This first post will set out my basic training plan. I have divided my training up into three-month segments. The training plan itself is divided into swim, bike, run, strength training, diet/nutrition, and money spent.

SWIM

Generally speaking, I swim on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I swim with the Rose Bowl Masters (http://www.rosebowlaquatics.com/masters.php) and I do whatever workout they are doing that day. I’m slow and really have no expectations of becoming a faster swimmer. I will be content with getting my swim endurance back up to the 2.4-mile level.
Currently, I have been hiking up to First Water (a nice 3-mile round trip hike in the San Gabriel Mountains) with my dad on Tuesday mornings. I enjoy this time with my dad and don’t plan to quit immediately. For this first three months of training I am only going to swim on Thursday mornings, just enough so that I don’t forget how. But after it stays too dark in the early morning, I will resume swimming on Tuesdays.

BIKE

The bike portion of the race will be the most challenging for me and I have devoted the most effort to devising a workable plan that will get me trained for both hills and altitude, not forgetting distance. The problem is that I am starting from Ground Zero since I haven’t even been on my bike in a long time.
The basic plan for the first three (and actually six) months is to really work on solid base-building. I have some Spinnervals (www.spinnervals.com) DVDs and I just bought the Sufferfest (http://www.thesufferfest.com/) videos. I plan to do these indoor cycling workouts on Monday and Thursday nights. For the first two weeks (or maybe the whole month of July), I will do the shorter ones, approximately thirty minutes. After that I will primarily be doing the rest of them. They range from 60-85 minutes. These workouts will provide me with endurance training and drills and all that sort of thing.
On Tuesdays I will do hill repeats. The north-south streets next to where I live (between Highland and Grandview) are short (approximately .15 miles), but reasonably steep. I haven’t done it yet to know whether this is how it will go, but my starting-out plan is to do ten of these repeats on Tuesday nights in the month of July. For August I will go above Grandview, approximately .3 miles, and for September I will do both segments, obviously about .45 miles. The idea is to start out with shorter distances so that at the end of the first three months this distance will be somewhat easy. It’s always kind of scary and presumptuous to use the word “easy” when talking about any kind of training, much less hill repeats on the bike.
By the end of the year I plan to be able to do 2-mile hill repeats up Michillinda. While that slope is pretty steep, it is nothing compared to what awaits at Lake Tahoe. So, starting in January much steeper climbs await and altitude training awaits and so many other things await.

RUN

I have been training for the Nike Women’s Half Marathon on October 14, 2012, so I have already been doing a lot of running. My New Year’s Resolution for 2012 was to run at least a mile every single day and I’ve done it so far. The basic plan here is just to continue to run every day, get in hill repeats and keep increasing the distance to the 13-15 mile level. I plan to keep myself at the half-marathon training level until April 1, 2013, and then will increase distance from there.

STRENGTH TRAINING

I think strength training is important and will continue to go to Crossfit (http://www.crossfitmonrovia.com/) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. The trainers are all experienced Ironman athletes so they are a valuable resource for me.

DIET/NUTRITION

I had nutrition pretty well worked out for my training for Ironman Arizona (although not so much for the actual race). I don’t actually remember what that was and that is still a work in progress. But it is important. For instance, I did a nine-mile run two weeks ago and did really well and was quite pleased. I did the same run yesterday and it didn’t go so well. I finally figured out the problem was that Friday night I had eaten a 200-calorie protein bar and before starting the run on Saturday morning I had eaten a 200-calorie Lara Bar. I expected me to run 9.25 miles on 400 calories consumed over twelve hours. That doesn’t work. So, definitely some work to do there.
I try to follow a Paleo (http://thepaleodiet.com/) diet. I don’t do it perfectly and sometimes I flat-out backslide, but pretty much I follow it. Basically, I don’t eat much in the way of grains or dairy or processed food.
I need to lose fourteen pounds. An additional five or ten pounds would be even better because the fewer pounds you have to haul up the mountains on the bike, the better you are. But I doubt if the extra weight loss is reasonable or even possible. So, let’s get these fourteen pounds off and take it from there.

MONEY SPENT

I want to track how much I spent on this little Ironman adventure. I know it isn’t cheap, but just how not cheap is it? So, I am going to track any expenditure that I make BECAUSE of the Ironman. For instance, I need new goggles. I need new goggles irrespective of the Ironman so I wouldn’t count that. So far I have paid for the Ironman ($708.75) and The Sufferfest videos (94.99).