Ironman Training

My Ironman training is proceeding apace. I’ve been doing strength and some base training since December. I’m about 4 weeks away from switching to a maintenance cycle on the strength workouts and ramping up more sport-specific training. The concentration at that point will be bike workouts and secondarily swimming. Honestly, I plan to take the swim nice and easy; I won’t be breaking any records, even my own. It’s the bike that is the most important part of my training, though, as I’ve set a goal of 19 mph average during the race next year. Plenty of time for that.

But right now, I’m in the most intensive part of my strength training. I’m squatting more weight than I ever have, with similar improvements on other parts of the regimen. This is kind of freaky because I haven’t pushed this hard on a lifting workout since high school, and there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. My back issues have made me a bit paranoid when it comes to stressing my lumbar area, but so far things seem to be working well.

One of my stated (i.e. “picked out of thin air”) goals for the training year is to “Squat 280 lbs by March 15th”, and I’m well on my way there. I’ll probably end up short, but that’s ok with me. The objective of this exercise isn’t to build strength just for the hell of it, nor is it to build the type of one-shot ability-to-lift-heavy-weights. No, the point is to train my muscles and neuromuscular systems to exert force constantly for a long long long time. That is how you finish an Ironman.