Recovery week

Last week was all about recovering from Around the Bay. I didn't plan any workouts because I just wasn't sure how I was going to be feeling after the race effort, but I recovered well, with one small (I hope) issue that I'll talk about below.

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 1600m swim; TR Mont Albert -1 (1 hour; endurance)
Wednesday: 5.5k easy run; 2200m swim
Thursday: TR Guyat (1 hour; intervals of increasing difficulty to threshold)
Friday: 10k easy run; TR Black (1 hour easy)
Saturday: TR Icefall (2 hours; over/unders); 2000m swim
Sunday: 15k run; 1800m swim

Four swims! Look at that. Amazing how when your long run is only 15k you have so much more free time. Swims were good this week - did a lot of it with the pull buoy to give my legs a break, plus to try and work on my position in the water. I'm not sure I made any progress there, but hey, I swam a bunch and felt good doing it, so that's a win.

Random photo of the bay. Doesn't look like spring. Sad panda face.

The bike felt surprisingly decent all week. Granted I didn't try and go over threshold (even the over/unders were only up to threshold, not over), but I was expecting more fatigue. I'm not complaining about it, though!

Doesn't really look like spring.

The run is...OK. Wednesday was ugh, as expected. Friday my hamstrings felt super tight. Sunday the right one felt fine but the left was still tight, and I could feel a big difference between them when I foam rolled Sunday night. So that's the wrinkle in my otherwise great recovery. I ran 15k on Sunday, and overall the hamstring felt ok until towards the end of the run - it's not painful, but it is stiff. Which is not exactly ideal. I have an appointment with a physiotherapist today to see what he* thinks. I don't want to continue running on it if rest would be a better choice, especially given that I'm still in recovery mode this week. And resting now when the goal race is still far away is a better option than pushing through and maybe making it worse.

*my beloved physiotherapist who used to fix my hips up all the time is no longer practicing. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Hopefully I like this guy!

Memorial bench seen on my run

In other news, for our 10th anniversary my husband got me a new toy to play with.

The 10th anniversary gift is supposed to be fitness gadgets, right? Something like that.

So realistically it's not like I need an activity tracker for my health (lulz), but this is the version with the built in heart rate monitor and it's making it a lot easier to track my resting heart rate. It'll take a few weeks to get enough data on that to be useful, but right now it's just kind of fun to obsess over. Plus this way when I forget or can't find my HRM strap I can just use this little guy! (comparing the two the wrist monitor is definitely slower to respond to changes in heartrate, so seems overall a bit less accurate. So I'll still use the chest strap for things like sprint intervals. But for a steady state run, it should do the job).

Only slightly obsessed with this.

Plus, it's significantly more attractive than the 920xt, which let's face it, is butt ugly. I really love the wrist notifications from my phone, so being able to get them on a more attractive device is an upgrade.

(I have not yet gone maximum triathlon dork and worn both the watch and the new HRM in the pool. It is waterproof, and I'm curious how/if it will read in the pool, so maybe I'll test that out this week...)

Enough of that nonsense, what's up next week - week 4 of the build plan! My hamstring doesn't bother me at all swimming or cycling, so full steam ahead on those two. Running, we will see.

Monday: rest
Tuesday: swim, TR (VO2 max)
Wednesday: run if physio says OK, swim
Thursday: TR (over unders); swim
Friday: run?; TR (60 min easy)
Saturday: Ride with 60 minutes tempo hopefully outside OMG OMG OMG; swim
Sunday: run?

This week I'm going to get some swim coaching from a very generous member of my tri club who has volunteered to do some stroke improvement sessions! Really excited to hear all the things I'm doing wrong. Heh. And fingers crossed the hamstring is a minor issue that clears up quickly.