Muskoka 70.3 base build week 4

Recovery week!

Monday: rest
Tuesday: Swim 2000m; TR Goddard (1 hour)
Wednesday: 8k EZ run; yoga for hips/hamstrings/back
Thursday: Swim 1800m; TR Looking Glass (1:20)
Friday: 8k EZ run; TR Slide Mountain (1 hour)
Saturday: 18k long run
Sunday: 2200m swim; TR Pioneer (1 hour)

Funny, last winter a 10 hour week would have been a peak week!

Thoughts of the week:

The long road back to work.

It was a little weird to have so much energy and extra time last week. Nice, though. The swims were good and I seem to have comfortably settled into doing 6000m a week. I'd love to add a fourth swim, but there's really nowhere to fit that into the schedule. Doing pretty well to manage three of them, really!

Love/hate

Sciatica was acting up on my left side this week, which happens every few months. A little quality time with the big bad orange guy there and it's largely resolved. Also my chair at work sort of started to disintegrate, so I'm currently auditioning new chairs. Which has led to the revelation that my old office chair sucked really really badly. The various options for my new one are so much better! Why didn't I get a new chair ages ago!

Loving this winter so far. The bay still hasn't frozen over!

My runs were really good this week, with one small exception.

DEATH TRAP

On Friday's run, about 2k in, I was kind of zoned out and hit Mr. Manhole cover up there (who puts that in the middle of the sidewalk??) and rolled my left ankle. Yep, the sprained one. Damn it. Fortunately it felt fine after about 30 seconds of walking around and cursing, so I continued on the run (the cursing is key, I find). No issues with it the rest of the day on Friday or for Saturday's long run. But Saturday evening it was kind of vaguely sore, and I can tell it's taken a few steps back in healing. So I skipped my planned brick run on Sunday in favour of rest, which I think was the right choice. I will probably wear a brace for my next few runs and see how that goes. I'm fairly certain it will be fine, so I'm not too worried about it.

EZ run = no guilt on stopping for a selfie. OK, I don't feel any guilt about that anyway. Selfies forever!

Cresting the LaSalle Park climb in the cold ass wind. Good times. #running #run365 #ATB #instarunners

A photo posted by Sam J (@sammykaye71) on Jan 23, 2016 at 7:46am PST

Let's see, what else. The trainer rides felt really easy this week, which is probably how they should have felt, given I went from 7 hours of rides down to 4! All set to do some crazy bullshit this upcoming week.

The sun!! You guys the sun was out!! It's actually pretty startling how big a difference that can make on winter runs. A little sunlight makes the wind and cold easier to take.

That's about it! Other than that hiccup with my ankle, it was a good week. I used my sudden extra time to take the kids sledding and help the little one do the requirements of her chef badge for Brownies, and got the house cleaned up. So it was pretty nice.

The plan for this week:

Monday: rest; foam roll to keep that sciatica calmed down

Tuesday: swim; TR - Haku (1 hour)

Wednesday: Tempo run

Thursday: swim; TR - Phoenix (1:30)

Friday: EZ run; TR - Tray Mountain (1:30)

Saturday: TR - Big Mountain (3 hours) + brick run; swim?

Sunday: Long run; swim?

I am kind of excited for the trainer rides this week because I've started watching The 100 on Netflix. It's terrible (the premise makes zero sense) but at the same time it's awesome. It's sort of a futuristic Lord of the Flies where instead of being shipwrecked, the characters are landed on a future Earth after a nuclear war has wiped out civilization, and everyone is really, really good looking and well groomed and they all make endlessly stupid decisions. It's perfect for the trainer because it's silly and fluffy but also totally entertaining. Can't wait to watch more!