Ironman training week 12 - recovery week!

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!