My 2025 Training Journal + Lessons Learned from Triathlon & Swim Training

I designed my simple workout-tracking spreadsheet way back in 2017 to help track triathlon training. I'd overtrained and given myself athletic-induced pnemonia that year, and in the aftermath, I realized that I'd done a ruinously bad job managing the three phases of triathlon training holistically. 

I got exhausted, and then I got sick. That was stupid. 

The problem is that I don't necessarily get sore when I switch sports a lot. So if I'm not careful, my total work load can sneak up on me from week to week. Most of the time when I get sick or injured, I can trace the cause to overwork the previous week or to stringing together too many heavy weeks in a row without a break. That was the case back in 2017, and it damn-near landed me in the hospital.

Some Thoughts on Getting Older as an Adult Athlete

I put this up on Twitter and as an extended Instagram story.  No idea how many folks read it or cared, but I'm still feeling it, so...

The hardest thing about being an adult athlete – about getting older – is managing rest and recovery. Alas, your time as a collegiate competitor is poor preparation. To be good in college, you have to grind everyday like you’ve got a mental illness. Go full-gas all the time, or somebody’s gonna take your spot. Sometimes that sucks, but it’s rarely complicated.

#SBRLLR: Losing My Father (Part 2)

We buried my father in Arlington Cemetery with full military honors.  A giant Marine Corps band showed up in their red dress uniforms, complete with a horse-drawn caisson.  The Marines took my father back in the end, and I walked away from the cemetery content in the knowledge that my dad was again with his people, that he was where he wanted to be.  He was buried in formation alongside all the other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who’ve faithfully served our nation in its times of need.⁴⁸  His funeral was truly moving.  But it was sparsely attended, however, because my father’s drinking had driven so many of his old friends and colleagues away.

Crunch: Journey before Destination

I read Oathbringer last week, the third book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives.  Though a best-selling author in his own right, Sanderson is most famous for finishing Robert Jordan’s magnum opus The Wheel of Time.  But where Wheel of Time is concerned mostly with destiny and the cyclical nature of historical events,Stormlight Archives anchors itself in individual growth.  To this end, its heroes, the so-called Knights Radiant, have a saying by which they summon their godlike magical powers:

“Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.”

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson.

Every time I read this, I am reminded of the sport of triathlon.

Fixing Foot Strike Revisited

Finally got a chance to take last week's shin-angle/foot strike fix out for a test drive this week, and it was a very different experience from what I'm used to.  

Triathlon: Fixing Foot Strike

Most swimmers make decent runners, and many runners learn to swim reasonably well, but it’s hard to be truly great at both sports.  Instead, swimmers and runners both tend to pick up cycling or yoga as their second-best discipline when they take up triathlon as master’s athletes.  But the difficulty of transitioning from one ostensibly simple aerobic activity to another can be maddening for folks who’re used to being considered good at whatever it is that they try to do.

Saturday Workout: Swim/Run Brick

Hannah and I are headed to tomorrow's Yankee game, the finale of their series against the Baltimore Orioles and, in a larger sense, of the Yanks' long home-and-away series against their AL East rivals.  The Yankees are in first place in their division, and they won last night, so tomorrow's game will see the Bombers either looking to take the rubber match or else going for the sweep.  It should be an exciting game, especially since the Yankees have decided to rest their purported--but struggling--ace Masahiro Tanaka.

Who's going to pitch, and how are the Yankees going to handle Tanaka going forward?  We have no idea, but we should start to see some of these answers tomorrow.

More importantly, at least for the purposes of this post, tomorrow has turned into an unexpected Rest Day.  Indeed, since this has been the last week of my typical three-week training cycle, next week is a Rest Week.  That meant that I needed to get both a swim and a run in this morning, and also that I didn't have to worry about overworking since I'm already headed into a scheduled rest cycle.

On Turning Forty-Four

My birthday is this week, and as you might’ve guessed from the title of this piece, I’m turning forty-four.  I spent the weekend feeling old and fat and slow, and I’m not gonne lie, I was legitimately upset about it.  I don’t know if it got quite bad enough to be called a “depressive episode”—I just learned that term from Twitter and have no idea what its technical definition is—but I was really blue most of the weekend and maybe a little more sullen than usual, so much so that I know that it bothered my wife quite a bit.

