (Frank Schätzing), a bestseller book in germany some years ago. a real problem was the cold air and the wind on the open fields around my home town.

by the way, due to the fact that everything works very well i actually plan to reach a finish time of 10:oo to 11:oo hours. :)

checkpoint 10k

hi:

yesterday i made a hard run trying to see what my current 10 km running time is like. it has been exactly 44min40sec. that's what i've expected. i want to become faster than 40min - after that i don't want to increase my speed any more. then it's time for long long runs. :)

total immersion swimming ...

see here

... counsel to start slowly, I’ve added the following tips.

1. Pierce the water. The most beneficial thing you can do is to think of slipping through the smallest possible space in the water. If you think of the guy in the TI logo, do whatever you can to maintain a shape something like that. A variety of forces – both internal (lifting your head or swinging your arms) and external (chop and swells) will be working constantly to divert you from that slippery line. Be aware of them and do whatever is necessary to counter those forces and protect your long, tight line through the water. Then move that clean, sleek bodyline along the course as if following a laser beam through the water.
2. Hold the water. With each stroke, use your arm to lengthen the line I described above, then patiently and deliberately wrap your hand and arm around as much water as you can and establish a firm hold on it before stroking back. One way to envision it is to trap as much water inside your arm as the volume of one of those popular Stability (or Swiss) balls used for exercise. Establish that hold as far in front as you can. Once you’ve done that, shift your focus to your other arm. Don’t concentrate on pushing the water back to your feet. The only part of your stroke worth paying attention to is the part in front of your shoulders. Once you establish your hold, let the rest of the stroke take care of itself, while you keep your focus in front of your nose.
3. Don’t look for buoys. Remember the postcard pictures I described? While you’re swimming in whatever group you happen to be with, everyone else is going to be looking to see where they’re going. As long as they’re going to be so kind as to keep you on course, just keep your head down, breathe normally (bilateral is best) and so long as you still have lots of swimmers on both sides, you’re still heading where you should. And when you do look (every 30 to 50 strokes should be sufficient), just take a quick, seamless “snapshot” of the caps and arms ahead of you. Don’t look for buoys until you’re within 50 yards of the turnaround or the finish. If you’re really curious about where you’re going figure out your direction by checking the position of the shoreline (and hotels and mountains) on one side and the masts of the pleasure craft on the other side, remembering at what point between them the buoy line should be.
4. Sneak along the course. I’ve been playing a pleasurable game each morning. As long as there are other swimmers around me, I take note of how much they’re churning up the water…which is always A LOT. I tune into how splashy and noisy they are, how much turbulence their pulls and kicks create, how fast their arms are moving. And I give myself the challenge of staying with them with far less noise, or churn and while moving my arms as slowly (and as long) as possible. The sense of advantage I get, the sense of having a secret edge, makes the swim much more interesting than if I was swimming solo. So while out in the pack, focus on being the “sneakiest, stealthiest” swimmer in the group you’re with.

Any of these focal points will make the race far more enjoyable and successful. Not only will they remind you of the most economical way to complete the course, but the mindful, concentrated state they create will block out all the potential sources of anxiety or distraction – the distance of the swim, the unfamiliarity of open water, the crowd of swimmers, the annoying chop – and give you a sense of an island of calm in the middle of chaos. So long as you FEEL in control, you’ll BE in control.

first 25km run (15 miles) run

On sunday evening i did my first half marathon during normal training. perfect. it really did a little work in my knees and in my bones with a little bit of aching at some places. hence i made two days of doing no sports at all.

I run 25km (with chillout running speed, because being afraid to punish my knees during this workout) and needed about 2.5 hours. With this i guess that my current half marathon time is something about 1hour 45 minutes.

by the way, i'm really very tired all the time with taking care of all of my four kids and doing some sports after 9pm or early in the morning. this makes it very very hard to get up in the morning. but i'm getting more and more confident in finishing the ironman below 11hours.

radically improved swimming technique

... because i currently do 500m in about 9.5 minutes.

it's really amazing, i improved my 500m time within one week from 10 1/2 to 9 1/2 minutes due to a swimming teachers hint. normally i breathed every second 'arm' during crawl. but the teacher told me it's much better to do it every three times because breathing with every second arm is too less streamlined. another hint was to put my head deeper in the water with the effect that my ass comes more to the surface. these two little hints improved my technique radically!!! :)

check point ::: training schedule january

hi:

this i what i've done in the first three weeks of january:

i started with 6hours, second week 7,5 hours and in the last week even 11,5 hours. I had a little giddiness in my head during a few nights - i thing the reason was that i drank too less water.
Next week i'll do only 6h of sport for regeneration purposes.

In February i plan to make 12hours in average of training followed by 14hours in march and 15hours in april. In may and june i hope to get enough time to do 15-18 hours a week.

