Last week was my first official week of training for Ironman 70.3 Ohio. I’ve been hitting it pretty hard since beginning of January, but man does it feel good to train with a purpose again!!

Here’s an overview of how it went:
Total Training Hours: 6 hours, 35 minutes
Total Mileage: 35 miles
I signed up for a free 70.3 training plan through AJ Baucco Coaching. We use an app called Addaero and all of the training is imputed into an easy-to-follow calendar. I didn’t follow the plan to a “T” this week, but I definitely used it as a base to what and how I was training. So far it’s an awesome program!

This weekend I headed back to the pool for the first time since August (haha) and surprisingly it went pretty decent! Although I know I have SO much room for improvement still. (Decent in this scenario means I didn’t drown or come close to it, but I wasn’t very fast either!) I focused the hour I spent in the pool on basic drills, trying to get the base of my form down again. At first I wanted to panic by how out-of-shape in swimming I was, but I reminded myself that I still have 23 weeks to train for the 1.2 mile swim. I will also be training with Cleveland Triathlon Club for a few open water swims and doing a few other swim clinics throughout the summer. Plus my college roommate is a swimmer so I’ll probably be getting together with her sometime in the next 23 weeks for a 1-on-1 training session. In my case – we’ve got nothing but time and I’m going to make sure I take full advantage of that!

In other news...I’m going on over a month of not feeling too great, which is super frustrating. I had a terrible cough/cold for all of February and it feels like it has been coming back over the past two days. I’ve been on antibiotics, steroids, inhalers, you name it. It’s frustrating and annoying, but the good news is I go to the doctor’s next week so hopefully I’ll be on the road to recovery soon. (Fingers crossed.)

Here’s to another full week of training! I had P90X on the schedule for today (conditioning), but when I got to the gym this morning someone else was already using the TV in the studio. It was annoying, but if there is anything I’ve learned about fitness and training – it’s that you’ve got to learn to adapt and modify. Not everything is going to go as planned because stuff (life) happens. SO instead I did 10 minutes of rowing, 40 minutes of strength training (pull ups, push ups, squats, leg press, abs and LOTS of kettle-bell drills) and then finished it up with 20 minutes of a huge incline on the elliptical. I was sweating like a dog!!

Happy Training!