Ironman training week 21

I'd say something boring like 'wow this was a big week' but at this point they are all big weeks, so what would be the point? Usual sort of week. Did a lot of stuff. Feeling good. Very hungry.

(the amount of food I am eating these days...oh man. Post Ironman is going to be quite an adjustment.)

Swim: 6220m
Bike: 245 km (8:32)
Run: 56k

Monday: rest

There are worse places to be on a Monday morning!

Monday was a holiday, which normally I would use to my advantage to get a bunch of training done, but I really wanted the rest day and to spend some time with the kids. Unfortunately the eldest wasn't feeling well, but the little one and I had a good time wandering around the Royal Botanical Gardens for a few hours.

Tuesday: 2500m swim; TR Jacks +1

The Tuesday usual. A trip to the pool in the morning, and threshold intervals on the bike in the evening. Threshold is for sure less painful than VO2, but it's got it's own special brand of uncomfortable going on. It's not easy. But now that I'm getting out on the road and seeing the results of this training, it's a lot easier to keep motivated to get these workouts done. You can pack a lot of training benefit into a 60-90 minute ride if you are doing the right workouts, which is what keeps me coming back to Trainerroad over and over again.

Wednesday: 14k run; 2000m open water swim

Running with the sunrise

Solid early morning 14 to bring back the mid week long run, which for me are a good way to add a little extra run distance into the week without having to add another run or make the long run extra stupid long. Plus I saw Amy heading out on her bike ride (and we took the most terrible pictures of each other I'm not going to share, haha). And still really loving the hydration pack, especially the pockets that make it easier to carry the GoPro to grab shots like the above (and really, the picture of the run is the most important thing).

Hooray I can still cram myself into this wetsuit!

Then it was Amy time again in the evening (yay!) to head out to Gulliver's for an open water swim. Gulliver's is under new management and things are a bit confusing at the moment (and more expensive), but I still have a real fondness for that lake, since it's where I learned to open water swim. And early in the season like this the water is really clear and cool and pleasant.

Before we jumped in (with Christina)

The swim was fine. It felt like it took a really long time to figure how the hell to swim open water again (kind of felt like I was less swimming and more randomly flailing around and not going anywhere very fast for about 1500m), but there was no panic or anything so I expect the next swim will feel better.

Sadly, I think I may be about done with weightlifting until after the race. It's just getting too hard to fit it in. Maybe a handful more sessions if I don't go to open water practice on Wednesdays, but I'll take it week by week.

Thursday: TR Gibraltar + 8k brick

1:45 of tempo on the bike, then out the door for an 8k run. That is a lot of work for a Thursday night, really, but I'm telling myself there's not that many more of these and I can handle them for a few months. It overall felt really good (I did have to turn on the AC at home, though, because the house was crazy humid and I could not fathom the bike ride on the trainer in those conditions).

i gotta buy much larger freezies for my post hot weather brick workout treat

Friday: 10k run; TR Pettit

rainbow socks and the red tanktop I forgot I owned. Dress fun and the run is more fun.

Easy run (surprisingly easy feeling after the Thursday night brick, really), easy hour on the bike. Fridays are all about easy and being prepared for the weekend.

Saturday: 135km ride

Yep. First of the big rides. Laurence and I can't seem to get our schedules to match up, and Fab was busy with a different workout planned, so my two go-to ride partners weren't available (and 135 solo sounded not super fun). But Zindine offered (threatened?) to come help me out with this one and brought Mellen and his friend Amanda, both of whom are stronger cyclists than I am. So I was a little nervous about keeping up with the group going in, but at the same time if you are going to ride that far, it's a hell of a lot easier if you have wheels to hang on to.

Mid ride pit stop with the coach/engine who pulled us pretty much the whole way

The black spots on my legs? All bugs. I was covered in them; I guess they stick to your sunscreen. Cycling is super sexy, y'all.

And it ended up being a really great ride! I mostly stayed on the group, felt pretty good (although I'm still feeling like I'm not climbing hills as well as I was two years ago), and didn't really start to feel tired or cranky until about the last 5k when my back/neck were getting sore and were pretty over this nonsense and wanted to get off the stupid bike already. But any time I can ride 135km and have an average speed of 30 km/hr, I'm going to be pretty happy about it! So that's the first big one checked off and it was a great confidence boost. Sometimes it's hard to feel if you are really making progress when you are just spinning away on the trainer, and you need to get outside to see yeah, getting stronger and developing that endurance.

Post ride. Note who didn't do a brick run after, because we are sensible people (plus we wanted to gossip and given how fast these three can run, I wouldn't have been able to do any talking if I'd tried to run!)

Sunday: 24k long run; 1700m swim

Started early with 6k solo (plus trying to help round up a lost dog that had gotten away from her owner), then met up with Nicole for another 18k. (after we had a couple of false starts trying to get our hydration packs adjusted properly!)