BAT2A-1/2-OMAN

6hours of training during 5 consecutive days

from wednesday until today (sunday) i made 6:10hours of running, swimming and biking. i plan to make 10hours next week ... but we'll see.

today i run 15km in 1:19 with moderate speed.

checkpoit 5k

Yesterday from 9pm on i did a 5km sprint to check out my current fitness. i did the 5k in 21min40sec. And it was really hard running for me having -4° celsius outside and a heart rate of 171. By the way, this seems to be my personal anaerobic sill...

current swimming time for 500meter: 10min20sec

HARD training time starts

from now on i will strongly increase my training time to 10h average a week for january, hoping to become no knee problems or cold.

actually i take care of our fourth sun, four months old, at home while my wife is learning 9h a day for her final exam to become a medical doctor in june. so i take the so called 'elternzeit' in germany, with some 70% of my old salary i got the last 12 months. so i'll go for my running sessions together with my baby in a buggy. and i plan to go 1 1/2hours each day (~17km). so, the following is my current plan:

monday: 1 1/2hour running
tuesday: 1 1/2hour running, 1hour swimming
wednesday: 1 1/2hour running, 1hour swimming
thursday: 1 1/2hour running
friday: 1 1/2hour running
saturday: 1 1/2hour biking, 1hour swimming
sunday: 1 1/2hour biking

that's all in all 13.5hours! and i think in my worst times it will be not less than 8hours and in best times not more than 20 hours.

the intensity is slightly increased for another two weeks followed by one week of very easy sessions for regeneration purposes of my body. and i will need that for this hard workout ... :(
but if i'll become no bigger illness with bones or whatever, the ironman has to be finished below 11hours with that amount of training! :)

in the following weeks i will post the development of my running and swimming time as graphical plots - from january on i document everything as there's only six months left until the roth challenge...

easy christmas time

no swimming, no biking but running (from 21-22pm) every three days for an hour.

Competition

last weekend i made a competition, running 12.5 km. I had an average heart rate of 171 with a finish time of 58 minutes. I think that was very good for me. This would be a 10km time of 46.5min. I'm getting better and better. yeah! :)
but today i woke up with a cold, meaning that i do nothing until wednesday... Not very good as last week i only did 2h of swimming and nothing else. From January on i will put my overall training time here every week - with the expectation of having a nice log to increase the training time continuously: 3 weeks increasing, one week only little for regeneration.

Swimming: my current 400m swimming time is 7:50minutes.

bat2aman-oman

my week

every day getting up between 6:oo and 6:3o. a little bit of breakfast. then dressing the three kids to go to the kindergarden which i leave at 8:15 to take the railway to my office. at ~9am i start work. Occasionally (2x a week) i do 10km of running at lunch time instead of big eating with collegues - i take some bread, bananasm apples with me... at ~18pm i leave my office for my famlily. after ~8:30 the kids are in bed and if i'm motivated i do a fast 5km run (1-2x a week) around our district in town.

actually my weekly training is generally like the following:
SWIM:
-tuesday from 8-9pm
-wednesday from 9-10pm
-saturday from 11-12am
RUNNING:
-2x 10km whenever i feel to do so
-1-2x fast 5km
BIKING:
-actually nothing, maybe 2km a week...

no biking

as i think biking is my favorite - there's no personal biking training since nearly two months. i plan to start with it in january to put power only into running and swimming.

my swimming power seven months before IRONMAN

hi:
today in the morning i had breakfast with my family and from 11 to 12am i did some swimming. 200m to become warm and then 10x50meter. after that i did 500m of crawl with my very best time of 11minutes! my plan is to imrove my technique and become faster than 8minutes. then i will have no fear to do the 1.2 mile swim.

if there's some time when the kids are sleeping, i will go for another 7.5km of running with a heart rate below 160.

i'm so motivated, hehe, i like that! hard is only to do sports after 8.3opm right after work and when the kids are in bed. but i signed in to ironman roth with an expected finishing time of 12hours - actually i hope to do something below 11h.

my body feeling

after swimming on two consecutive days with 10k running in between i feel really very tired right now and will do no sports for two days. i think the current training time is something about 5-7h a week.

