Fall 2014: Week 8

So I kinda forgot to write this post this week. Usually I write these as I go along, jotting down a few sentences about each workout right after they happen, but this week I just...didn't.

Guess it was both a running rest week and a blogging rest week! Now I barely remember what I even did!

Monday: Rest day.
Tuesday: 8k easy
Wednesday: 7k easy in the morning, 30k bike ride in the evening
Thursday: Rest day
Friday: 10k easy (well, 9.9, just to make people crazy - biking seems to have cured me of really caring about exact distances, because for some reason my watch always overestimates the distance it displays while I'm cycling, and it then corrects when I upload the file to Strava/Runkeeper. So I can't tell the exact distance until the ride is over!).

Saturday: This one deserves more words - new personal distance record on the bike! 88k with the lovely Jana. The wind was unpleasant, the hills were somehow hillier than usual, but I loved it. The padded shorts did their job and it was surprisingly comfortable to be on the bike that long.

Route planning!

Mid-ride selfie via Jana

What's a little less comfortable is my left hand. I seem to have a case of Cyclist's Palsy - numbness in the left ring finger/little finger due to nerve compression over a long period (like, say, a 4 hour bike ride). So that kind of sucks. It's mild right now, but I'm going to have to figure out how to deal with this to make sure it can heal and not come back. First step is buying better, much more padded gloves. I may get a re-fitting on the bike, too, to make sure I'm not carrying too much weight through my hands. Apparently core strengthening is recommended too. Why is the answer always more core strength? Ugh.

Sunday: Long run, 16k with Patty. My legs were pretty tired at the start from the long ride the day before, but felt surprisingly good by the end.

Gotta love a run where you find Superman's Fortress of Solitude made of sand.

In fact, I felt so good that in the afternoon, after giving the bike a thorough cleaning and lubing and then tracking Irina and Mari and Laurence through the bike leg of Iron Man Mount Tremblant, I had to get out on my bike for a bit. It was a gorgeous afternoon and just very necessary to do an easy 40k - the Iron Man was so inspiring. Congrats guys, great performances all around!

Weekly stats
Run: 41.7 km
Bike: 158.5 km
Total: 200.2 km in 10 hours, 29 minutes
(I just checked, Iron Man distances would be 42.2 km obviously, and then 180 km on the bike. So in one week I still didn't do as much as my Iron Man friends did in one day!)

A little high for a rest week, but I don't regret that 40k ride on Sunday for a second.

This week I move into peak training time for Oakville. If I'm going to go after that PB, I need to focus on the run and get ready for this. Plus I need to give my hand a break to start healing before I jump back on the bike again. So this week will be largely running, hopefully back up around that 60k total mark. I will try and get in a duathlon practice on the weekend, though, since that's coming up soon too.