I survived week one of half-IM training, which really is just picking up where base training left off a week ago. Here are some highlights and a summary of the week:
Monday – 15 mile bike ride outside – I had to use my road bike since my triathlon bike was in the shop. Was a welcome change except it was cold, really cold but since I didn’t have work on this day, so I figured I could get outside, i have to take advantage of it while I can. Where is spring?
Tuesday – 2000m swim (AM) and 4 mile run outside (PM) – I had some added motivation to run fast on Tuesday, so that helped. My swim was all about drills, side drills, catch-ups, pull-buoy, kick, etc.. quite tiring but I got through. First double session of the season.
Wednesday – OFF (recovery day), although I didn’t sleep in like I always say i’m going to. I guess when you wake up before 5am every other day of the week, your body just doesn’t know how to not get up early. It kind of sucks because then I end up bored and then heading to work early ..
Thursday – 18 miles on the indoor trainer. Thankfully I have a Blackburn indoor trainer for my bike and a subscription to Netflix, its about the only thing that helps me get through a long indoor ride, because they really suck. I found that my tri bike that I just got back from the shop was not shifting right on the back gears.. no time to troubleshoot it though, rode through it (again, its good I was inside).
Friday – LONG swim, 2300m (AM) and 4.25 miles running outside (PM). The long swim was an 1800m straight swim, which felt pretty good and I did it in 38 minutes, which is faster than I ever had done before. I think the swim advancement class helped, I really felt efficient compared to last year. The only thing that irritated me during this swim was this dude in the next lane appeared to be racing me, although I wasn’t racing him. Now, I was doing like 36 laps or so straight, so each time I got to the shallow wall of the pool and flipped to turn around, BOOM .. the guy next to me bolted out from the wall and shot ahead of me. He was definitely faster than me since he was sprinting, then he would get back to the shallow wall long before me and seemed to just wait for me again. I’d get back to the shallow wall again, flip and then BOOM, he’d bolt out again… maybe its just me, but it was really irritating. I guess there is value in bilateral breathing because I was able to watch what he was doing. It was freaky. Anyway, the evening run was in the cold rain, but overall not too bad .. i’ve never been afraid of the rain.
Saturday – 22 mile ride, inside again. Well, I planned to get outside to ride but the wind gusts of 35+ MPH wouldn’t do me any good on a bike that is so light I can lift it with only a few fingers. We also got a freak snow squall that dropped an inch of snow in an hour (that did melt), but it really would’ve sucked to have to ride home in the snow. With this being the case, I setup on the trainer again with Netflix and Crackle. I struggle so bad indoors, spring better get here.. oh, and the stupid rear gears still weren’t working properly, forgot to fix them. I was irritated by it, but got through the ride.
Sunday – 1850m swim and 6.5 mile run. The swim was good, I felt really good and efficient throughout. I did primarily endurance sets with some drills mixed in but realized I should have been taking it easy because I ended up dying on the run by the end… it was still kind of cold out for my run since I was primarily running into the wind (at least in the beginning), but I got through it.
Total training time this week: 465 minutes, so 7 hours 45 minutes, not too bad.
I guess I shouldn’t say not too bad because my body is totally sore today (especially my hip flexor). I finally fixed my bike gears today by loosening the rear derailleur cable, tested it and it seems to be okay now. I also had to charge my watch, my ipod and wash my clothes, they really stink. Its time to prep my breakfast and lunches for the week and map out my training, figure out my bike commuting plan, etc … this never seems to stop, i’ll explain more about the lifestyle of endurance training in another post, some might find it interesting.
One week down, 19 more until IMRI and 9 more until NJ Devilman..