Current training status

Actually there's not much time to update my blog but i still continue with training which is mainly running and swimming. I don't think that there will be big problems with the bike, hence i will improve my swimming techniques and my bones while running.

since the last month i went swimming twice or three times a week between 9 and 10pm and saturday from 11-12am. my current speed for 2km of crawl is 45 minutes and for 50m something about 50 seconds. during the last months i was always swimming longer distances. but due to a hint by a professional, it's better to do stuff like: 10x50m with good speed. the reason is, that you improve your techniques because there's always enough power to maintain the stability of your whole body for all of the 50m. on the other hand, during longer distances from a certain point, there your general stability gets worse and your simming style maybe adapts to this quite bad situation. so i actually do 400m to become warm, do 10x50m and after that whatever i want...

running is continuous but actually not the very best. i takes ~22min for 5km and 48min for 10km. once i tried 14km but had big problems with my right knee. but these aches has gone away after a few hours. so i plan to run only 2-3 times of 10km a week.

by the way, i feel good but it's very hard for me to go running after 9pm when the four kids are in bed and i worked the whole day before. but it works - and i have to. at 13.07. there's an IRONMAN. :)))
and i won't do all those crazy sports stuff short before midnight without any date like this...

Fourth child born and started training again

As there was a quite big interruption in posting, here i am again as the very proud father of my fourth son who was born in early september. So there was not really long time for running and that stuff - but i'm doing sport again one hour each day since a week again.

what i did not expect was my phantastic result in freestyle swimming last week. I'm still very slow, but i managed to swim 1000m without any breaks in about 28minutes. So i think i can start improving my swimming technique right now. and that has to be improved! :(

biking is very rare actually, but that doesn't matter much as biking is my very best discipline and i think i should spend more time in swimming techniques and improving the stability of my sinews, bones and joints while running 1h three times a week.

Next post will be my 10000m running time with a heart rate hard below my aerobic sill (is it called this way in english?)...

On holiday

The last two weeks i was on holiday in denmark. Hence i spend only a few hours in triathlon training. No swimmung, 2h of running and 3 1/2h of biking.
On sunday i had a mountainbike-marathon in south-east of germany. 100km and 2700m up and down in 5:50h. My best time. But after 70km i thought of stopping the race as i was so out of power i never was before. But then i thought of the ironman next year with the consequence of not finishing an ironman ever with such an mental attitude. so i did the full race and as every year without any big training in the mountains or on the street.
at the end i got place 250 out of 340. last year place 92 out of 172 (but with another 100 biker not finishing due to cold and rainy weather... all milksops)

As i'm still out of power after the mtb-marathon an the weekend i plan to do nothing this week - only let my body stabilize.

Last week another nice article was in spiegel.de. There is something written about a fat boy in school that could not stand with all the people saying that he's a "Mondgesicht" (moonface). So he worked hard to finish an ironman. He had nine months of time and he finished with nice 14:56h. I think very good with his premises. But i plan to be below 12:00h. and i will. hähä!

And i found another person in the blogspot community that plans to finish an ironman: http://226thomas.blogspot.com/
and
http://www.mh-nbg.de/wordpress/

first two weeks of training

Here are my first two weeks of training.
Resting pulse rate: 59
Weight: 68

Wo:1 Tges | RUN | h:mm,km | BIKE h:mm,km | SWIM h:mm,km
Mo 01:15:00 | ######## | 00:01:05 | 00:10:00
Di 00:30:00 | 00:30:00 | ######## | ########
Mi ######## | ######## | ######## | ########
Do ######## | ######## | ######## | ########
Fr 00:35:00 | ######## | 00:35:00 | ########
Sa 00:50:00 | ######## | ######## | 00:50:00
So ######## | ######## | ######## | ########
SUM 03:10:00 | 00:30:00 | 01:40:00 | 01:00:00

Wo:2 Tges | RUN h:mm,km | BIKE h:mm,km | SWIM h:mm,km
Mo 02:05:00 | 00:45:00 | 01:20:00 | 00:10:00
Di 01:30:00 | ######## | 01:20:00 | 00:10:00
Mi 01:00:00 | ######## | ######## | 01:00:00
Do 01:00:00 | 01:00:00 | ######## | ########
Fr ######## | ######## | ######## | ########
Sa 00:40:00 | ######## | ######## | 00:40:00
So 01:00:00 | 00:50:00 | ######## | ########
SUM 07:15:00 | 02:35:00 | 02:40:00 | 02:00:00


So 3:10h in the first and 7:15h in the second week. But i will try to make 10h in average for the first three month and increase then to 12-15 at maximum times.

rainy weather

rainy weather today, so i did not go by bike to work. but 1h jogging at lunch break.

blogs are strange emotion-self-prostitution areas. see this: "I have hope that there is still something good in this world, hope that I can feel good, hope that I can be happy with myself. Hope that I can do something. Hope that I am not a complete failure..." see: nice.blogspot.com oh my god!!! stupid self-pity!

why such a f****** name for a blog

the blog name is a f****** one. this is beyond doubt. but here comes the very simple reason.

BAT2A is a special salary in civil service for a scientific employee. -1/2 stands for half of the BAT2A salary. and -O means that i only get the eastern germany (former GDR or in german: DDR, this does not mean Dance Dance Revolution) salary.

