Week 2 - Summary

It was an exciting week! First real bike workouts on the road, of course this makes your trips a bit more dynamic :)

Summary
Distance on bike: 130 km
Distance running: 14,8 km
Distance swimming: 2 km
Stability workouts: 2
Total heartbeats: 56495 beats
Averange rest heartbeat (waking up): 52 beats / minute
Days remaining: 153

Lessons Learned
Try to plan workouts on the same time every week, it can make things easier :)
Plan an intermediate goal. Find a 1/2 triatlon around july. Any suggestions?

Week 1 (Official shedule) - Summary

From 14/04/2014, the official training plan execution was started! YES!

The strategy is to build-up the duration quantity for several weeks with after that several quality weeks with a very specific focus.

Workouts run: 2x

Workouts swim: 2x

Workouts cycling: 3x

Workouts power & stability: 3x

It all went pretty ok... discovered the joy of music while running and after some intense training the 'high' effect. That can keep you going! :)

Summary

The stats are obviously still very low, I'm very curious how they will increase each week! Can someone try to make a guess what these will read in 10 weeks? :)

Distance on bike: 100 km

Distance running: 11,4 km

Distance swimming: 0 km

Stability workouts: 0

Total heartbeats: 41670 beats

Averange rest heartbeat (waking up): 52 beats / minute

Days remaining: 160

Lessons Learned
Believe in yourself, cause others might not...
Try to keep it healthy, you don't want to be a cripple after 27/09/2014 :)

Testday! Lactate + Kine stability + Bike fitting

Today was an important day. After 4 hours of testing & fitting we can almost really start with an extensive program! (officially next week).

The lactate test reveiled something interesting; since the last test in the hospital 1 year ago (more extensive, which included an oxygen mask, pretty crazy stuff) things have improved? Hmm... so doing nothing seems to help? Better to be on the safe side on work on those new lower limits.

And yep... max heartrate is still well above 210. This time 213, previous time 217. The 'norm' would be 220 - your age = 193. So no, I'm officially not 'normal' :)

The kinesist was pretty positive. A lot (too much?) of power in the quadriceps, really not enough in the hamstrings so there is some work todo to get some more balance in joints such the knees (what I fear most for, weak knees might kill this dream).

Bike fitting as last reveiled the bike was not really fitting to give maximum power, nowadays with 3D technology (and a lot of sensors, about 8 each side) and such you can precise your saddle, steer, etc fitting to the mm. Actually gives you a very comfortable feeling knowing you have now the optimal position. The saddle was moved 2cm to the front, pretty incredible how much more power and comfort that gives you!

So what's next? Just have some fun this week the coach said with a big smile... cause things will change :)

Bike training 3 - Keep the cadens!

Finally managed to get the cadens sensor working!

Decided to keep on doing some interval training, and set a new milestone to 30km+

In the beginning the knees did not feel optimal, so seems I'll need to focus a bit on strengthening those with squad training... hope this won't stop me! (same feeling yesterday with running 5km).

However I do feel that working on a nice cadens can prevent some injuries, thank you Matthias Verstraete for the advice!

Below an impression of the trends, not really stable yet :)

Summary
Distance: 34,5 KM
Cadence AVG: 83 RPM
Cadence MAX: 107 RPM
Speed AVG:  29,31 km/h
Speed MAX: 45,1 km/h
Power AVG: 130 Watt
Power MAX: 340 Watt

Bike training 1 - indoor

Experimented today indoor (was already pretty late) with some bike training on an TACX training system (upgraded i-flow with tacx 4.10 advanced software). Did not manage to get further as 20km... well, its a start :)

Pretty cool what you can analyze & observe nowadays, it even comes with integrated virtual reality!(yep, you can do the tour of flanders indoor whenever you would like)

Only have some issues with the POLAR HRM & Cadence sensor, hope to get that sorted out soon!

Next week thursday will be the big test & analysis day (performance, kine & bike fitting), curious what will come out.

Summary
Distance: 20km
Cadence AVG: /
Cadence MAX: /
Speed AVG:  26,74 km/h
Speed MAX: 45.1 km/h
Power AVG: 134 Watt
Power MAX: 466 Watt

180 days - the blog

Welcome!

This blog is created to share my personal experience on what it takes to become an Iron Man... in only 180 days... and without any relevant experience. Yep, it's crazy...

Over the years, I have had an amazing respect for the 'real' athletes that push their limits and make the impossible possible. Such an inspiration is Marc Herremans. For this reason, I believe his training center 185.be is the best fit to help me achieve my goal. Let's be honest, this is not something you can do all yourself in 180 days.

I realize it will be very tough: I never rode more as 50km on a race bike, was not able to swim any crawl since 2 years ago and never ran more as 20km.

During the week I work as a consultant at Delaware Consulting, a challenging & amazingly interesting job. To make efficient training possible, I am very grateful they allowed me to work a bit less to focus on what for me is currently very important in life.

I will need all your support, coaching, encouragement & love to make this happen! Let's do this!

Target set: Mallorca 27/09/2014. GO!!