Monday, April 18, 2011

Cross Training???

Last week was busy. It was another one of those where I time to work and train OR work and blog. You know where that always leads.

I was able to get in every workout until Friday. Friday I was scheduled for a long run, but the combination of the incoming storm and me over-napping squashed that, although I did have time to get in a make up run I missed from my Monday PERT call out.

Saturday was my scheduled off day and I took it, I thought about making up the long run, but that we were hit by the storm that large storm that came across the country. Sunday I was scheduled for a long ride, but I went to Raleigh to work with my rescue squad to help work with the storm's aftermath. Raleigh has had between 15-20 fatalities reported. MY training is important to me especially considering last week and this week are my build weeks before going into my HIM taper.

On the way home, I got a call from CB that her Grandmother had a few trees fall in the storm and she was very upset. CB's father works in Atlanta during the week, Cb's little brother sings opera and carries a purse, and that leaves me to be helpful in times like this. I went out and assessed the damages and collected what I needed to work today.


The largest problem at the house was large part of a cedar tree that had fallen. This section is 52 feet long, it broke away frm the rest of the trunk about 12 feet off the ground. It is only about 18 feet from the corner of the house, but luckily fell the opposite direction.



Although through my rescue technician training I am trained with all sorts of power tools including the jaws of life, and other really fun things. However, for this job the only thing anyone in my in-laws owned was a 16 inch, electric chain saw.

After 7 hours of work, I was able to saw the branches down, cut them into reasonable sizes, cut the trunk down to reasonable sizes, take 5 trips to dispose of the tree, and clean up the tools. After I was done I still had to go work on a few things at my own house.

My training plan called for a 10 mile ride and 6 mile half marathon pace run. This did not get done. I just finished working in the yard about 1 hour ago (9PM). This disappoints me since it is the third workout I have missed in a row during a very critical time. As frustrating as this may be, I am counting squatting, farmer carries, and log tossing as cross training. This is as good as weight training in my book. I am sure that some of these moves will translate into functional strength for endurance sports.

Now I just am considering how to take this week. I had today's brick,  a time trial on Wednesday, and I was going to combine my Friday long run and Sunday long ride into one brick in order to test my nutrition. I realized over the weekend while doing some reading, that my training plan had no long brick similar to HIM. My longest ride before a run was 25 miles before a 3 mile run, the other is a 15 mile ride with 5 mile run. In my opinion neither of these seem suitable to test long course nutrition, considering on my weekly long ride and runs I have only been fueling for the given workout without consideration to multi-leg needs.

2 comments:

Caratunk Girl said...

Hi Luke. I am so thankful to hear your family is OK with all the craziness and storms that were going on down there.

I am sure others who know more than I do will chip in on this. The most important part of training for the brick is more getting your legs used to it - you have been doing that. If you have been doing your run training and your bike training, I would say you are all set as long as you follow your training program from here on out.

Life happens, you know? What you need to train is your head to believe you are ready, that is a part of training not many people talk about.

Big Daddy Diesel said...

I am glad to hear you and your family is safe as well

We all understand life gets in the way, that is way I always say the age groupers are the heart and soul of this sport, we have to juggle so much more then pros do and we still manage to race and train