Sunday - Tuesday

Starting with Sunday and working my way forward, Sunday included a 3 hour ride with a HR cap of 125. The weather here - which had been brutal for a month and a half or so - finally began to improve. Sunday was 45 and sunny, so Stacey and I decided to get the road bikes out of storage and head outdoors. After an hour and a half, a nautre break required that we return to our apartment. Riding outside here is so uninspiring that we both decided to finish the ride on the trainer. Once the weather improves, I think we'll be driving to a better location to do all our long rides. I felt good pretty much the whole ride and my HR didn't have any problem getting up. Outside, I was pleasantly surprised with the gear I could push while keeping my HR down. Stacey kept accusing me of exceeding the HR cap as I breezed up hills and out of her sight.

Next up was 1:15 of running with 30 minutes at 145 bpm. Again, the weather allowed me to run mostly on concrete or dirt, depending on the type of road I was on, instead of snow. The run wasn't too taxing on my body, and I cruised at 7:09/mile with a HR of 147 for the 30 minutes during which I was aiming to average 145 bpm.

Monday included a tough swim and then a 1:30 run. The main set of the swim began with 600m as fast as possible, which ended up being 10:07 (seven seconds too slow!). Next, I did by 6 x 100m at 1:41 per 100m with 10 seconds rest, which didn't require pushing too hard. I repeated the same thing for 400m and 200m, and though my T200 time was slow (1:42), I don't think I missed the time for any of the 100m's. At times, I worked on lifting my elbow with my shoulder to engage my catch, but couldn't keep that technique up the entire time because it made the lateral-most portions of my shoulders sore. I will continue working on acheiving a high-elbow catch, and will get some video posted one of these days, too.

I got out of the pool and onto the treadmill. I set the incline at 1% and after a 15 minute warm-up, did 4 x (1 min walk + 15 minutes at 8.6 mph/just faster than 7:00/mile). My respective HR averages were 152, 156, 157, and 158. Other than needing to vary the incline throughout the run for comfort reasons, the run went well and was surprisingly easy (especially since it immediately succeeded a hard swim).

Today, Tuesday, I did two workouts. The second was a tough bike ride including 4 x 20 minutes. For the first 20 minutes, I stood and did occasional one arm riding. I missed the target HR of 145 bpm by two bpm. Next up, I did 20 minutes in the aero bars, averaging 154 bpm, missing the target by one bpm. For the third set, I did 20 minutes at 156 bpm, missing the target by two bpm. Finally, I bailed halfway through the fourth 20 minutes. I wasn't as focused as normal for this workout, since this was the last workout before a break (and almost not included!). Still, I got in 1:25 on the bike. The effort required for the middle two sets wasn't as high as last week's interval ride. Still, even though my PE was pretty low, I felt like I couldn't have pushed much harder...like I didn't have another gear.

The three day break will be nice, and I will not be doing extra work.

Post script: fiften minutes or so after the ride and my legs are feeling it. Ouch!