In training its important to keep track of what you have done and what worked for you and what didn’t. I’m keeping track of my training in 3 different places at the moment: TrainingPeaks.com, connect.garmin.com and dailymile.com. Today I think I finally found my groove for getting all three sites updated the quickest. You might be wondering why I use all three sites.
TrainingPeaks.com is the site the MidwestTriathlonCoaching.com uses to deliver their workouts. It a private site and its primarily used to allow me to communicate my workout information and results back to my coach. It has a nice feature that allows me to upload my workouts from my Garmin Forerunner 405 directly into the workout that was assigned to me. I just figured out today that all of my devices export files are actually stored on my computer by the Garmin Agent. Before I was uploading the date to connect.garmin.com then exporting the file before uploading it again to trainingpeaks.com.
The Garmin site is my favorite. Connect.garmin.com gets all of my device data automatically. As soon as my device is in range of my computer, the data from my Forerunner is transfered to the “connect” website. This site now is home to every workout I have done with my Garmin. The more I learn about my Forerunner, the more I appreciate the site. I’ve just recently began paying close attention to my heart rate and identifying my training zones. The connect website has helped increasingly by showing me graphically where I’m working too hard or not enough. Since I’m trying to lose weight still, I’m hoping to get one of the fancy scales that talks to my Forerunner after calculating my weight, body fat etc. (Jillian if you are reading this, thats what I want for my birthday!) As I’ve said before, the easiest way for me to cut an hour off of my 70.3 time is to lose 45 more pounds.
Lastly, www.dailymile.com, is a site that I keep my information public on. Its just distances and pace. It’s easy to use, I’m not using it for much more than another place to log miles. I thought that the widgets might be a nice addition to this website, but they aren’t really what I’m looking for. I’ve only found 1 other friend that is using it, so I’m not sure how much longer I’ll stick with it. Even thought it is the site that I usually update first.
Tonight I went for a swim of about 45 minutes and she went to her “fight club” at Title Boxing. Her workout was an hour. When we both got home, we planned on going for a run. I was ready to go for the run, she was ready to go to bed. We haven’t ran together in quite some time, and I missed it, so I turned down cuddling in order to fight for a late night run.
It was dark and we had both just finished working out already, so we decided to make it an easy run. We went a mile out and I set the pace nice and easy. On the way back I told her that she could set the pace. At about 1.5 miles we had the final hill before cruising into home. I noticed that she was starting to pull away. I dug in and focused but I couldn’t catch her. She kept pulling away. At this point I was reminded of Saturday when the pace group leader started pulling away and I couldn’t do anything about it. The only way I could catch up with her was by cheating and crossing the street early. Then it dawned on me that even though I ran a good race and ran farther, Jillian ran faster than I did on Saturday. After I cheated to catch her, she again pulled away for the last 200 meters. I pulled into the house 10 seconds after she did.
On Saturday, after the race I was feeling pretty awesome. I checked all my stats and patted myself on the back for doing so good. Jillian also had a PR on Saturday. Her PR in the 10k is now faster than my own (recent) PR. (Back in 1995, I think I ran a 56:xx 10k, I’m still looking for that official time.) Anyway, she was running faster than I was on Saturday. I’m not the fastest person in the house anymore. I’m pretty sure I’m putting in two or three times as many hours into training, but Jillian is still faster than I am right now.
All the happy, good job, proud of my workout feelings that I had are suddenly washed away and replaced by feelings of inadequacy, motivation and renewed purpose. I have to beat Jillian in a 10k.
