Ah the recovery week. Assuming you did the work leading up to it, a welcome decrease in volume and intensity that should hopefully leave you charged up and ready to get back into things.
Unfortunately this week ended up with a little more recovery than I had planned...
Swim: 8200m
Bike: 125 km(4:15)
Run: 18 km (??! - read on)
total hours: 8:48
Monday: Rest
Somehow on Monday I stumbled across this rather bizarre youtube video, but it was talking about the thing I'm currently trying to work on with my swim (getting my feet to stop dragging along behind me like a damn anchor), so I watched it all the way through. In particular, I was interested in the exercise demonstrated at the 5:30 mark of the video. Since it looked pretty simple, I decided to try it Tuesday morning at swim (if you don't fee like watching, basically you float in the fetal position with your back at the surface of the water to find your buoyancy/balance point, then gradually extend your arms and legs, looking specifically for the core/back muscles you need to contract to get your feet to break the surface of the water).
Tuesday: 2600m swim; TR Bird -1
The exercise from the video - which I repeated a few times through the swim - was illuminating. I have not been engaging my core muscles right at all while swimming! I could really feel the difference when I managed to get it right. No magical tremendous speed gains (damn) but I think if I keep working on this I may make some progress. A few times I could even feel that 'swimming downhill' thing coaches are always going on about.
Plus the sunrise is coming back when I leave swim in the morning, so that's a net positive.
No run (recovery!) but there were VO2s on the trainer in the evening, because Tuesdays are VO2 day, forever and ever, into eternity and beyond.
Wednesday: 9k lunch run; weights
Lovely little lunch run keeping things easy down to the bay to admire the ice sculptures the waves in the bay were creating along the shoreline, and also avoiding monsters.
Well that's a confusing sign
Weights in the evening, as usual.
Thursday: 2600m swim; TR Goddard
Goggle selfies are not flattering
Another swim, more working on keeping those feet up. Seemed to go pretty well.
Unfortunately, during the day on Thursday I started to feel an ache in my left hip. It's not how my sciatic pain usually manifests itself, but Dr. Google seems pretty confident it's sciatic nerve related. Yay? At least sciatic stuff I know how to manage. I'm a little concerned it may have been triggered by the change in my swim form, but no way to really know for sure at this point (plus I'm not even sure I was really successful at it on Thursday!).
TR in the evening, not too exciting. Some spin ups and form work that I largely ignored and a few sweet spot intervals. Felt pretty good!
Friday: 9k run; TR Slide Mountain
Got up early to run; hip felt OK during the run but not great during the day after while sitting at work. Sciatic stuff is always a little tricky to know if continuing activity will help (usually, up to a point) or hurt. I decided at that point I would likely cancel my planned runs for Saturday and Sunday, since it just had that feeling of something more in the muscle that might be aggravated by running, but I went forward with my planned biking and swimming, and did some extensive foam rolling at various points as well.
TR in the evening; an easy hour with some sweet spot intervals.
Saturday: TR Cumberland; weights
1:15 of tempo, feeling pretty easy for a tempo ride. Yay recovery!
But I did skip running; just had a feeling it was the better choice.
Sunday: 3000m swim
Fun 3000m workout (as fun as descending sets can be) then I headed over to the lift bridge to see my friends running Around the Bay.
Brought a whole thermos of tea because I am PREPARED
It's Reid Coolsaet! I didn't really get decent pictures of anyone else, though. Race photography is a lot harder than you'd think (plus I was in a terrible spot for it with the angle of the sun - but I was sheltered from the wind and toasty warm, so I stand by my choice even if it ruined the pics!)
Mixed reactions to my sign, but I think I mostly made people laugh. They were halfway through, so at least I was honest?
Man, if you aren't running the race, you have to be a spectator! super fun watching the elites come by, then the sub-elites taking things VERY VERY seriously, then the regular fast people, and on down the line. It's fun watching how the outfits and attitudes of the runners change as they all go past.
So a little more recovery than I'd planned, but I'm glad I decided not to run over the weekend. Things are about 95% back to normal but I'll need to do a test run tomorrow to see how my hip reacts and whether I need more days off running or not. Plus I was sick yesterday (hence the late blog post) and I'm giving myself time to recover from whatever 24 hour bug that was.
Not super ideal heading into the last block of the base training program, but nothing to do but see how things go and adjust as necessary!