SO HAPPY TO NOT BE ALONE!!!

The run was fine. Great company makes a big difference. My legs weren't at all tired from the bike ride the day before, but it was getting humid and warm and I was mentally not super excited about this run. My heart rate was also a little high through the whole thing, but overall I'm not going to complain about it. The time was put in and I felt at the end like I could have run longer if I'd wanted to (which I most definitely did NOT).

Love having Nicole in my corner; keeping me company and believing in me :)

Then it was into the lake for a quick cooldown (brrrrrrr) and home to shower off all the damn bugs. Theme of the weekend was clearly getting covered in bugs.

Short swim at the pool at lunch because I had some stuff I wanted to do with the kids and not a lot of time. And my shoulder was bothering me a bit after the open water swim on Wednesday, so I figured better to do a short swim and see how things went than a long swim and injure something. It felt fine so I dunno, some kind of one off randomness.

So a great week! The next one shortens things up on the weekend ride and run, which is super nice because I have a 5k race on Saturday evening. Can't wait to see how that goes after doing a big brick workout in the morning...

Ironman training week 20

Ah the recovery week. I always look forward to the recovery and then for some reason it never really feels all that restful. Some of the workouts this week, ugh. They felt harder than the objectively more difficult ones from the week before! But that tends to happen a lot on recovery weeks, so it wasn't really a big surprise, and overall I do feel ready to tackle the next round of build workouts (which is good, because they sure aren't going to get any easier from here on out...)

Swim: 8400m
Bike: 6:20 (182 km)
Run: 38 km (big cutback here, which I felt like I really needed)

Monday: Rest!

Tuesday: 2300m swim; TR Spencer

Swim was OK. It was early in the morning. It got done.

Then the VO2 workout in the evening, despite being a lot fewer intervals than I'm used to, was still REALLY DAMN HARD because the % of FTP was higher than it had been in some previous weeks. I ended up dropping it a little bit (still in the VO2 range) to complete the intervals successfully, which was the right decision. And now that's it for VO2s for a little bit! To be replaced by something terrible in a different way no doubt.

Wednesday: 10k run; weights

Heavy legs on this run but look at these flowers! So pretty!

Weights in the evening where I kept things light to try and avoid too much DOMS on Thursday. Spoiler: FAIL on that. Ha.

Thursday: 8k run; TR Mount Wood

Good morning!

Another morning run that felt pretty blah, but it got done.

And then the DOMS settled in during the afternoon, which made the evening ride a little more challenging, but it helped loosen things up, so I had that going for me. Over under intervals, but not as difficult as previous weeks, so all good.

Friday: 3600m swim; TR Pettit

There's not a lot of options for taking pool selfies

Finally, a good feeling workout! I took Friday off work and went to the pool later in the morning, which can make such a huge difference. Stuff is so much easier when you didn't haul yourself out of bed 20 minutes early and you are going into things un-caffeinated. I did get the stink eye for being splashy from the old ladies walking in the lanes to warm up for water aerobics, but, uh, it's a pool, guys. There's going to be some water. Anyway, I managed to misread the workout and swam 400m more than was in the book (I figured it out when I looked at the clock and was like, ugh, why is this taking so long), but it felt so good that I wasn't even mad about the extra swimming. Plus, a new longest swim ever!

Usual easy 60 minutes spin on Friday night. Nothing exciting.

Saturday: 2500m swim; 15k run

Woke up to pouring rain, and wasn't feeling enthusiastic about running in it, so I went to the pool and got in a solid 2500m first. Then the rain stopped so it was time to test out the new hydration pack on a long-ish run before I start using it on really long ones. It's a lot more comfortable than I was expecting, really, although given how popular they are I'm not sure why I was surprised. I think it's going to be really useful this summer, especially adding in all those pockets! That's always the drawback from the switch from the winter wardrobe to the summer - the pockets all disappear.

Of course, I didn't quite manage to avoid the rain as it then totally poured on me during the last 3k and I looked like I'd just gotten out of the shower when I got home. Damn weather.

Sunday: 96k bike + 5k brick run

Sunday morning was pleasantly cool and overcast. Met up with Fab who needed to ride 3:15 for his training plan, which was longer than I was technically supposed to ride but I felt like a good 90k on the tri bike was something I really needed to do. We had a brilliant ride, other than both of us ejecting bottles at different points, and I accidentally stepped in some nasty sticky mud on the side of the road and then had trouble clipping in the whole rest of the ride because my cleats were so caked up. But we finished with 3:20 ride time (almost perfect!) and a solid 5k brick run. Cannot complain about that.

When I cleaned my bike yesterday I literally had to take the cleats apart to get the mud out of them. What a mess!

