Week 4, One month down

First off, sorry the blog is a day late, I was swamped last night with school...

With one month of solid training under my belt, and only another 7 months to go, I can tell I will be where I want to be, well before my October deadline rolls around.  With school midterms in my immediate future, last week, and this week won't be what the others have been.  I took 3 days off of biking last week, but went to a 2 hour training session on one of those days, focusing on push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups.  Here's the excel sheet for this past week.  Not a ton of miles, but still a pretty good week of training.  I really need to hit the trails and get some fresh air, I can only watch so much girls basketball before going crazy; trust me, I'm half way there...

NCLS, as I spoke about in last weeks blog, was going to be very interesting, and it truly was.  I attended the Medal of Honor panel with Colonel Bud Day, Colonel Leo Thorsness, and Sergeant Sal Giunta.  They spoke individually of their experiences in war.  Colonel Day and Thorsness talking mostly about the POW camp they lived in together for 6 years in Vietnam, and only after hundreds upon hundreds of beatings and years of solitary confinement, they were able to go home.  Sergeant Giunta spoke of a different war, and how he didn't earn the medal for himself, it was his fellow soldiers who lost their lives that earned the medal for their country.  Giunta is quite a humble man, who I really enjoyed listening to.  I also saw Colonel Day and Sergeant Giunta individually, and as they each spoke more into their stories, I agreed more and more with what they were saying.  For them, receiving the Medal of Honor wasn't the best part of their Military careers, rather helping those around them and doing what they had been taught and learned from others, was the highlight.

I didn't see Dick Hoyt like I had hoped, as it turned out I accidentally went to the wrong lecture hall.  Instead, I saw Chad Hennings, a 3x Super Bowl Champ, AFA grad, and an A-10 pilot.  He has lived an interesting life, but hearing his 4 step plan to success was a bit excessive, and while I assume he didn't get paid a lot by the Academy to come out and speak, promoting his book to success over and over was a little much for me.  One athlete I did enjoy listening to was Lopez Lomong, a Sudan native, who escaped a rebel camp, who  eventually made it to the U.S.  His story of overcoming diversity, while sounding cliche, was pretty impressive.  He won two NCAA championships, and competed in the 2008 Bejing Olympics.  He is now looking to make the finals and possibly podium in 2012, with his impressive 3:45 - 1500m time.  Along with the professional athletes, I met and listened to Neil Amonson, a prior AF Special Tactics guy, who now lives the ultimate adventure lifestyle, with base jumping, extreme skiing, skiing with a parachute and everything in between.  He lives the ultimate grown up-child life, doing what he wants, with no one to stop him.  I'm half jealous...


Overall, this last week was pretty productive, with somewhat decent training, only 2 days of school, and 2 fun days of lectures.  Hopefully I'll get out on the trails before long, the warm temps are really calling my name.  Recognition is only 2 weeks away, with spring break just one week behind that, excitement is in the air.


I leave you with a picture of Sergeant Giunta and myself; I was mid sentence, that's why I have a weird smirk on my face.  Take care everyone, I'll see you next week.  

Week 3, the training continues

As life continues to move on around me, I seem to be standing still.  Over the last week, my boredom has hit an all time high.  With the stresses of school and the lack of variety in my life, I feel constricted but am working through it with my training.  I know it sounds bad, but no worries, I'm not depressed or anything of the sort; I'm just ready for a little excitement in my life :)

My biking this week did go well for the most part however, 136.5 miles, which brings my 3 week total to 460 miles.  I don't have any intense riding stories to share, nor do I have any cool scars from a good crash out on the trails.  I am still just riding the stationary bike, watching countless hours of silent TV with only the subtitles to keep me posted on what's really happening.  Oh, here's my excel sheet, by the way...

Side note to ESPN:  If you're going to spend 2 weeks covering every moment up until the start of the Daytona 500, you should probably cover the race too.  Rather than being able to watch the race while I rode today, I was stuck watching College Lacrosse on one TV, with women's basketball on the other.  I would have rather watched a nice long episode of underwater basket weaving.  I mean come on, there's more action in 5 minutes of scuba diving than an entire season of lacrosse or women's basketball.  No offense to either sport but ESPN, you really dropped the ball on this one...

Anyway, this coming week I only have 2 days of classes, which will allow me to relax and hopefully do something a little interesting.  NCLS, the National Character Leadership Symposium, is a conference the Academy puts on every spring.  Every year, over 15 amazing speakers and leaders come here to speak about their life experiences, allowing the Cadets a chance to see the possibilities which may away in the outside world.  Last year, I saw the Secretary of Defense, 2 astronauts, Tommy Lasorda, and the writer of Black Hawk Down.  This year, I am scheduled to see 3 different Medal of Honor Recipients, including Colonel Bud Day, and the most recent recipient of the award, Sergeant Giunta.  I am also seeing the first above the knee amputee of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Two other people I will be seeing are Dick Hoyt, and Neil Amonson.  While not necessarily leaders in battle like the Medal of Honor winners, they both have lived extraordinary lives. Hoyt is the founder of Team Hoyt, and has competed in over 1,000 athletic events in the last 30 years while pushing his paralyzed son, including 28 Boston Marathon's, and 6 Ironman Triathlons.  His determination to train, all for the love of his son is truly amazing.  Neil Amonson is regarded as the worlds best base jumper, and has starred in a few helmet camera commercials. If you've seen the commercial with the base jumper or the skier with the parachute, that's him.  His story will be interesting, but I'm certain the others will be more relevant in my near future.

