Beer of the Week: Stone Go To IPA

Another week, another hoppy beer.  This summer has been proclaimed as the summer of the Session IPA so here goes.  In case you didn't know, a sessionable beer is generally one that is lower in alcohol and can be sampled multiple times in one "session,"  hence the term.  Stone is a Southern California Brewery known for crafting high quality beers.  They definitely have a soft spot for hops.  I'll let you visit their web site for the brewing details.  Here's how this one goes down.  The aroma and initial taste would lead you to believe that this is "standard" IPA.  Floral, grassy, and definitely hop-laden.  The mouth-feel is light-bodied and very crisp.  This follows into the finish which is, while still light bodied, also very bitter.  It's in the finish where you come to see it's a session IPA.  Great beer for a Hot Summer's day or night!

Beer of the week: Hoptimum

10.something% ABV, 100 IBUs.  This is by far the hoppiest beer that I've ever had.  But in a good way.  Given the extreme nature of this beer, it would be easy to write it off as a novelty beer.  In reality, it's quite drinkable, a sipper for sure, but still something to be savored.  As with many IPA's (or imperial IPA's as in this case), you probably will enjoy it if you are a fan of the style.  A piney nose, light to medium body, and a slightly bitter finish with a pleasant after-taste.  Given it's "shock and awe" style, it's fairly well balanced.  Still, I wouldn't drink more than one of these in a single sitting unless I was trying to get stupid-hammered.  It also isn't a beer that I'd pair with food (although I would caution against drinking it on an empty stomach).  Let's face it.  When it comes to hops, there isn't a better brewery than Sierra Nevada.  They've got it down.  Hoptimum is evidence to that end.  Enjoy.

1.57

So this is supposed to be my monthly update, but the truth is, I've been so busy that this is the first chance I've had to really sit down and write something.  So instead of two months until Ironman, it is now a mere 1.57 months.  That really does seem very soon, even though there's most of a summer between now and then.  So here's the training recap. I'll try to be brief.

Swim:  I've been extending my daily swim by about 500 yards and as a result I managed to put in one of my bigger months in May in terms of total volume.  I've made one swim each week an endurance swim, while the others are dedicated to drills and intervals.  That said, it's still woefully low in terms of both volume and effort.  Now that we are a ways into June, and the work has subsided a bit, I will be able to build a little more swimming into each week and have individual sessions last a bit longer, say 60-90 minutes.  Tomorrow morning will be a special treat.  The "Iron Cowboy" will be in town as part of his 50-50-50 tour.  Pueblo is one of his stops and he's invited anyone that wants to, to join him for part of his "race." Since he's swimming out at the university, I'm planning on going and doing that portion of the day.  (Update: The Iron Cowboy was a bit later this a.m.  I waited for 30 minutes, but wound up heading home.  Sad I didn't get to meet/ swim with him, but I wish him the best of luck!).

Bike: In May I came up a bit short of my biking goal of over 400 miles.  I was set to do it, but rainy weather made it a bit more difficult to get out on the bike.  In addition, I was starting to feel a bit burnt out by the end of the month, so I wound up skipping one of my last rides.  I did manage to get a 102 mile ride in during the month and I felt pretty good about that.  The ride took about 5.5 hours which is probably a bit faster pace than I have planned for Ironman.  I also managed a couple of brick workouts (in May and June).  The first was a 68 mile ride, followed by a 10 mile run.  The ride wasn't too bad, but the run got to be fairly brutal by the end.  I was pushing the pace a bit more too, so that didn't exactly help.  Today, I did a longer ride of 84 miles and then followed that with a run of just 6 miles.  My goal was to dial back the pace a bit and see if I felt like I could go a bit further.  The ride felt really nice for the most part.  There were one or two parts where some very rough roads made it unpleasant (especially since I was planning on doing a couple of loops and so I knew I'd be back across it).  The run also felt pretty good as I made a conscious effort to slow down.  I felt like I could have run at that pace a bit longer except for the fact that I didn't take any nutrition or hydration with me on the run.  The last 1.5 miles were starting to feel unpleasant, but it wasn't anything that some cold water and perhaps a gel couldn't have solved.  I crossed an interesting mileage landmark today as well.  At this point, I've ridden more miles in the first five months of 2015 than I did in all of 2014!

Looking back at the trade center (from the Brooklyn Bridge)

Run: The month of May was good for running.  I only logged about 60 miles (give or take), but this included a longer run of 16 miles which felt really good.  While my overall training was limited during my trip to New York last week, I did manage to get an 8 mile run in one evening.  Perhaps it was the stress or the limited exercise I'd had for most of the week, but I really pushed it, and wound up covering those eight miles in about 1 hour.  It was a lot of fun to run along the East River and past all of those iconic bridges.  I did each mile in well under 8 minutes, so a bit of intensity to make up for the lack of volume.  I actually had a longer run planned for earlier this week, but it was abbreviated thanks to a thunderstorm.  The shortened run meant I was back on the trainer for a bit, but there was an upside to that as well . . .

My Father's Day present to myself was a new pair of cycling shoes.  I wound up getting a pair of Specialized Expert Road Shoes.  They weren't the fancy colored shoes I'd originally planned on, but they are a nice Carbon-Fiber soled shoe.  I wound up getting a road shoe as opposed to a triathlon shoe.  These will be a bit more versatile after Ironman Boulder, and I really wanted something comfortable.  I'll keep the old tri shoes for the occasional sprint or olympic race.

Conclusion: With just over a month and a half until the big event, I feel pretty good about where I'm at.  I know that the next 4 weeks are really what's left when it comes to major training (I'll start to back off a bit after the middle of July).  Right now I'm planning on getting at least one more 100+ ride in, and I'll also look to do a couple of extended runs.  There's probably also going to be one more big brick workout in there somewhere.  I have a couple of ideas about that.  One option would be similar to today's workout; An 80ish mile ride, followed by a 10 mile run.  The other would be a full distance ride of 112 miles, followed by a shorter run of about 5 miles.  I'll have to decide in the next couple of weeks to see where in July it will fit.

The next "big thing" is a triathlon camp at the end of the month in beautiful Steamboat Springs!  I've never done anything like it so I'm looking forward to that.