Ironman training week 11

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.

Saturday: TR Appalacian; 5.5k recovery run; weights

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!