I leave you with the typical sunrise here at the Academy.  I took this picture just last Friday on my way to morning formation.  There's one good thing about being up early, sunrises here in Colorado are truly amazing, pictures don't do justice.  

Have a good week everyone.  Happy Birthday Mr. Washington, I will enjoy my day off tomorrow.

Take care,
Matt

Week 2, Complete

As week 2 of training comes to a close, I realize I continually exceed my expectations, riding further than I had planned.  I finished this week at 151 miles, with 5 days of training.  I took both yesterday and today off to relax, with an ab exercise thrown in the middle of the R&R.  The weather has warmed up and the snow continues to melt, but I am still restricted and am unable to hit the trails in my off time.  I'm guessing I'll be spending a lot of time down in the bike room, spinning while watching the same ESPN episodes, hour after hour.  No worries, only 229 days, 13 hours, and 45 minutes until the start of the race, and my training pays off, hopefully...

I added a new column to the spread sheet, average speed in mph.  Sean Zoufaly, a friend of mine in the squad, questioned how accurate the bikes read the distance and calories burned, but after stepping back and looking at my training plan, I figured it out.  The level I ride at, not the zone with the heart rate, but the level on the bike, refers to the intensity of the ride I am on.  A higher level means I am traveling up a steeper hill, it doesn't mean I'm pushing a bigger gear and going further, it simply means I am exerting more energy to cover the same distance.  And also, my heart rate zone does relate to my intensity and time along with my calories burned, but I have yet to graph those numbers to make sense of them.  Don't worry, another week or two and I'll have enough data for an aesthetically pleasing line graph depicting my training over the last month or so.

Here is the excel sheet for this last week.  I can already tell, 6 months from now I will have too much information to even make sense of it, but until then, I'm going with it.  Supposedly, Kevin Lubinski was going to send me an inspirational quote or saying every day to keep me motivated, but after the first day, he quit.  Thanks, Kevin, great friend.



If you have anything inspiring, feel free to share, anything at all will help.  Thanks for reading, have a good week everyone, Happy Valentine's Day to all of you lovers out there!! <3

Take care,
Matt

Training Status Week 1

Well, I am currently training for a 24 hour mountain bike race, which is the first weekend of October here in Colorado Springs.  The website for last year is 24hoursofCOS.  It looks fun to me, and rather than running a marathon or trying a triathlon, I thought, why not try something I'd enjoy training for?  So that's what I'm doing. It's 24 hours of mountain biking on a big 14 mile, technical, single-track trail.  You don't have to ride for the whole 24 hours, but I plan on going without stopping too much.  As of right now the goal is 120 miles, but we'll see if that changes as the October date approaches.

Due to the recent snow and -40* temps we've had of late, and another circumstance I'm facing, all of my training so far has been indoors on the stationary bike in the gym.  It's not as fun as riding outside, but it does make it easy to track the training progress with the heart rate, calories burned, exact distance, and time all recorded.  I have started making an Excel sheet, documenting everything I've done, including everything I listed before, along with food and water intake, how I felt during and after training that day, along with what zone I was training in.

Zone training focuses on how hard the heart beats during a work out.  Contrary to popular belief, going as hard as you can, as long as you can, every day, isn't always the best training regime, especially for an endurance event.  Zone training allows me to focus my workouts on both the length of the ride, and the intensity.  Heart rate zones go from 1-5, and are different for every person, based on the Lactic Threshold of each person's body.  The Lactic Threshold, or the LT, is the max heart rate a person can sustain for 20 minutes, without experiencing fatigued muscles due to the lactic acid build up.  I have calculated my LT to be 168 beats per minute, with a max HR of 198.  This is a good site to read on more about the training zones involving heart rates.

I've attached the my workout spreadsheet, its pretty straight forward.  I can already tell a huge improvement in the conditioning of my legs, along with my overall aerobic fitness level.  I hope to always ride at minimum 5 times a week, and put in some good miles every time I do.  When I start riding outside, the miles will drop but both the intensity and fun levels will increase, to make it all worth it.

Here is the link to the Excel sheet after my first week or so of training.  Like I said, it's pretty basic but is definitely a good way to keep track of everything.

I found this hanging in the bathroom on the comic sheet for this week, found it very relevant...



Thanks for reading all of this, I know it's pretty boring to most of you, but I'll keep it going as long as I can.  Take care, Everyone

Matt