Altogether i must say that i work full time, have a half-payed job and additionally: i get less than people in same positions west of germany. nice, ha?!
(despite of the last nice point of my special salary reductions - we all don't want to have the DDR back!!!)

yes, i thought my salary is worth using it as a blog name. :)



--bat2ahalf-oman

training time increases to 7:15

The time i spend on training slightly increases. During my first week i did altogether 3:15h of training with 1h swimming, 1:30 biking and 0:45 running. The second week (last week) i did 7:15 with spending nearly 2h on each sport.

During all running units i had little aches in my knees. Hence i will very slowly increase my running time.
Swimming is hard as i try to make more than 100km of freestyle and every time i started i only did something below between 50-100m. i don't have any endurance in freestyle. it is such a big difference to running. but last sunday i was so happy to do exactly 200m of freestyle in around six minutes.

My knowledge of my first two weeks of training is not to do so much hard units on running (aching knees) and invest more time in increasing my endurance in freestyle.
[i think one has to invest the time in freestyle and not in breaststroke as you won't have big power in your legs after 3,8km of breaststroke. Even now i feel the difference between both kinds of swimming in my legs.]

--bat2ahalf-oman

my daily routine

from monday to friday the children start our life at about 6:15, the same time we have to get up and eat something. At 7:30 we take the children to the kindergarden. After that i go by racing bike 14km (since the start of my ironman-career. ;) ) to my work close to the beach. But as you've seen, the last weeks i only did one or two days of biking to my work. This week i plan to expand the 14km to an extended round through little villages with altogether 25km. And i plan to do this before and after work every day from monday to friday. today in the morning i did it and the rest of the week i hope so too. then this would be 50km*5=250km per week - i thing definitely enough for my first months. if nothing comes in-between, i 'only' have to think when to swim and run.
my running units i plan to do every two days for half an hour. on the weekend when the children are (hopefully) sleeping and under the week during my lunch break (every second day no meal together with my co-worker).
and my swimming i do every wednesday from 20:oo to 21:oo and on sunday or saturday again when the children are sleeping

Generally this is my plan, if everything works well:
2h of swimming+2hrunning+~6hbiking=10h
WOW, i really did not expect that i could find so much time!! but this is theory - my second week was 7:15 and we will see, there might be illness of whatever, aching knees ...

--bat2ahalf-oman

best IRONMAN blog ever

hello everybody!
HI! i want to use this blog as a personal motivation for my first ironman in july next year in roth/germany. and as well this could/should perhaps be a motivation for everybody who wants to finish an ironman in his/her life without having much time for excessive training. (another short finisher story)

i found no information on the www about a personal story of an ordinary person having children, both parents having full-time jobs who tries to finish an ironman. hence i think this could be a nice blog on problems during training, amount of training, time-management and other more general information (link). i really thing finishing an ironman is a nice dream to fulfill.

all informations put here might be quite private - but my profile will not lead to any exact informations about where i'm living or what my real name is. everything i will tell about my person are the following facts:
i'm 27 years old, having tree children (soon it will be four) in the age of 1, 3, 4 and i'm living in germany.
my sports background is:
a few weeks of training (~2-3h per week) twice a year to finish two MTB-Marathons south of germany
100km and 2,5km up in 6:45h
my work is:
actually i'm doing my phd and will finish with that in mid of 2009.

finishing an ironman is a dream since nearly four years. i thought about doing such a crazy event every few months but not knowing or planning when to start exactly. with the birth of my sons during my years at the university i did not really had lots of time for sports - in general only the daily trips to the kindergarden and university of only four km each day. running was not more than once a month in average and swimming was very rare too - even worse than running. SO, best qualifications to finish an ironman!!! ;) but nevertheless, I WILL FINISH!

two weeks ago i heard of a man who had a bet with his boss an friends: all of them put 23000Euro together believing that he will not finish IRONMAN GERMANY in frankfurt below 12h. He had nine months of training. He accepted the bed, worked hard and...................finished with 11:56! and he got 23000euro. :)

so i also thought about singing in for the ROTH-CHALLENGE 2008 as this was again a very actual topic with both big german ironman in Frankfurt and Roth at this time. i signed not because of having lots of time at the moment, but believing that my free time (with work and huge amount of children :) ) will not increase withing the next ten years. hence, it doesn't matter if i start now or in for example six or seven years as available time for training is the same now and in future. but there's one advantage of doing it exactly as early as possible: i'm younger in 2008 than in 2018. that's a fact! :)

yes, now i signed in and i think about this ironman every day. everything smells and smecks of ironman. and i like that, it is such a great motivation hanging around in my brain the whole day. and using free time in the evening not for hanging around but for sports is even very very satisfying.

withing the next months i will put here my problems or success during training and how to find as much time as possible for training with having only a little.

--bat2ahalf-oman