Time to Get Nerdy on February!

and by nerdy, I mean it is time to look at what I did over February, and where do I need to go for March. I still have my first A race coming up in May, so I need a strong March and April. I know February had some obstacles that were out of my control. I had a few travel dates, I had a few family obligations and I also had some basketball coaching obligations also (We went 9-1 and lost in the semi-finals of the tournament), and I always had a couple of races thrown into February, so it will be interesting to me at least to see what I actually did.

So first, let's look at the month as a whole. This chart to the right is based only on mileage, but you can see the time spent training in the legend. So to make it easier, it broke down like this:

Swim: 4:57  14,976.38 yds or 8.5 miles
Bike: 5:53  136.4 miles
Run  6:15  41.74 miles

I trained for 17:05 in February, which was much lower than I originally planned. These 17 hours happened over 22 days, which works out to approximately spending 46 minutes training on the days I worked out. This could also be a little higher than reality because I know I was traveling for some of those days and did very little while out of town. I am still not sure if 45 minutes a day will get me the results I am looking for, so I will need to keep that in mind for March.

Swimming:
Actually I am happy with where my swimming is currently at. I feel like I have a good base and can really start to work on speed. I know I have the distance covered for my A race in May. I really am looking to just get faster. A lot of people say you don;t win a race with the swim, but my mindset is if I can come out of the water faster and not totally depleted, then I am a step further along than I was last year. But keeping to the nerdiest of this post, my average swim time per 100 yards was 1:58. Yeah, I am happy with that, but I am looking to lower it. I hit a new PR on the 100 this month of 1:31/100yd. I was still 4,000 yards short of my monthly goals in February.

Biking:
I was disappointed in my biking totals for February, but sometimes life gets in the way. I know I missed a few bike workouts last month. So, I do not have a whole lot to say about the bike in February. I know I am looking forward to getting off the trainer. I am also focusing more on my cadence while I am on the trainer vs mileage or speed, but just to make me feel good, I did average 23.18 mph on the bike for February. Now I know, there is some difference is road speed and trainer speed, but pedaling for 5:53 is pedaling for 5:53. I missed my bike goal of almost an hour or 93 miles.

Running:
I am very pleased with how far my running has come along. In February, I hit 2 new PR's. One in a trail run 10k that I finished in 52:30 and another 5K I finished in 23:43. I want to continue to do better with my run as that has been the biggest obstacle for me in races in the past. In Feb, my 41 miles all came with an average pace of 8:58. I missed my goal mileage by 36 miles, but again, I have a family, a job and a life, so I did what I could.

So overall, I am pretty happy with February's totals. I know I still have a lot of work to do and I am looking forward to it. Seeing the gains I have made with my running is motivation enough to keep me pumped up! So lookout March, here I come.

Here are my goals for March:
Swim  18,600 yds
Bike  257 miles
Run  80 miles

Sounds like a lot doesn't it, but just think how awesome it will be to hit these numbers, then I know I will PR my Olympic triathlon in May! Thanks for reading...