Muskoka 70.3 build: week 5

Oh man, what a week that was. Things are generally all around going awesome. Other than the cold I seem to have picked up from my youngest (kids: SO MANY GERMS), but I've had pretty good luck this year with avoiding illness so far, so I can't complain too much.

Monday: 1800m swim
Tuesday: TR Matthes +1 (75 min VO2s)
Wednesday: 8k run; 1850m swim
Thursday: TR Petit (1 hour aerobic); 2200m swim
Friday: TR Phoenix (90 minute tempo)
Saturday: 100k ride outside; 6k run
Sunday: 2000m swim; 13.5k run

Swimming paraphernalia. 

Kind of misplaced my rest day this week. Oops! But it was way too exciting to have my lunch hour pool reopen; I couldn't resist a trip over there on Monday. And swimming just felt fantastic this week. I'm so looking forward to getting into open water soon and seeing how all this pool swimming translates. That said, I'm fully expecting the first open water swim to be...interesting. The pool on Monday was very cold, and I got the panicky tightness in my chest I remember so well from my first 6 weeks or so of open water last spring. With cold water plus the constriction of the wetsuit, I won't be surprised at all if I have to work through panic on the first few open water swims of the year.

Doesn't look like much, but a 25m pool is a 25m pool. Especially when it has lunch hour lap swim. And I'm usually the only one in the fast lane.

I was really happy with all my swims this week. I've been working hard at it and it seems to be paying off! I even woke up with sore lats after a swim this week, just like a real swimmer. Progress!

On the trainer this week, I used my webcam to take a few pictures of what I look like at the end of a VO2 max interval.

Doesn't that look fun? HAHAHAHA. Probably not really selling the whole Trainerroad thing, am I? It's painful but it works, I swear!

Saturday I headed outside for my first metric century of the year! Despite it being cold and windy, I had so, so much fun. I had company with Danielle from the club again for the first 20k, which was lovely. Then I rode the rest solo, other than the few km where I was leapfrogging back and forth with a small group of roadies. Got in a little draft zone and passing practice there.

And I finally got a picture of the road sign that cracked me up during the century ride in the fall:

COME ON. I love whoever designed this so much.

The sign is accurate, too. This hill is ridiculous. It's just outside a village named 'Kirkwall' and I swear they must have named the town after the wall-like nature of this hill. Good times. Pretty sure I swore out loud when I saw it in front of me.

What was perhaps even more exciting than getting out for such a long ride so early in the season, was how strong my legs felt throughout. I was tired at the end, but my legs felt pretty much fine. I was even able to follow up with a strong feeling run that afternoon. All the training is paying off!

And then I hit a milestone for this training cycle: I fell asleep on the couch for 45 minutes late Saturday afternoon and had a very restorative nap. That's how you know you are really getting into the tough training; I had a few random naps at the peak of Barrelman training last year.

Re running, I saw my physio on Tuesday and he did assorted physio voodoo to get my SI joint to cooperate (ART, mobilization, etc), and it seems to have fixed me right up. My hamstring feels back to normal and my sciatica has cleared up. I did end up having to move my Friday run to Saturday because of life stuff, which was fine. The extra day off running was probably helpful.

Sitting in the spring flowers, taking a selfie. Totally normal thing to do.

Sunday's run felt great for the first half, but then the aforementioned cold chose that time to move into my sinuses. Running with painful sinuses is not something I would recommend. So that was a bit of a downer. But hey, at least the cold has decided to peak on me just in time for rest day. Ha. Always looking on the bright side. I expect to be over the worst of it in time to get back to training on Tuesday, but, as always, will modify the intensity if necessary.

The super glamorous 'trail behind the Walmart'. Jealous?

What's up this week:

Monday: well-earned rest day
Tuesday: swim; TR VO2s* + brick run
Wednesday: easy run; swim
Thursday: TR over unders; swim
Friday: easy run; TR aerobic
Saturday: long outside ride + brick run; swim (?)
Sunday: long run; swim (?)

*both this week and next week have utterly terrifying VO2 workouts on the schedule. 4 minutes at 120%? I don't even want to talk about the over/unders. Sometimes I really do think Trainerroad is trying to kill me.

I'm aiming for four swims a week now, which is easier since I've come around on the whole evening swim thing. It's still tough to talk myself out the door at 8:15 pm, but it's worth it. That said, if it ends up being three swims I have no problem with that, either. And now that my hamstring feels 100% I'm going to add back in the brick runs. Very short on Tuesday (probably 3k or so) and see how that feels.

Two weeks of hard training before recovery. Let's do this!