New Year’s turned out to be wonderful. Our original plan included dinner with friends, but The Boyfriend realized that what I really wanted was to be able to spend some time alone with him on New Year’s Eve. So we got dressed up, went to dinner, just the two of us, then headed over to hang out with our friends later. And it was perfect. I got the alone time I wanted with him, and we rang in the new year with friends. We played cards, laughed while watching everyone attempt to dance along with the XBox Kinect games, toasted with champagne at midnight and I finally got to kiss someone at midnight after too many years of going without.
My dish to pass was far from being healthy, but it was damn cute.
Penguin shaped cake pops, that’s right, there’s cake in there! Red velvet cake, because I guess I’m a little odd, and I thought that would be funny.
I looked around the room at midnight and knew that I was truly one of the lucky ones. None of these people were in my life at this time last year, and I am so thankful to know them all now. My boyfriend has truly brought more love and joy to my life than I could have ever imagined and I cannot imagine life without him now. I am incredibly lucky, I know it, and I hope I succeed in showing him how much I appreciate him and love him and I hope I make him feel as lucky and happy as he makes me feel every single day.
And now it’s the New Year and I have triathlons to train for. The combination of starting grad school and trying to find a routine in a new relationship caused me to shelve my exercise routine for the last 4 months of the year. I concentrated on finding a routine with school and am still struggling with finding a routine with The Boyfriend, but we’re working on it. Whether a routine has been established or not, I can’t push off training any longer, I have events coming up and I need to be prepared.
Since sprint triathlons are my focus, I tend to keep cardio workouts to about 30-45 minutes. I increase the intensity and duration slowly each week, increasing workouts by about 10% then backing off by 5%. If that makes any sense. So for example. A 30 minute run increases to 33 minutes the next workout, then back down to 31.5 minutes, then back up to 35 minutes the next time. So the first workout of each week is 10% longer than the previous workout and the second workout of each week is 5% shorter than the previous workout. Make sense? Same goes for strength training, +10% then -5%.
January through April goes something like this: Swim 2x week, Run 2x week, Bike 2x week, core and strength training 4x week, power yoga 1x week.
I know it might seem like a lot (or maybe not for you overachievers) but it really isn’t. Workouts are usually 60-90 minutes a day, not too bad at all. One day a week is a rest day.
Once April rolls around I’ll start brick workouts, which means at least 1x a week there will be a Swim-Bike workout and 1x a week will be a Bike-Run workout.
Here’s how my schedule looks right now:
Monday- Swim/Core/Upper Body
Tuesday- Bike/Core/Lower Body
Wednesday- Run/Core/Upper Body
Thursday- Swim/Core/Lower Body
Friday- Off
Saturday- Bike/Yoga
Sunday- Run (Yoga if I didn’t do it on Saturday)
Runs start at 20 minutes, Bikes at 30 minutes, and Swims at 500 meters all increasing in length from there.
I will probably try to work in at least one interval run a week in an effort to increase my speed, but for now, I’ll start out easy.
This is the training schedule that I used last year and it worked pretty well for me. One mistake I will not be making this year that I made last year is trying to increase my run distances beyond 4 miles. I have knee problems and the more I push myself, the more pain I am in. My knee unfortunately limits the distances I can run and the sooner I recognize this and accept it, the better. Otherwise I’ll be a candidate for knee replacement far sooner than I should be.
So, are you training for something? What’s your routine? Tips, tricks, insights? Please share!
SO glad you had an awesome NYE!!!!! That is truly the best feeling, when you feel like one of the lucky/blessed ones! I obviously concur. And those penguin pops? you are so talented!! I LOVE your training plan by the way!! It is intense but you can SO DO IT!!!!!!!
New Year’s was great, I really expected you might have some news to share after the New Year, not quite yet, huh?
Those penguin pops are so stinkin’ cute. I’m glad you had a wonderful NYE!
Those penguin pops are adorable!