Trainerroad Ironman plans operate on a 4 week cycle - 3 weeks of buildup, then a recovery week, with that third week of build being a peak week that can get a little bit intense.
This week was the second peak in the base building plan. That meant some long hours, but I'm really happy with how it went, overall. It's the most training hours I've put in since the peak weeks right before half ironmans, which is also a bit terrifying since this is just the base building phase, but let's take this thing one week at a time.
(and of course now I get a glorious recovery week, wherein I will probably be bored out of my skull and with no idea what to do with all the free time!).
Swim: 7100m
Bike: 219km (7:37)
Run: 56km
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 9k lunch run; TR Dade -1
Do you know how to work this thing? Because I pretty much don't.
OK that came out pretty badass. Completely by accident, but we'll take it.
Skipped swimming because my husband was out of town and I didn't want to leave the kids at home with no parent easily contactable. Christina suggested a lunch run, so we headed out into a beautiful day and got some pics with the mysterious Chedoke totem pole that looks like it has been there forever but somehow we only noticed in the fall.
The VO2s in the evening were a complete circus. The Computrainer kept dropping connection, and then my tire blew out on the second last one! So that was a dramatic end to things. Really, I take a small amount of pride in having destroyed a trainer tire. It took a couple of years to do, but I did it!
Wednesday: 12k lunch run; weights
wait, those powerlines aren't giving me cancer, are they? sure hope not with all the time I spend running under them...
Easy 12 on a work at home day. Not much exciting to report there. Not having fully finished out the VO2s the night before probably made this a little easier!
Thursday: 2100m swim; TR Gibraltar
With my parents in town to spend time with the kids, I got in a morning swim. It was fine. Didn't drown.
The evening ride felt great with a new trainer tire on the bike - clearly the old one had been on its last legs for a while, because the difference in how smooth this felt was huge, and no more connection dropouts. Although given that it was a 1:45 tempo ride, I was kind of hoping for a few drops just to get a break...
Friday: 3000m swim; 8k lunch run; TR Spruce Knob
Big day, since I was only working half of it so had some time to play with. Early swim, easy run, 90 minutes on the bike, BOOM. done. All about building up some fatigue to make Saturday extra fun...
There's only so many ways to take this picture. I need new angles or something.
3:30 on the trainer. That's just dumb. I went into this plan fully intending to sub out the 3:30 and longer rides with 3 hour ones instead.
And yet somehow I find myself thinking, the next long one is 3:45, that's not really that much longer...
Plus, more opportunities to watch my favourite trainer movies. Nothing wrong with admiring Captain America for a few hours. I swear they built Civil War entirely around an excuse to have this scene...
I had to force myself off the couch for the recovery run, but once again Coach Chad is wise, because I felt much less tired after an easy half hour or so run. Not sure how that works, but I'll take it!
Sunday: 21k run; 2000m swim
Up with the sun. Kinda my thing.
Feeling some fatigue, but overall a solid run easy paced long run. The swim felt pretty draggy but it would have been more surprising if it hadn't!
Not bad at all.
Still working on those GoPro selfies.
So that was a pretty big week (over 15 hours! what on earth am I even doing here?!), and it went really really well. I'm tired, and I'm glad today is a rest day, but overall I feel really good. Looking forward to a lower intensity week this week to absorb some of those gains, and then diving back in to the silly stuff for the last 4 weeks of the base building block!
Less than 23 weeks to race day now, which somehow doesn't seem like that big a number, even though there's snow on the ground this morning and it's feeling very wintry outside.
But nothing to cure a little training panic like having a great week!
Swim: 7600m
Bike: 161km (5:20)
Run: 48km
Monday: rest
I was mostly worried, after the Chilly, that by running hard I'd trigger a sciatica flare. But, other than being pretty tired and a little sore, no real after effects from the race. Whew!
Tuesday: Swim 2500; TR Mills
Motivation was low but I managed a decent swim. I did not, however, run at lunch because there was just enough DOMS from the race to make me think I'd better save my energy for the VO2 max workout on the bike in the evening.
Mills was an experience. The first few rounds were really, really hard and I was afraid I was going to have to bail out on the whole thing (my quads were very very unhappy), but after about the 3rd set my muscles shut up (I think the high cadence aspect maybe helped flush things out? even if science says that's not how that really works...) and I powered through the whole set successfully.
