Ten weeks to lift off!

This is week one of my last ten weeks before official Ironman training begins. With my marathon behind me, it gives me a chance to regroup and kind of plan what I want to do for a while. I thought a lot about what I wanted to accomplish during this 'break' from structured training. By structured, I mean following a particular plan. This has given me the opportunity to structure my own ten week plan with what I want/feel like doing.

So here is what I came up with:

1. I'm going to plan a 4 week training cycle with the 5th week as a rest week and then repeat. Voila! Ten weeks down!
2. Swim-each week I'm going to go to masters 3 times and take a lesson with Tim in addition to those pool times.
3. Bike-each week I'm going to do one trainer ride using some Spinnerval DVD's, I'll do one ride with my Wednesday Women group and I'll do one long ride with Dave on the weekend.
4. Run-each week I'm going to do a speed workout, a hill run, an easy run and a long run.
5. Strength-each week I'm going to do 3 sessions of strength work using my TRX and various other toys I have here at home. 

I'm going to bump up each week a bit to get some build and bump it down for my rest week. Since this is still basically my base building time, I'm not going to worry too much if I miss a workout. I'll just be careful of which one I chose to skip.

So far week one is going great!

Last year I set a time goal for my 5K. I'm not the fastest runner on the block but I'm getting better. This week I was able to meet that time goal twice, yes twice. I was pretty happy about that.

Wednesday, my girls riding group rode from Los Gatos to Los Altos Hills and (it seemed like) everywhere in between. Now, if you had a mansion with your own private lake and boat dock, would you want a chain link fence around it? I know you want your privacy but this look just didn't do it for me.

I went for a trail run today in Quicksilver County Park. It was just gorgeous and reminded me how lucky I am to live with this in my backyard.

My house is just on the other side of the green hill in the middle of the picture.

....and really? It's February! Sorry rest of the country. It was a tank top day!