Ironman training week 28 - 5 weeks to go

Right to the facts:

Swim: 5640m (?)
Bike: 305 km
Run: 39k (?!)

Explanation on those reduced swim and run numbers down in the Sunday section. Although any week where you miss a couple of workouts and still do almost 17 hours must be an Ironman peak training week...

Monday: 2600m swim

The kids were off visiting their grandparents for the week, so when Fab said he was thinking about doing a Lake Ontario swim, the gears started turning and next thing I knew we had a nice group headed down to see how the big lake was doing.

Got stuck in traffic so not into the wetsuit yet. Get it together, girl.

Taking GoPro selfies off shore is tougher than you'd think. 

Post swim smiles with Christina

The swim was slow, but good. The city seems to have the buoys marking the swim area much further apart than usual, which made sighting a huge pain in the ass and I kept finding myself suddenly heading out into the middle of the lake, until I realized I needed to keep the sun in about the same spot every time I breathed towards shore, which straightened me out. Previous years I'm pretty sure they were 150-200m apart, but this year they seem more like 300-400. Just took a bit of adjustment (plus they are tiny and hard to see!). Glad to have gotten down there on a calm day, as I heard things got pretty choppy for people swimming later in the week.

Tuesday: 16k run; TR Frissell +2

I had to take my husband to the train station Wednesday morning, so my usual long midweek run would have meant getting up even more ridiculously early. So it made sense to do the 16k run on Tuesday instead, even that meant tired legs going into the evening's threshold workout.  You do what you have to do to fit it in.

Bumped into Amy starting her run!

Sunrise. Not bad.

The run was slow and steady and overall fine. Then Trainerroad in the evening for 1:45 which was just uggggggggggggggggh because I'm sorry but Tuesdays are supposed to be an hour, maybe 1:15, tops. Knock it off with that stuff Coach Chad!

Wednesday: 7.5k run; TR Whorl; 3000m swim

Unusual Wednesday, but I was planning ahead to 1) have a rest day on Friday and b) sleep in Thursday because Thursday's workout was probably the scariest one in the whole plan.

Yeah yeah yeah sunrise silhouette, sticking with what works.

The trainer ride was a very easy (boring) spin, then a solid 3k in the pool after. If I'm remembering right, I slept pretty well that night! Much easier to manage that sort of nonsense with the kids away, that's for sure.

Also, I picked up the best burrito of my life after the swim. Worth it.

Thursday: TR Polar Bear (2 hours tempo) + 15k run

Yeah. Biiiiiig workout for a Thursday. I have not really been looking forward to this one, just because 3 1/2 hours on a Thursday is RIDIC. We have jobs, coach Chad! Augh!

But I was kind of looking forward to seeing how it would go, since it would be a pretty good fitness test. And with the kids away and my husband off on a business trip, what the hell else was I going to do with a Thursday evening? (don't answer that, I'm sure there's a million better things I could have done...)

Anyway, the ride was solid, and then the run felt...great. like the whole run felt amazingly easy. I upped significantly the number of calories I would normally take in on a 2 hours trainer ride, and then did a shot (literally) of salted maple syrup in between the ride and the run.

(what, that's not weird, is it?)

Lots of fluids on the run, just very focused on running easy and steady, didn't even stop to take any pictures, and it was really, really good.

So tired I couldn't figure out how to take a non blurry picture and just said to hell with it, there's like 5 people reading this anyway (hi guys!)

And the best part is, I get to do it again soon. HAHAHA. Man I hope the second time around goes as well...

Friday: rest!

Picking up the kids, back to regularly scheduled programming. Which of course meant...

Saturday: 165k ride

Long ride Saturday! So this got planned out early in the week, when as our route planner I realized I was SO BORED of our usual ride routes and wanted to head more north than usual. With 165k to play with, you can cover a lot of ground. Zindine and I rapidly realized that his group could do 100k out of Georgetown, and Fab, Christina and I could ride the ~30k to their meetup point and back to get in the 160 or so we needed. So that's what we did! We started at 6 am, had to make a minor detour around some construction, but still managed to arrive in Georgetown for 7:15.

damn that looks far

Then it was off to climb the hills of Caledon, getting almost to Orangeville, before heading back and making the obligatory bakery stop in Erin.

climb climb climb

Sugar twists so fresh they were still warm!

Mellen taking pro-level selfie while I'm trying not to look like my mouth is full of sugar twist

Really fun ride, and I finished it feeling really great. The hills didn't bother me, I was comfy on the bike, I got in my nutrition and fluids without having to force anything, and was just really, really happy with this as a training ride. Plus I got to see some of my friends doing Lake Placid and wish them good luck!

Sunday: unplanned rest day

OK, what happened here. This was supposed to be a long run and a swim. But back up to Saturday afternoon, where after I got home we spent a few hours moving furniture around to make room for our new bed (king size luxury for the win, yo) and shifting our old bed into the teenager's room. Good times.

Love the new bed, but I perhaps didn't do as much post-race hydration as I should have.

Plus, new bedframe, mattress, bedding, etc; well, sometimes that shit offgasses weird chemicals. Although I slept well Saturday night, when I woke up to get ready for my run, I was really dizzy and lightheaded. I pretty quickly made the decision to just go back to bed and sleep a few more hours (by which point it was getting far too hot and humid to run).

By around 8 I was feeling fine again, but at that point I'd already written off the day of training and figured I was better off taking a rest day. I certainly wasn't going to start a long run at that point. Heat and humidity are bad enough without full sun, and in case I was getting sick I figured rest was better. So I did a lot of laundry, took the teen to the mall, made a nice dinner, and basically had a super relaxing normal person day.

I'm not worried at all about missing the swim (in fact the swim plan I've been very loosely following only had two swims on the schedule this week, if I remember right), and although I'd have liked to get in the run, I'm not worrying about that either. I'm not trying for Kona or anything here and the run is going to be a walk/run/shuffle anyway, so being a long run down isn't really a big deal.

At this point, the fitness is either there or it isn't, and I've done the work. Just a few more weeks left...