Decent Tri Training Week

I'm thinking a consistent 10 hours/week of training with adequate sleep and recovery will be adequate to enable me to prepare to attack the Santa Barbara Triathlon.
This week felt like a pretty good week to get things going, with 7 hours 50 minutes of combined training load between riding, running and swimming.   I did hit my goals of 100 miles in the saddle and running a 10K in one workout (just under 8 minutes per mile pace).  Also, I did my first ever 1000 yard swimming workout in the pool which took about 25 minutes with ample rests between laps.

So now that I've shown myself capable of doing some minimal amount of running and swimming, it's time to start putting some structure to my workouts and the last barrier now is to increase my hours of sleep.

10K Run on Ellwood Bluffs

Pretty incredible views tonight running along the cliffs overlooking the ocean at Ellwood.   Bagged my Strava 10K Challenge for April, which was nice.

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Choosing my Triathlon Training Plan

The Santa Barbara Triathlon is a bit of an odd beast to plan for because it is not quite a "full half" Ironman Distance, but it is longer than most typical courses.  I've decided to pursue the 20 week in duration 70.3 "Half" training plan available at BeginnerTriathlete.com (http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/training/training-plans-view.asp?planid=16) as the basic template for my training and I'll just have to hope that I have enough base fitness that I will not sting myself too bad by jumping in at week 3 of the Prep period.  
The bt.com plan calls for 7-11 hour training load weeks,  and up to now I've been able to achieve only 6 hours/week with any kind of consistency and that includes my time spinning 90RPM on my bike commute, riding my pedelec.  So, it's time to carve out some more training hours on the calendar.

Tuesday, yesterday/day 0, I got out for a 5K evening trail run at ~7:30 pace after about 12.5 commuter miles on the bike, while today I got about 50 minutes and 1400' of hill climbing after a mile mile commuter load.  Tomorrow I plan to get in some swim time.

Preparing for my first Tri

I've decided to prepare myself to compete in this year's Santa Barbara Triathlon long course.  The event will be held Sat Aug 23, just about 19 weeks from now.

My plan is to post regular updates here as I work to dial in my training program so that I will be prepared to attack all three legs of the event.   Comments and advice are welcome.

Labor Day 'Date' Ride

We snuck in a fun little Labor Day road bike loop for Mom & Dad, making it work in between kids soccer in the morning and afternoon.

A couple more photos on-line here.

Painted Cave Road Ride - Aug 11

A couple photos from remnants of Team Polli Veloce, (Nikola, Mike, and I), got out for a little hill climbing over the top of the ridge on another beautiful day in Goleta.

Funny how when you turn the camera just right it can make a 10% uphill grade appear to be downhill.  Nikola's happy face contributes to the illusion making you think he's rolling downhill rather than hammering up lower painted cave.
Of course you can't go anywhere in this town without running into someone you know and Nikola slowed down to chat with a friend who was leading a group running through Painted Cave Village.

Road Bike Climbing in (and to) Paradise

A little wetness made the descent down Old San Marcos just a bit interesting. The sloppiness really did cap off a pretty awesome road bike outing with Fastrack, Cutler, Coach Doyle and myself.  We all just needed a  bike wash after.

Dave somehow managed to bust a spoke nipple loose on his front wheel w/o losing its true or slowing him down at all.

My Garmin showed 38 miles and 4500 feet of climbing in 2 hrs, 45 minutes, fun stuff. Thanks for a nice outing boys.


Picasa Gallery, Road Bike Climbing in (and to) Paradise
Photo Gallery (sorry for the lousy focus on a couple images, operator/rider error):