Early Season Training

I cant believe that it's already March!! This year is flying by and I only have 3 weeks until my first race of the season.  I wanted to recap how my training for the first two months of the year went.   I'll break them down month by month, but if I could use one word to sum them up it would be: really awesome!

January:
I started the year off on the right foot...by taking a rest day.  I figure it'll be a long year so we'll take it slow to start off.  I was on winter break from school so I was able to get some really good training in without having to worry about when my next test was or making a paper a half a page longer to fulfill the assignment requirements.  The first week of the year I used as a building week soI could really put in some long hours during the second week and make it a mini training camp.  It was warm enough this year that I could run outside, which was really nice! A treadmill is great and all but you cant beat getting outside.

Week 2 of January brought some hard sets, long hours, and a lot of work.  Because I didn't have anything else going on I wanted to see if I could set a PR for amount of hours trained in one week.  Not only did I get there, but I blew my old number out of the water! Just crushed it.  That great week was a combination of a couple things.  I felt great all week, I didn't have anything else to focus on, and I wanted to get a good mini training camp in before going back to school.  Putting up the number I did during that week gave me a lot of confidence about this upcoming season!

February:
After completing my training in January I didn't think that I could ever get more fit than I was.  I was on top of my game when February started and it only got better from there.  I figured that I couldn't improve much more but February brought many different PR's, even longer training hours, and even more fitness.  To kick February off I started a 12-day training block.  12 long, hard days of honest work.  During this training block I was able to ride outside twice...which is always awesome given how cold February in Iowa can be.  I clocked 45 miles on the first ride and 55 miles on the second one.  I was stocked to not only be outside on my bike, but being able to get quality miles is an added bonus!

I was also able to get in some really good swimming and running to go along with my biking.  I set new PR's in every swimming distance between 100 and 800 yards.  I really enjoy swimming (except getting wet. It's the worst part) so my swim training come really easily to me.  What I once though I could never swim I now do repeatedly, and with relative ease.  My running is also improving on a daily basis.  I've been focusing on speed work and leg turnover rather then long, slow runs.  With that, I was able to lower my 5K PR as well as my mile PR.  Not only am I excited about my new times, but I know that I can go faster too!  When I was done with each of those I still had something in the tank so I'll be looking to lower those even more in the coming months.

All in all I couldn't have asked for a better two months to kick off my 2013 season.  Setting PR's in training, getting some quality time in outside, and having more fitness then I ever thought was possible for myself has given me a lot of confidence for whats to come. It's been a heck of a ride so far and I can't wait to see what the coming months have in store for me!