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...