A wee bit gross at the end of that one, especially since I couldn't find a clean hairband. Didn't realize how much I need those until I didn't have one. So sweaty!
VO2 is hard stuff.
Wednesday: 11.5k run; weights
Runner in the dark or serial killer? Great I just freaked myself out.
Early morning 11k to work on the habit of the longer midweek run. Getting there.
Weights in the evening. Have to deload and get my squat depth back (gah) but I'm feeling like the weightlifting is helping me. I didn't have nearly as much muscle fatigue late in the race at the Chilly that I would normally have expected, which may be from the weight training.
Big day. Swimming felt like the usual, although I've been working on kicking without a board and trying to roll to breathe feels more like drowning, but I'm getting there.
Then a nice lunch run with Christina. A little faster than I should have given I was still in race recovery mode, but it may have helped to stretch out the legs a bit. Or something like that.
Finally, an 80 minute tempo workout on the trainer. Usual let's build more endurance nonsense. Getting caught up on Dr. Who, so I have that going for me.
Friday: TR Tray Mountain
Could maybe have snuck in a 5th run here, but didn't bother. Lazy day with just a 90 minute sweet spot workout. (laziness is relative when it comes to Ironman training...)
Saturday: 2650m swim; TR Phoenix + 6k brick run
Family stuff happening so I snuck out for a swim and did the brick workout a little later in the morning. Phoenix is always a bit intimidating since it's a long slog at a fairly continuous power with no rest breaks, and motivation to then go run after can be low, but I finished it all off happy, which is really all I ask.
Sunday: 21k long run; weights
Any time I can time my long run to match the sunrise when the forecast is for clear skies, I end up in a really happy joyful place. Yeah, the runs end up with a bit of stop time from all the picture taking, but this stuff is just really good for me mentally:
There's just something about being outside while the world is waking up that makes me happy. And it makes the long run seem to take less time somehow.
Tough week on the bike ahead (3:30 long ride! Yikes!) before a recovery week next week. Fingers crossed I can fit everything in and stay sane...
I initially signed up for this year's Chilly because, frankly, I missed seeing my running friends and was having some serious Fear Of Missing Out. And not doing ATB this year was making me a little sad, so I figured this was a more sensible consolation race. Shorter distance, nice race shirt, could make for a solid catered training run with a medal at the end. No sweat.
So I didn't taper for it, or really change my planned schedule much other than skipping one swim (more due to laziness than anything else), shortening my Friday run, and skipping my Saturday run. I did my prescribed TrainerRoad workouts full gas, no changes, meaning I racked up quite a bit of training stress on Thursday/Friday/Saturday before the race. But hey, the Chilly would just be a training run, no biggie.
7 hours of cycling is not how I would normally prep the week before a race.
Saturday night I realized my lazy attitude towards the race meant I hadn't checked if I had any gels, and it turned out I didn't. On long runs I usually eat whatever random gummy candies we have around for the kid's school lunches, but those are tricky to eat while racing. Fortunately, Ivanka came to my rescue and said she'd bring me a gel. Whew. Note to self: buy a few gels to have on hand just in case!
Since the Chilly has a late start, Sunday morning was pretty leisurely. Ate a breakfast sandwich, drank some tea, and headed downtown to get a good parking spot and hang out with Zindine and chat Ironman training for a bit until the girls arrived. People asked me a few times what my goal was and to be honest, I hadn't really given it a lot of thought. I didn't want to run super hard and risk disrupting the next week's training with recovery, and I'd handicapped myself nicely with that whole three hours long bike ride the day before, but the race atmosphere worked its magic and I, almost unconsciously, decided I'd just run what felt good and see how it played out.
And I had absolutely no clue how it was going to feel. I've stuck almost completely to easy running for about 9 months now, aiming to loosely keep my heart rate down to a reasonable number. I don't subscribe to any particular number or approach (I'm not following Maffetone, for example) - more I use my heart rate as one signal to judge if I'm running easy or not. Some days the old ticker just insists on a higher heart rate for whatever reason (a poor night's sleep, hot weather, hormoes, etc), so I don't worry too much about the exact details, as long as the run feels truly easy. Whereas before I often pushed harder than I should have to make the final pace number on Strava look prettier, now I try not to let the overall run pace be a factor in how hard I run.
