Speed It Up!!!

My goals up to now have mostly been around distance.

Century ride - check!
Marathon - check!
Ironman - check!

It's always been very rewarding to cross off those new distances, to go that little bit further, but now I've gone as far as I really care to...

So now what?

Speed!

I've been getting faster each year, but I feel like it was almost coincidental. Doing more of anything will make you faster at first, but there's a point where it's not enough. It's time to focus and do some serious work-outs with getting faster as the priority, rather than just going further and further...

Cycling Speed Plan

• Spinervals in the winter
• Long steady ride
• Hill repeats, intervals, tempo rides

Biking is probably where I've been the least structured. I pretty much have two rides I do: long and slow or short and all out.

This year I'm going to work on carrying the intensity of a Spinervals spin session onto the road on my short rides.

Running Speed Plan

• Hills, hills, hills
• Tempos
• Trails
• Long Steady Distance

When I say "hills hills hills", I don't mean hill repeats, I mean incorporating hills into almost every run. On long runs, this means slowing and keeping a steady heart rate. For short runs, I treat them more like intervals, where I go hard up the hills, recover, then go hard up the next one.

Trails - I felt like the off-road running I did at the end of last year strengthened a lot of the muscles that don't get direct attention from road running. I'm going to try to get out on the trails now and then to keep it up. And it was fun!

Swimming Speed Plan

• Improve Form

My biggest limiter in the pool is still form, no question. If I improve my form, I will go faster. So my workouts have been around practicing form, rather than really doing a swim "work-out" as such.

I'll change that up a bit this year, and try to do sets where I focus more on really pulling through the water with power. It's a secondary concern, though.

Weight Loss Speed Plan

I've talked about this before, but it's a bit part of going faster: dropping weight.

No matter how hard I train, if my weight stays where it is, I'm leaving something on the table. That's not good enough! I dropped a few pounds before Christmas, some of which were kind enough to return, but I would like to see a 10-15lb drop by the time I do Muskoka 70.3 and the fall marathon.

Faster Goals

I want to find a sub-1:45 half marathon by the spring, and somewhere around a 3:45 marathon in the fall. I think it's there. And in general I just want to see faster bike splits, especially at races I've done before.

Comments/Advice appreciated!