So, not too bad. Now Ironman is sending me emails reminding me the race is 3 months away (THANKS GUYS I FORGOT THAT) and it's time to start the last half of the build plan. And get registered for a warmup triathlon next month. This weekend is going to be a pretty big one, so fingers crossed this goes well...

Ironman training week 19

Saw a few days ago that it's now less than a hundred days to race day, which once again was another rude shock that I'm actually planning to do this. WHAT. Well, that and the fact that I'm now into my first recovery week of the build plan, which means not that many more 4 week cycles to go through. Eep.

Fortunately, this was a really great, confidence building week. Also the most training hours I've ever done. This Ironman thing, maybe not so crazy if you train smart and build things up gradually? I'd like to think I'm being smart about this. This week suggests yes.

Swim: 7900m
Bike: 231 km (8:25)
Run: 62 km

Monday: rest

Because heading into a big week, rest is best.

Tuesday: 2500m swim; 8k run; TR - Bago

ugh it was hard to get up for this one. Main set was all 100s on short rest (15 seconds IIRC) which is always fun. Good enough.

I know they are weeds but I think dandelions are pretty.

Short easy run at lunch. Usual loop I run from home. Not exciting but gets the work done.

Dying a slow death on the trainer. Also, the theme of the day was yellow based on the pictures I took...

Then. The workout I was really, really not looking forward to. The granddaddy of VO2 workouts with 12 three minute intervals inside a 90 minute ride. And the really unpleasant surprise was the target power WENT UP with each set of intervals. Trainerroad is the worst. By which I mean the best because I know this shit works but goddamn, guys, that was a hard workout.

Wednesday: 16k run

Literally the only remotely scenic spot for the sunrise on that particular route. The bridge on the trail behind the Walmart. #classy

Oh yeah just what would for many people be their long run at 5 am on a Wednesday morning. No biggie. After the VO2s the night before I was worried this was going to be the suckiest suck that ever sucked, but once I got warmed up it felt pretty good! Even when I realized I'd miscalculated the route and would have to do some impromptu adjustments to avoid being a km short it didn't bother me.

I skipped lifting weights for a few reasons. I knew Thursday would have a big workout in the evening, and my shoulder/neck was still feeling a little off after being sore the week before after weightlifting. So it seemed prudent to skip it.

Thursday: 2700m swim; TR Gibralter + 7k brick run

Thursday triptych. Fancy words, I know 'em.

A triathlon with a really long transition between the swim and the bike that involved an 8 hour work day and cooking dinner. It's just how I roll. Swim in the morning (selfies while using the kickboard don't really work), then 1:45 tempo ride on the trainer (ugh) and a short run after that I really, really wanted to skip and make Friday Emma deal with, but Zindine messaged me that he was doing his off the bike run and I couldn't let him show me up like that. So I sucked it up and went out and ran and it was a really nice run after all the mental complaining!

Friday: TR Pettit

Friday Emma was very pleased to not have to run and basically end up with a nice active recovery day, with just an hour easy spin on the trainer to do. Should have sent Thursday Emma a thank you card for that one.

Saturday: 108k long ride; 5k recovery run

Saturday the weather was looking really iffy and I was seriously considering just doing the scheduled 4:30 ride on the trainer.

But then when I got up it was looking like very, very light rain for about the first hour and clear up after that, so I figured I'd take out the road bike over to Milgrove and ride a few loops around the less used roads there. Then if it was miserable I could come home fairly easily and finish things up on the trainer.

Still need to replace that bar tape. BAD CYCLIST.

I did get rained on briefly about an hour in, but then it cleared up and other than cold toes, it ended up being a great ride! I could have done without the headwind for the last 25k or so (I was wishing for a personal support crew to show up and swap out my road bike for my tri bike), but it was a really solid 100+ km ride that I finished feeling tired, but good.

Smiling because I haven't turned towards home yet and started fighting the wind...

Within a few hours after the ride and after some food my legs didn't even feel tired anymore so I got in a short recovery run, which are prescribed in the trainerroad plan. I'm finding they really do help with feeling better after a long ride and being prepared for the long run the next day.

Sunday: 25k long run; 2700m swim

Oh man, this run.

I went into it thinking I'd be tired and it might be a struggle after the first (outdoor) (metric) century the day before, but after getting warmed up in the first few km (everything always feels like garbage for the first 10 minutes), the entire run pretty much felt amazing and easy and like I could have gone on forever. My heart rate stayed really low the whole time, the weather was perfection, and other than having to take a bathroom break at 11k, it was one of the best long runs I think I've ever had. And after such a heavy training week! Huge boost in confidence.

(the swim later in the morning was fine, but my legs weren't overly thrilled about the situation. Still, it helps with recovery, so shut up legs and just keep kicking).

