Epic Day!

I listen to a lot of podcast. Mostly they are running, biking or triathlon. I really like IM talk with Bevan James Eyles and Coach John Newsom. Another podcast, which Bevan does, is Forever Fitness with Ish and Bevan. They are a couple of cheeky Kiwi’s and they provide fresh training ideas. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to episode 55 – EPIC TRAINING DAY. The gist of the show was to take it up a notch.

I had been thinking of this and got some buy in from the lunch crew. Wednesday’s are STADIUM days and yesterday was to be the first of the EPIC DAYS!

We hit the stadium steps – we generally do 30 reps of steps or 20 reps of bleacher lunges. Today we decide to do 20 reps of steps (alternating single and double steps) while adding 10 push ups at the end of each repetition. This was challenging. This kicked up butts (and legs and chest – 10 push ups start to add up).

Next it was on the football field with some ab work – 250 reps of crunches (regular or oblique with a few bicycles thrown in) as fast as you could. This seemed so much harder than the usual Swiss ball, medicine ball, planks and such that we normally do. Oh yeah, we did add a plank at the end – just until you could not do it anymore.

Next came 100 yard dashes across the football field with 10 seconds rest. These were close to all out and exhausting – I think we got 4 reps. The last rep we got about 30 seconds rest before giving it out all. Vic led this last one out with a very surprising burst of speed and beat me by about 5 yards. Tough stuff.

A nice quick run back to the gym because we were not done yet. We finished off with 30 pull ups / chin ups any grip as fast as you can. I busted out a solid 10 and then with a few seconds recovery tried to add 5 more each time. Once I got over 20 I was only adding 1 or 2 per effort. My upper body was toast from the push ups (did I mention that we have also been doing the 100 push up challenge thingy).

By the time that we completed everything we were spent – done – used up – game over – satisfied.

After work I was meeting some guys out at the lake for what would be an EPIC SWIM. It was only epic to me. This will be the last time to wear the wetsuit this year! We swam out to the first buoy which is about a 1/8th of a mile from shore. We then proceeded to race each other to the next buoy – only about 150 yards away. For me this was full on – no holds barred – full attack swimming. I won all of these mini races (no doubt the wetsuit helped me immensely). I am sure that I was red in the fast after each sprint. About half of us had wetsuits on and half did not – one of the guys without the wetsuit was holding onto the buoy for dear life as we recovered from the intense effort. I’m not very good at treading water – I was glad I was in the wetsuit. These sprint efforts, although they only lasted about 1:40 were intense! Hard stuff! Loved it! This was an overall good and fast swim – total mileage was about 1 mile.

Last night and this morning my body was feeling the effects of EPIC DAY. Thursday is the fast group ride and I have been feeling slow. Last year I was able to hang and lead quite a bit – this year it is a different story. I think, due to the volume of ironman training, I have lost a half step or so. It is frustrating but I think my endurance has increased just the max speed is down - especially in the last month or so following the 1/2 ironman, century ride and the cold that I had). Anyway, we have been smacking the ride – we beat last weeks by about a minute and a half – I only did a short pull there and back – the legs were dead from EPIC DAY! Total group ride was 22 miles in 59:15 (22.28 MPH).

Today is an easy day – just a little swimming at lunch.