Muskoka 70.3 base build week 1

Switching up the titles now that I've started my 'official' base training for the Muskoka half iron. This week I started an 8 week half iron triathlon base plan with Trainerroad (high volume version), which will then be followed by an 8 week build and an 8 week specialization. Technically there's more than 24 weeks until the race, but that gives me some flexibility to take extra rest time after Around the Bay and taper properly for the Chilly half (which I am now officially signed up for).

The workouts:
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 2100m swim; TR Slide Mountain (1 hour)
Wednesday: 10k run with 2x2k intervals @5:00/km
Thursday: 2000m swim; TR Cumberland (1:15); 6k brick run
Friday: 2000m swim; TR Ericsson (1 hour)
Saturday: 20.16 long run; 1700m swim
Sunday: TR Big Squaw (2:30 OMG); 7k easy run

Ahhh, vacation. So much more time!

The training plan started with an FTP test Tuesday, but I subbed in a sweet spot workout to stay on the safe side with my ankle. And also I didn't wanna do one. SO THERE. I may have to suck it up and do one soon, though, since my FTP feels off. And not in a good way. (The rest of this will probably only make sense to Zindine, so feel free to skip to the good part of the post - the pictures!) I've been trying to remember if I changed to a trainer tire after I did my fall FTP test. I think I may have done the FTP test with my regular tire, and that might explain why I'm having so much trouble hitting the TR power targets now that I'm doing sweet spot work instead of the aerobic base stuff - I suspect my FTP is currently set a little too high, and that's after lowering it 10 watts recently. I think it needs to go down another 5-10. I've spent enough time with Trainerroad now to know that something is wonky because certain workouts feel harder than they should. The trainer tire is much heavier duty, so if I did do the FTP test on the stock tire perhaps that explains things. At any rate, I think I'll lower my FTP a bit and see if I can get the effort level to feel right for the first workout this week.

OK, on to the good stuff! How the week went. It featured a lot of this:

I may be sick of cheese. I know, I didn't think that was possible...

Some of this:

I didn't die doing bike intervals! Yay!

Good times:

Running the year with some of my favourite running peeps! And I was very pleased how good the pace felt on this one. Promising.

My husband ran his longest run ever (27.5k!) and then did this:

I know EXACTLY how that feels.

And I found the speed in my legs again! Yeah! I did 2x2k fast on Wednesday without really looking at my watch and was surprised to be right around 5:00/km on them. I haven't forgotten how to run fast!

Technically from a different run. FAKER! I didn't take any pictures of the interval run. Blog fail.

And I did my longest trainer ride to date on Sunday, which was fairly miserable because man I was capital-T Tired for that one. But I slogged through it! All two and a half hours and no I'm not looking ahead in the plan to see what that goes up to later on because I don't really want to know.

Really, no complaints about the week. Hit all three sports pretty strongly.

Week 2 of the base building plan:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: swim before work; TR in the evening
Wednesday: interval run at lunch
Thursday: swim before work; TR in the evening
Friday: easy run at lunch; TR in the evening
Saturday: TR, brick run, swim(?)
Sunday: Long run with the Iron Canucks (20k ish); swim (?)

The trainer workouts this week are all 90 minutes except Friday which is 'only' 80 minutes, but they are all sweet spot and won't be easy by any stretch. So this week is going to be challenging! And I'm not sure how many swims I'll be able to get in now that we're back to work and school and such. Hopefully at least 3, but if that has to drop down to 2 for my own sanity, well, that's how it'll be. I have to work with the time I have, and swim is the hardest one to schedule, so it gets dropped. Just how it has to be.