Training has Begun.

As many of you know last summer I competed in my first super sprint distance triathlon (basically a quarter of an olympic distance).  I placed 4th in my age category.  I was proud!  The second race I competed in was supposed to be a sprint distance (half the olympic distance) but it got turned into a duathlon at the last minute. Boo! And I placed 7th.  I would have done better if it had remained a full triathlon because the run is my weakest leg of the tri.  But I was still really happy with my results! My transitions were good, other than losing the insole to my running shoe.  Blah!  I trained with Mommies in Motion.

This year my goal is to train for a full olympic distance triathlon (1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run).  I'm super excited to train with a new set of folks (men and women!!! woot).  Janicke is my new coach, from Millcroft Fitness.  Currently I am running with them, I go to Goodlife for spin classes and weights, and as always I am still doing hot yoga at Power Yoga Canada.  So if you are interested in my journey it it my goal to begin posting more often.  I want to share my journey.  To inspire anyone to try something new and scary, something that will make you proud!  And most importantly bring you closer to who you want to be. I want to be a mom, an athlete and a teacher. I want balance and happiness.  This is how I'm going to do it.

Ok so for the last month I have been slowly getting myself into the kind of shape I think I need to be in to actually compete in these events.  I'm not kidding myself, last summer I was racing against other newbies into the sport.  Not many triathletes stay in the short distances for very long, they move on to bigger and scarier events.  So this summer I'm going to be competing against some fierce women.  I've been working on building endurance and strength.  So that means I've been killing my legs, arms and shoulders doing super sets. That means about 300 reps alternating major muscle groups.  (gluts and legs to calves) (biceps to triceps  and (shoulders to traps)  It hurts, I swear and it takes like an hour and half.  I warm up, stretch, do the stupid long set, do some abs core and then finish with a stretch.  So I aim for 3 times a week, on alternating days I do some long cardio.  For example I might do a spin class followed by a run (I'm working up to running 10k after spinning for 50 minutes) So far I can run 7.5k.  On Saturday morning I like to do a marathon workout.  CXworks (core type class with the rubber band), then a combat followed up with a spin class.  I am aiming to be able to sustain a high level of physical activity for about 3 hours.  I'm also running during my lunches with a fellow teacher a couple times a week, and running with my Millcroft Fitness group.

Eventually starting April official triathlon workouts will begin.  And starting this week I will also be adding a swim on Wednesday nights to the schedule.  Ok so what does this insanity look like....

Monday: Run at school, legs at gym and hot yoga
Tuesday: Run with group, (possibly hot yoga or swim practise)
Wednesday: Run at school, arms at gym, swim (if I didn't do it tues.)
Thursday: Spin then tread mill run
Friday: Shoulders at gym
Saturday:  CXworks, combat and spin classes at gym
Sunday: REST!  Amen!  (if I can I will bring the kids to little pretzels and I will do a hot yoga)

This schedule will change in April as I begin to add in more training with the group and less weights (but somehow I will need to keep my legs strong to support the extra load).  As of now my teaching schedule is letting me get most of these workouts in either before school or right after so that I'm home with the kids 6 nights a week.

after a 2 hour work out...

I come home and eat!  Tonight I had made (before leaving for the gym) an egg white omelet that consisted of mostly leftovers from yesterday's meal.  Yesterday was our big fancy turkey meal, which was of course turkey, homemade stuffing (with sage from my garden), roasted rosemary (also from the herb garden)  potatoes, and roasted broccoli and a mix of steamed veggies.  So I chopped up some onion, celery and the roasted potatoes and fried them up in the cast iron pan.  Mark also asked that I add some turkey so I chopped up cubes of turkey and added that as well as some rosemary for flavour.  I took out about 1/3 of this and added chopped spinach and poured out 1/2 carton (well almost) of egg whites.  I poured my omelett mixture into my smaller cast iron pan, added a layer of hemp hears and a bit of mozza cheese and covered it till it was cooked.

I am now totally savoring this meal as I write this!  I did eat about and hour and half before going to the gym (which is probably too long before a workout) and after the first hour I had a GF  protein bar.  Thank goodness because ouch the second hour was pump (combat was first).  This is my first combat/pump double since having the baby and I am going to be sore in the morning.  But alas... no pain no gain! 

Mark got me a new chest strap for my heart rate monitor watch and I'm pretty proud to share that I busted out 1150 calories.  My goal for the next 12 weeks is to burn 7000 calories a week.  So the math that I'm doing is sort of quasi-acurate but lets say I need 2000 calories as my base metabolic survival (it's 500 calories higher because I'm nursing), if I want to create a deficit of 1000 a day than I eat 2000 calories and burn 1000 at the gym or eat 1500 and burn 500 at the gym or eat 1000 and don't burn any at the gym... (I am NOT a fan of the 3rd method... I like food way way too much for that).  The problem I have is that I'm not a calorie counter, but I guess for the next 12 weeks I'll have to try.  Honestly I find it much easier to eat healthy and clean and just burn the calories at the gym.  Yes I am lazy that way!