I don’t know what to tell you.  I feel like I’m struggling with this whole “mid-life” thing, and you can say whatever you want to about it.  I’ll just say that it’s true.

Swim / Run Brick (Tempo Intervals)

As the weather has gotten a little nicer in Connecticut, I’ve been moving away from being as exclusively swim-focused as I was over the winter, into a more balanced multisport training approach.  I don’t know that this means I’ll necessarily race a lot this summer, but since the sun is out, it seems like a shame to spend my time in an indoor pool.

I got this past weekend’s main workout from Runner’s World and decided to do it twice, once in the pool and once on the treadmill.  The original set was written for the track:

 3 x (4 x 440 @ :30 res), 1:00 between sets

With adaptations and time constraints, my workout went like this:

Saturday Workout with Hannah

I've been working this week to get back into the gym with my daughter Hannah.  This is something of a switch.  Hannah is a dancer and a gymnast while I am a swimmer and a triathlete.  We spent a lot of time earlier in the year working out together to help Hannah improve in gymnastics, but because of school and work pressures, we haven't been working out together as much lately.  Hannah had to put more focus on her schoolwork and on ballet while I decided to double-down on swimming.

Swim / Triathlon Training: Building Emotional Resilience

I did my long swim of the week this morning, and despite making quite a few changes to the plan on the fly--among other things, I realized midway through that I'd miscounted the yardage total and needed to cut back--I was really pleased with the results.

I'm filing this one under "triathlon" not "swimming" because you can easily adapt the basic principles below to any of the three disciplines.

Triathlon: Swim / Bike / Run

Saturday Workout Update

You guys are always so fascinated by my workouts, so here goes:

Race Report: Woodruff Family YMCA Y-Tri 2016

I did the Woodruff Family YMCA Y-Tri last weekend, and it was my first race in several years.  I still haven’t decided if it’s the start of a comeback or a one-off, but at a minimum, I suppose I’m now honor-bound to do the Woodruff Y’s other seasonal race, August’s Charles Island Sprint Triathlon.  If I can come up with one more race, I suppose that would make this the start of an official comeback.

The Y-Tri is a short sprint, and although I feel like I have to defend myself for saying this, it’s exactly my favorite kind of race.  I typically train for Olympic distance triathlons because those training distances really suit me—two to three thousand yard swims, twenty-five- to fifty-mile bike rides, and six- to nine-mile runs.  As a racer however, I function best as a kind of later-day mid-distance specialist.  I’ll be forty-three next week, and yeah, that makes it easier to longer, slower.  However, I once specialized in the 200 butterfly, and with that background, my best thing remains hard uptempo work at the end of short-but-grueling races to a strong finish.  

This describes the Y-Tri perfectly—300 yards swimming, 11-miles cycling, and 2.4-miles running.

Training Log: 1/11 to 1/17 (Week 3)

This was kind of a different week for me.  I've been struggling to find a sense of purpose for my training lately, especially because I've been enjoying running and lifting weights so much, but swimming is undoubtedly my best thing.  Around mid-week, I finally decided that I needed a change of pace, and in putting together my calendar afterwards, I chose the Danbury Half-Marathon on April 3rd as my next race.  

I'm not going to actually enter the race until I get a little further into my training and have assured myself that my knees and ankles are going to hold up for the long runs, but it feels good to have a training target.  More importantly, I'm happy to have a focus that won't force me into the pool so many times per week.

Training Log: 1/4 to 1/10 (Week 2)

This was not an easy week.  We went from having beautiful, spring-like weather to the full-on heart-of-winter.  I kicked off the week with a bike commute in eleven-degree weather, and I'm not sure I ever fully recovered.  That made it hard to keep up with my training over the course of the week, and it left me exhausted, both physically and emotionally.

Swim, Bike, Run

It warmed over the course of the week, and the weekend has been actively nice, but it's been tough to get back on my schedule.  I wound up cramming almost the entire week's training into just Saturday and Sunday.  That's hardly ideal, but at least I got it done.

Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: 10 Steps to a Fitter You

The nice thing about the holidays is that they give us time to rest, hang out with family, and think.  I spent my time thinking about how to improve both this blog and my fitness training plan.  I've seen a gazillion articles this week about New Year’s resolutions and fitness, so I thought maybe it was time to write a General Fitness/New Year’s article, too.  I should note that my wife Sally helped me with this; about half the items listed below are hers.

Sally mugged it up before class on Sunday.
Sorry the shot is blurry.  That's my fault for taking exactly one picture.

Sally works in fitness, but I'm like you.  I'm trying to manage my weight and my health at the same time that I'm working and raising a family.  I'm lucky, though.  I grew up with a father who took the time to teach me how to run and lift weights, and I got involved in competitive swimming at an early age.  This gives me an excellent base from which to build lifelong fitness.  I'm still busy, though, and I still find staying fit a challenge.  I envy folks for whom vigorous exercise is a part of their basic job functions.  For the rest of us, staying healthy is an important part of our daily lives; it’s just not easy.

You can abuse your body all you like.  In time, though, your body will abuse you back.  More importantly, kids become their parents.  If you want happy, healthy kids, you have to model a happy, healthy lifestyle.

So… how do you get in shape for the New Year?

There’s not just one way, of course, but there are a few basic things you can do to help yourself succeed.

Tri Training Log: 9/28 - 10/4 (Week 2)

This was a big swimming week.  That was by design but also by necessity because of the rain.  My goals for the week were to put in 6000 yards in a long swim workout and to get in two runs.  I managed to get the long swim done but flat forgot to go on my first run during the week.

Oops.

I should maybe note that I am not actually training for any triathlons right now.  I am, however, considering an attempt at swimming solo across Long Island Sound.  This is why I've been so focused on swimming.

Tri Training Log: 9/7 - 9/13 (Week 2)

I've called this a "triathlon" training log, but my main goal these days is to get comfortable swimming further at an easier pace as I try to transition to an emphasis on long distance open water swimming and away from a balanced, "triathlon" approach to physical fitness.

I only swam twice this week, but as you'll see, I feel like I'm getting there--finally.  It's just proving to be a longer, tougher road than I might have hoped.

Triathlon Training Log: 8/17 - 8/23 (Week 5)

It's been kind of an interesting week.  I never made it out to run, but I did a decent amount of swimming, and I actually got out with one of my buddies for a long(ish) ride on Saturday.  That was fun, and I think it was productive as well.

I'm getting tired, though.  I usually train on a four week cycle, which is three working weeks followed by a rest week.  This is Week 5, however, meaning that I haven't had a rest week since early July.  I still feel okay, but in the back of my mind, I know that I need to back off soon and let my body recover.  Recovery is an important part of training.  But while that's easy to say, it's hard to do when you feel like you're making progress.  This week in particular I finally managed to get down below 195 lbs for the first time in almost a year, and I felt good both in the water and on the bike.  Yes, I'm tired, but it's going to take a change to my circumstances to force a change to my training.  As a matter of reality, swimming three times per week and riding my regular commute is a solid training plan all by itself.  I could cut yardage, but I don't particularly want to.  Still, that's really the only way to do it without changing my schedule.

Fortunately, we're headed on vacation later this week, and that promises to be less rigorous.  That's a good thing.

Triathlon Training Log: 8/10 to 8/16 (Week 4)

As I've mentioned before, I'm seriously considering a solo attempt at next year's Swim Across the Sound.  I'd like to do it, but at this point I have two concerns.  First, I'm not sure how my body is going to react to the dramatic increase in swim yardage required to contemplate a 15.5-mile open water swim, and second, I'm not at all sure that I have time in my personal and professional life to make the kind of commitment to training that I think success is going to require.  So the past two weeks have been about upping my swim yardage and gauging how my body is reacting while working with my wife to design a family schedule that works for everyone.  So far, so good, but we are all of two week in.

If you're new to the blog, this write-up uses a points system to track training and equivalence efforts across all three disciplines.  You can read about that here.