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...