A Week in the Life: May 1-7

Well, hello there and welcome (back)!  A couple years ago I was pretty diligent about doing a weekly recap of what happened in my training and my life.  I guess it's more of a public journal than anything else but I hope that somewhere in these posts you find something that can help you or just makes you laugh.  So, I guess that's about it.  Off we go!!

I'll just jump right into the training side of things.  The week started with a rest day on Monday.  Tuesday was bike night.  The training plan called for either a bike interval workout or a group ride.  Seeing as the weather was delightful, I opted for a group ride.  I met up with the crew from Cedar Bluff Cycles for their weekly ride.  I opted for the faster "A" ride.  It hurt.  30+ mph pull-throughs made for a great interval workout... at least for the first 20 miles.  At that point it was all I could do to just hold the back of the rotation.  I did, however, hold on and made it through the rest of the ride.

Wednesday night was back to pool for the first time in over a week since getting back from vacation.  Main set was 100 repeats on 1:50.  My form felt like crap and my pace was off a bit but I expected as much.

Thursday's Run ended up on the treadmill due to weather.  I had a 45 minute tempo run.  Goal was to run the first half of the run steady and then pick up the pace for the second half inserting quick two-minute speed up intervals at the 10,20,30 and 40 minute marks.  I set the belt on just under 7mph for the first half with intervals on 8.0mph.  For the second half, I bumped up to 7.3 with 8.5mph intervals.  It was a good run. Well, as good of a run as can be had on the treadmill.

Another rest day was on the schedule for Friday to get ready for the standard big training days on the weekend.  Saturday was a long bike, 3 hour minimum on road or 2 hour minimum on dirt.  The weather was questionable.  Grey skies and a threatening forecast greeted me when I woke up.  I decided to take the mountain bike to the North Boundary Greenway for some mixed surface dirt/gravel fun.  I managed to avoid the rain for most of the ride other than a few sprinkles as I was riding out to the parking lot.  I stayed in the woods on the singletrack for the first part of the ride and the tree cover was enough to keep the sprinkles at bay.  By the time I hit the gravel, the rain had subsided.  I did a nice moderate push on the gravel with a short trip up another bit of singletrack at the turn.  On the way back, I hit the same singletrack that I started on.  It ended up a great day at 2 hours, 18 miles and just under 1800ft of climbing.  Off the bike I was supposed to do a 25 minute T-Run but cut short due to rain.

Today, Sunday, was much better.  There was a definite chill in the air this morning but the weather looked promising for later in the day.  All of this worked out well since I had a 3800yd swim to get done before my run workout.   Today's swim felt much better than Tuesday's.  My form was there and the pace was where I needed it to be but it was still a tough swim.  Lots of pace variation and speed intervals ensured that I got out of the pool with my arm sufficiently useless.

After my swim, it was back to the house for a nap and some relaxation to get ready for my run.  I had a tough interval workout with the meat being 8 x 800 best effort intervals with a long steady run warm up and a cool down after.  The 800's went a little better than I expected.  I didn't try to push the pace as much as I have previously since this workout added 2 extra 800's than I had been doing previously.  My first three locked in pretty solid on a 6:10 pace.  I thought I could hold that but after number 3 I knew it was going to be a struggle.  The next 5 dropped to a 6:20ish pace and pretty much stayed there.  I wish I could have held the faster pace but my legs just didn't have it in them.  I ended up with 8.5 miles on the day.

Totals for the week looked like this:

Swim: 7050yds
Bike: 39mi (road), 18.8mi (off road)
Run: 15.8mi