So I'm pretty damn happy about that week. I didn't even feel particularly tired on Sunday afternoon! I had a lovely hike with one of my daughters and was happy to climb the hills and scramble up the rocks with her. I was pretty tired yesterday (Monday), which I expected. For whatever reason rest day Mondays are always exhausting.

(Maybe don't ask how much food I ate over the weekend. Because, yikes)

Now, a recovery week! Going to cut back on the run and bike quite a bit and let my body absorb all that training stress before starting the next 3 week build up. And maybe try and deal with the weeds in the front garden so that the yard doesn't quite so much scream 'no one here has time to deal with this'.

Ironman training week 18

Usual sort of week around here - juggling workouts around events and weather weirdness. Didn't quite fit everything in but got close enough.

Swim: 7000m
Bike: 6:05 (164k; 80 outside)
Run: 51km

Monday: TR - Triple Divide

Switched things up a bit this week because my daughter turned 13 on Tuesday (aieeeeeeeeeeeeeee teenager in the house!), so I got my usual Tuesday ride done on Monday instead. VO2max intervals remain terrible, but looking ahead I'm almost done with this particular brand of torture for a bit, so that's kind of exciting. It'll just get replaced by something equally brutal, but at least that will have the novelty of being different (she says optimistically and will probably regret).

Tuesday:  2300m swim; 7k run at lunch

That swim felt awful. Like possibly the worst I've felt swimming since I was sick last year. Not really sure what that was all about - I was just super heavy feeling in the water and had no energy at all. Maybe it was the VO2 intervals the night before, or possibly hormone related. Being female that's always a consideration - generally my hormone cycle doesn't bother me much, but for some reason this week it was really tough on me.

I won't complain about it being too hot to run at lunch yet. I won't complain. I won't.

IT'S TOO HOT AND I HAVE THE CRAZY EYES

OK I'll complain a little. We skipped spring?!

Then pizza with the birthday girl in the evening.

Wednesday: 14.5k run; weights

A little weighted down by the pizza from the night before but a solid early morning medium length run. Getting a little more comfortable with those. And they are so much nicer now that it isn't pitch dark the whole time!

Thursday: TR - Carpathian Peak +2

The hormones thing had me feeling blech again, plus I woke up with my shoulder and neck super sore for who even knows what reason, so I skipped swimming and a lunch run. Just one of those days. The over/unders on TR were kind of fun, in a painful sort of way. With each little segment being only a minute long it was much more mentally engaging than most other workouts and went by fairly quickly. Really solid workout.

Friday: 2200m swim

I had every intention of getting up early to run or swim and it just didn't happen. Then I figured I'd run after work, but the whole 130 km/hr windstorm thing happened so nuts to that. When I was driving home and seeing shingles and such flying through the air, I figured the pool would be safer and went for a swim instead after work. Then I forgot to check the pool schedule and got kicked out by a swim team when I was still about 300m from finishing. D'oh. The club rents out the pool during little used times (I mean, how many people are lap swimming at 5:30 on a Friday night, really) and I forgot that's one of the handful of times the pool is unavailable. At least I almost finished!

The windstorm on Friday blew over part of our fence. So probably the better choice nut to try and run in that!

Saturday: 83 km ride; 6k run

Guess who came off the trainer to play?! TRI BIKE TIME! Oh man. This felt so good. I'd been a little disappointed with how hard the road bike rides the last couple of weeks have felt (shouldn't I have gotten stronger over the winter?!) but ooooooh baby put me on the tri bike and suddenly I can feel the difference. Yeah. The training is working. This felt fast and great and fun and all that I Love Bikes type stuff.

Unfortunately Christina got a flat tire that we couldn't fix so the whole thing took a little longer than planned, but still. Super fun ride!

A little very tough feeling run in the afternoon as recovery, since having skipped running on Friday I had to do something to make sure I got my run mileage over 50 for the week (without doing something silly like running 30k on Sunday). Saw a lot of houses with way worse damage than we got (one house had all the siding ripped off!) and a lot of loose shingles lying on the ground. That was one crazy wind storm!

Sunday: 23k run; 2550m swim

This was one of those perfect spring long run days. Cool temps, a bit of a breeze, sunny and just all around perfect.

Plus, cherry blossoms. Purdy.

It's reassuring to think back to last year and how hard running even 5k felt - and now I'm back to 2:20 long runs feeling comfortable. At least until it gets really hot out. Let's not discuss that right now.

The only real problem was getting stuck at the lift bridge for ten minutes while a ship went through the canal, but even restarting to run the last 5k didn't feel as bad as I expected it to, so can't complain!

And then a pretty solid swim, although I faded so hard in the last 600m or so. Totally lost my form. But after that totally miserable swim on Tuesday I'll take a swim that felt mostly good!

And now, peak week #1 of 2 for the build plan. I have a feeling I'm really going to earn my recovery week next week...