But this approach means I went into this race with no speedwork, no tempo runs, and no idea how it might feel to run 5:30s or 5:20s or 5:10s, or how long I could hold any of those paces (my training runs typically fall around 6:00/km). But I was feeling completely zen about the whole thing and ready to just let things unfold.
Waiting for the start
Got separated from everyone before the start, which was fine. I wanted to run my own race. The start corral was tremendously annoying, with people pushing to try and move closer to the front, but whatever. Zenlike calm. It's a half. No goal. Just enjoy yourself.
Pre-race selfie, right before some girl stepped on my foot
Gun goes off, shuffle shuffle, finally across the start, immediately start passing the pushy chicks who'd forced their way in front of me in the corral.
5k: 26:35
5:20-5:18-5:18-5:18-5:22
Nicole pretty quickly came up behind me and commented on the pace. I glanced at my watch. 5:10/km? "Well, I think that was downhill?" I said optimistically and slowed up a bit. Nicole had an assigned workout and pace to do, so she said she was going to drop back and I wondered if I should go with her, but I was feeling good and I could see the 2:05 and the 2:00 pacers not far ahead of me, so I figured I'd at least get ahead of the two hour pacer and kept going.
I didn't look at the pace on my watch too much, mostly I just glanced at the heart rate to see if I could keep it around 170 bpm for as long as possible. I was feeling comfortable and figured I wasn't running all that fast because it took 3 km to finally catch up to the 2 hour pacer - and as I was going past him I heard him say, oh shit, I'm 30 seconds ahead.
Huh. I don't feel like I'm running that fast, but considering I was probably at least 30 seconds behind him in the corral, if not more, I may be running too fast. But it feels so comfortable, I guess I'll just go with it?
So that's what I did. I kept half an eye on my heart rate but didn't pay much attention to the paces, and tried to shelter behind taller runners in the windy bits.
After passing back through downtown, I could see the ears of the 1:55 pace bunnies in the distance. Gradually, they started to get closer. Alright, let's see if I can catch up to them, run with them. 1:55 would be a solid race. I should probably slow down a bit. I mean, when's the last time I was running 5:18, 5:19/km? There's no way I can hold this pace!
At around 9k I caught them and started running with them. OK, this works, I'd be pretty thrilled to finish with a 1:55.
That lasted about 30 seconds. And I started to pull away from them. What are you doing?! Why does this feel so easy?!
I started watching for my friends coming back at the turnaround, and I don't think any of them were expecting to see me so soon because I had to shout at them to get them to notice me! Sam looked especially startled when I yelled at her!
Hit the turnaround at 13k, still feeling really, really good. And noticing my pace was, if anything, getting a bit faster?! OK. There's Marlene and Andy up ahead, let's chase them down and run in with them.
So I focused on Marlene's back for a while, eventually caught them, introduced myself to Andy who seemed somewhat puzzled by the fact all these friends of Marlene kept yelling at him, and then gradually started to leave them behind (they were pretty clearly doing some kind of workout and not running hard - Marlene is a much faster runner than I am).
The km were ticking off, still feeling good, and when I'd sneak looks at my pace I was seeing things like 5:12/km. I'd pick someone ahead of me, run until I caught them, then move on to the next target.
I have NEVER been that person late in a race. Usually I'm just trying to convince myself to keep going and feeling bitter at the people catching up and passing me! But not today. I just kept on reeling them in and moving on to the next one. Especially the guy who was not only playing his music through his iphone speaker (ugggggggh why people, why), but was playing Ed Fucking Sheeran. Really? REALLY? I had that stupid Gallway Girl song stuck in my head for like 8 hours after. Thanks ever so much, guy in bright yellow shirt.
At 18k, I happened to glance at my watch as it clicked over the km and saw my total time (I didn't have the total time displayed on the main screen). 1:34? But...
(here I tried to do math, which is always fun late in a race)
1+1 is 2? Right? Guys?
3k left. 5:10 per km, which is apparently a speed I am still capable of running, because that's what I'm running right now.
Holy shit that puts me finishing at around 1:51??!
What. The. Fuck.
Last km: 5:06
I kept running the numbers around in my head and they kept coming up the same, so I pushed hard, feeling weirdly amazing, finally to the right turn to the finish on Brant, up into a wind like a brick wall (my god that last 100m was hard!), and then across the finish with this showing on my watch.
WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED. I was so befuddled at the finish it took me 5 seconds to figure out how to stop my watch!
