Feb 2 – 8 Back to the grind

Total: 17 hrs
Swim: 11km
Bike: 6 hr 50 min
Run: 4 hr 30 min
Strength: 2 hr 50 min

Another week of training under the belt! Consistency seems to be my middle name these days as I’ve continued hitting all my sessions without having a day off training since Nov 26. I’ve heard that the work you put in during Jan/Feb is what you race on later in the year. We’ll see how this works out for me. In years past I’ve never put in this kind of volume week-in / week-out during this time of year.

Running continues to come along well with the focus of establishing good rhythm. With my long run this past week of 1 hour 40 minutes I felt like I could go on forever (e.g. RPE zone 2) running a nice mid-7 min pace … in the end my HR numbers backed that feeling up as I was well within my aerobic zone throughout. It feels like my running form is coming back together, I just need to make sure I take care of my lower legs. This week will be another one with plenty of volume and a little bit of intensity sprinkled in here and there. The long run will grow again, this week swelling up to 1 hour and 50 minutes.

It looks like my running race schedule for February will change a little as I have a FCA-E training camp at Table Rock Mountain on the weekend of the 10k I was supposed to do. I was a little bummed about missing this race since I’ve done it the past two years and it is nice to be able to see your progression as a runner but also because it is the corporate division SHOWDOWN between us (Colonial Life), Westing House, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. We’ve won the last 3 years in a row (I think) and they were counting on me to put up some good numbers. Also this was the only running race around for the month, but then I just received an email that there is a new 8k race on the 21st. This may actually suit the coach better because he preferred a 5k race for this month since I have so many sprint triathlons coming soon. I’ve never run this distance so it should be a learning experience. I supposed you just pretend you are running a 5k and then just suffer through the remaining 3k.

The highlight of last week came in the form of a surprising warm up set in the pool. I had a standard 400 meter warm up before the main set which I generally take pretty easy to get the arms and shoulders firing and find a good rhythm. Well on this particular warm up when I was done my watch said 5:51. Nice … I usually swim these warm ups around 6:03. The only difference was that there was a pretty fast swimmer two lanes over that thought I could be challenged. I didn’t go hard as it was my warm up, but I did enough to let them know that there was no chance for hanging with me even for 25 meters :-p

Paul K, from A Ticket to Kona, asked me this question sometime back:

“How much do you think your training will change now that your coach is TBB? Do you think there will be knowledge trickle down? Those guys (and gals) train hard.”

My response was that I hoped so and then I received this from my coach this weekend:

“this week, you will notice some TBB swimming workout flavor.... it s been interesting week and i know you will also get some good out of those workout...i adapted them a bit...”

The weather has been soooo awesome this weekend and is supposed to continue. I’m chomping at the bit to get out and do some long rides in the hills. I hope to make that happen sometime this week!

If you get a chance, check out the video my coach put on his blog of riding in the Philippines, if it wasn't so warm here right now I would be terribly jealous.

Happy training!