Muskoka 70.3 base build: week 9 + Race week!

Solid week this week, although the lack of swimming is a bit annoying. Just how it goes when you have young kids and the husband type person has to go away for work. And my lunch hour pool is still closed for renovations. Swimming is a right pain in the ass to schedule, is what it amounts to.

Monday: rest
Tuesday: Kickass 12k tempo run; TR Dade (1 hour)
Wednesday: TR - Phoenix (1:30)
Thursday: 8k run
Friday: TR - Avalanche Spire (1:15)
Saturday: 26k long run
Sunday: 2400m swim; 30k bike ride OUTSIDE; 10k run

Yeah, so yesterday's weather was kind of crazy, wasn't it? 10 degrees in February!!? When I left the pool I knew there was absolutely no way I was going to lock myself in the basement on the trainer. I ended up dusting off Foxy (my road bike), massively overdressing, and doing a short 30k ride. OUTSIDE. In February. Bonkers!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The wind was intense. I took this picture, then had what I think was my slowest ride ever up the No 1 side road series of climbs. Every time I crested one of the little hills the headwind would basically push to me a complete stop! Still, though, just being able to get outside on a bike was SO FUN. 

Other random stuff from the week. This is what happens when Coach Zin picks the bike trainer workouts:

That wasn't fun at all!

What has been passing for 'snowy' this winter

More from the sort of snowy lunch run

Not at all snowy long run with my best girls. Open your eyes, Sam!

 Really happy with how that long run went. Every week I worry a bit about the Friday ride/Saturday run combo, but all this training seems to be working because it hasn't been an issue. Both the ride and the run felt really great. It's probably the awesome running company. Although I have to admit, as much as I love our long runs, I'm kind of looking forward to after ATB, when I can drop those distances back down into the 15-20k range. 20k runs I find enjoyable - as soon as we get beyond that I start to question my sanity.

Playing with an HDR photo app on my phone. Still figuring out what I'm doing there, but I think it'll make for some nice pics. 

Here's a fun story of me being a complete idiot!

So Tuesday I decided to do a tempo run, and figured it was a good chance to think about a pace goal for the Chilly half. For reference, my half marathon PB is 1:51:19. I thought that to get a new PB I'd need to run at least 5:09/km, which seemed unlikely, and is why last week I said I wasn't going to go for it. But a 5:15/km pace seemed reasonable to attempt. I was idly wondering what finish time that would translate to (I was figuring a 1:53 ish), and plugged it into the Cool Running pace calculator.

ALL THIS TIME I HAD THE GOAL PACE WRONG.

Yeah. That changes things. So I did the 8k at 5:15 and nailed it and felt freaking great doing it. In fact I was fast on every km except the last one, which was exactly 5:15 and included climbing the Longwood hill, so yeah.

Going for the PB, guys. Let's do this thing, Chilly! Not really sure how this is going to work out (and weather is always a fun potential factor), but no way to know but try.

Plan for the week. Kind of a work in progress as I need to work out the details. Going to be a much lighter week than usual, that's for sure. Taper!!

Monday: rest
Tuesday: maybe swim, FTP test (yay)
Wednesday: run with some intensity; some sort of easy TR workout
Thursday: short run
Friday: rest
Saturday: easy swim
Sunday: RACE! + TR recovery ride