No race specific training. No speedwork. No tempos. And I was less than 30 seconds off my half marathon PB? I ran a beautifully paced race with a negative split of something like 80 seconds? Am I dreaming? Did that just happen?
If I had any doubts about stepping back and taking my easy runs truly easy to build a more solid aerobic base for my running, those are sure gone now. Something is working for me here. But of course I don't just run - I suspect all those Trainerroad hours have made a rather large contribution as well. I'm not doing running intervals or running tempo, but I've sure put in a lot of hours on the bike doing VO2 max intervals and the bike equivalent of tempo. I expect that fitness has crossed over.
But really, could I be any more pleased with myself right now? It was a crazy wonderful day that has given me a huge boost of confidence in my approach to training right now. This shit is working. I am excited to see what happens next!
(and now, of course, I'm a hair away from signing up for next year's Chilly half so I can really go for that elusive sub 1:50! Definitely a goal I think I'll be revisiting in 2019!)
Early morning swimming, still hard to get out of bed for, but so worth it when I do. I can't remember why I took a picture of the workout. I'm sure I had a reason, but Tuesday might as well have been 6 years ago for all the details I can now remember!
I overdressed considerably for this run, but got in the miles I wanted. I decided not to alter my training this week before the Chilly half marathon on Sunday, since the plan was to treat it as just a long training run. Well, sort of the plan. To be honest I didn't give it much thought overall.
And then of course everyone's favourite, VO2s in the evening. Tuesdays are such a fun day.
Wednesday: 10k run; weights
SUNRISE!!
Aiming to start bringing up the mileage on the Wednesday run, so I got up early to get in 10k. And was rewarded with an early peak at the sunrise! I know, the time change is coming up, so this won't last, but still. SUNRISE!
Weights in the evening since I figured that would probably be my only chance for the week. Although I didn't alter my training plan for the race on Sunday, I did decide to drop my usual Saturday weight training just because why make running a half even more difficult.
Thursday: TR Phoenix
I got out of bed to go swim and then just was like, no, I don't wanna. And went back to bed. It happens.
Phoenix was its usual mentally grinding self. 90 minutes of tempo work isn't terrifically physically demanding (it's a step up from an easy effort), but it's a mental effort to hold it that long with no breaks.
Friday: 6k lunch run; TR - Glassy
After the disappointment of not getting a snow day, at least the lunch run was kind of pretty! My Chilly race prep consisted of doing 6k instead of 8k. Not exactly much of a taper...
Saturday: TR - Allegheny
Allegheny is 3 hours and 15 minutes of aerobic riding. That was quite a few episodes of Dr. Who and a whole lot of levels of Wordscapes.
I got a little loopy towards the end...
But really, this ride was pretty good. You have to get in the right headspace for these rides and just not worry about the time. Set up interesting stuff to watch and just grind it out.
Then I relaxed for the afternoon to completely my Chilly half 'taper'. I was going to go swim but various forces (children) conspired against that. And I didn't really want to anyway.
I did, however, eat this Buffalo 'chicken' cauliflower at dinner and it was so damn good.
Sunday: Chilly half marathon; 1800m swim
So, the Chilly. This one deserves a race report, so I'll write that up in the next few days.
But as a preview, a few facts:
My half PB is 1:50:34, set at the Chilly two years ago (I've always had good luck at that race)
I haven't done any specific pace training since getting sick last year, instead doing almost all my runs easy, other than running hard at tris in the summer and occasionally running a bit harder when running with friends. Oh and I did some 1k intervals once back in the fall. Basically, virtually no speedwork of any kind recently. Pretty much averaging 6 minutes/km for months now.
My run volume this year is pretty similar to two years ago (a little lower, but not much), but two years ago I was doing loads of pace/tempo/speedwork
I went into the race with no plan other than to run comfortably hard and figuring I'd probably be under 2 hours, and have an outside shot at 1:55.
I had only the vaguest sense of what sort of paces would even be needed for sub 2 and 1:55.
And of course that little 3:15 ride on the bike the day before. I've built up to that now over the last few months so my legs weren't tired after, but still. That's a long effort so I had to figure I'd be carrying some fatigue.
The result:
Oh this is a story. If I'm remembering right that would be my second fastest half marathon ever. Race report to come!
(Now we see this week if I have regrets about that race when I get to this week's VO2 workout...)
24 weeks until Ironman and I am feeling awfully pleased with things so far!
