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The Base-Build Trasition

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

It is that time of the year people!

For most people, the triathlon racing season is just kicking off, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. For this guy whose main focus is on that big 140.6 mile race in September, the base training season is OVER.

Time to ratchet up the training volume and intensity to see exactly what my body can handle.

Besides just cranking out more hours and more hard intervals, I’ve got a bunch of other training goals that I’m trying to hit along the way.

Focus on recovery just as much as training.

Going hard one day isn’t worth much if you are so wasted that you can’t hit your workout targets for the next three days. I’ve been addicted to Ultragen after all of my hard workouts and I’ve been liking it a lot. I was big into chocolate milk as a recovery drink last year. Ultragen is obviously a little pricier than a glass of chocolate milk, but there is no sense doing all this training if I’m not fueling with some top quality stuff, so I think it is worth it so far. Plus, the cappuccino flavor is so freaking delicious it is something great to look forward to as a reward after beating up my body for a few hours on the weekend.

I’ve also been pretty awful about stretching, except when something starts to bother me. No excuses here. I just gotta make it a more regular part of my post-workout routine to keep me healthy and loose.

Anticipate raging food cravings so I can make responsible choices

The hunger is already coming. I feel like I have only seen the beginning of the ironman food cravings. The one major thing that I learned from my #i8this challenge is that the easiest way to eat healthy is to simply stock your fridge and pantry with healthy godies. If you have crap in the house, it will get eaten. Or even if you don’t have anything good in the house and need food fast, you are probably going to make some bad choices.

Start my experimentation with OptygenHP.

So far I’ve loved everything that I’ve tried from my new nutrition sponsor, First Endurance. Beyond killer race nutrition and recovery stuff, I really wanted to test out their OptygenHP supplement. All their stuff is based on tons of research, so I trust ‘em. They haven’t let me down yet. You can check out their site for details on it, but it has some special goodies in it that Tibetian sherpas use for climbing Everest and helps increase oxygen utilization, reduce lactic acid buildup and helps adapt to high levels of physical stress.

For the first two days, it did give me this strange tingling all over my body, especially on my face and ears. The site says that this is caused by one of the ingredients (Beta-Alanine) activating some neurons or something like that. All this time they were just hitching a ride and not carrying their own weight?! Shenanigans! Their whole explanation is over here.

I’ve only been taking it for six days so far, so it is too early to tell how effective it is, but I’ll definitely report back if I feel that it helps me get through hard training days (and ultimately race day) any easier.

Get my legs smooth n’ race ready.

Nuff said. Soon it will be time to lather up and get these doggies race-day smooth!

Balance both my training and social calendars

Except for a few hiccups, I think I’ve been doing pretty good about keeping a relatively normal social life during my base training. Keeping Sam posted on when my long workouts will be, having a shared Google calendar and doing lots of pre-dawn workouts has helped to keep things pretty sane. It isn’t going to get any easier now that the weekly training hours will be jumping up, but definitely something I need to keep my attention on.

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I’m not going to lie. I was thinking about this blog post while doing hill repeats the other morning and was singing this song to myself (in my head).