... 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...