Another snowy Monday training update

Well, another Monday, another day at home. I could get used to this! This time it's a snow day, which is WAY more fun than being home with a sick kid. Especially since Monday is usually my rest day so I don't even have to try and figure out how to cram in a workout (other than shoveling the driveway, which is totally cross training). Later we'll bake cookies!

SNOW DAY!

I had to move some of my workouts around last week due to sick kids and pool foulings and such things, but it all got done.

My pictures of the actual pool were all weirdly blurry, so you get this boring one instead.

Swimming: ~2300m over 2 sessions
Cycling: 3 hours 30 minutes on the trainer
Running: 44k; 4 hours, 23 minutes

Total training time: 8 hours, 54 minutes

Some interesting developments this week. First, on the swim, the bilateral breathing is coming together - I no longer swallow half the pool when I breathe to the right, and it's starting to feel natural to switch back and forth. So yay to that.

On the bike, since I've been repeating the workouts I did 6 weeks ago, I've been able to compare my results, and it's very, very good. This training plan really works.

Bow before my epic paint skillz. But seriously, I'm really happy to see this kind of progress!

On the run, the speed work during the week was a bit of a mess due to weather and road conditions, but the 26k run I did on Sunday with Mari went extremely well. I can't get over how strong I'm feeling on my long runs lately. I'm becoming a believer in the Run Less Run Faster plan, that's for sure.

Annnnnnnnd I pulled the trigger and registered for Welland. Eep.

Crap, I need to buy a wetsuit.

This week, more of the same. Usual two swims, still working on that bilateral breathing. I may try and push the total distance up a bit on the swim this week. Or maybe not. Biking will be the peak week of the current training plan, so it's going to be tough! The long ride this week is the hardest one in the plan, and I'm simultaneously exciting to try it and a little bit scared. Running will be the usual, although since I went a little longer than planned for my long this week, I can probably shorten things up a touch this weekend if I feel tired. And running is very weather dependent (thank goodness I don't have to run until Wednesday, which gives the city lots of time to get things clear for me, since doing my runs on clear roads is clearly the most important thing they should be worrying about).

This picture has nothing to do with anything except I had a snake around my neck this week at my nieces's birthday party. AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH. 

And some solid time with the foam roller is in order, I think - my right leg is a little cranky. Nothing major, but some self massage is called for.

Fingers crossed for a good week this week!

Snowy Monday training update

I was going to title this related to how many weeks are left before Around the Bay, but I have no idea. It's in a spreadsheet somewhere and I'm too lazy to look.

But I was so enjoying have ice and snow free sidewalks and roads! Damn it!

At any rate, it's a suddenly snowy Monday morning and I'm home with a sick kid, so I thought I'd write up a brief training update before I jump back into the work from home thing.

Swim: ~2k
Bike: 3:30 on the trainer
Run: 40.7 km
8 hours 30 minute total

Last week was pretty intense. Week 3 of my cycling plan, when things really start to build towards the week 5 peak, plus some tough interval and tempo runs. Since I've never trained like this before I'm keeping an eye on my fatigue levels to make sure all is well. So far so good. I also monitor my resting heart rate as it tends to elevate when I'm getting tired and should maybe think about another rest day - all in line with what I usually see (in fact it's lower than usual by a couple of beats per minute).

Sample workout - 90 minute ride with 20 minute long intervals. Those are no joke.  Excellent mental practice for racing, though.

My right hip (the one that has been bothering ever since the marathon) finally seems to be fully better (KNOCK ON ALL THE WOOD EVERYWHERE). I had an entire week where I felt entirely normal, and then BAM. Early last week, sciatica acting up on the left side. It doesn't bother me at all while standing, walking, running, biking, just while sitting. Which, given that I work an office job, is like 90% of my day.

However, my charming husband brought home this bad boy foam roller, and let me tell you, 5 minutes with that thing and I found a spot in my left glute that was very angry, worked it over, and now the sciatic pain is completely gone. It's always the glutes, I swear. This roller is my new best friend and I'm greatly enjoying having no stupid hip pain. Fingers crossed that lasts.

Also it can double as an emergency pylon. ORANGE!

Now, going into this plan my worry was that I'd lose running fitness running only 3 days a week. I've always been a 5 or 6 day a week type runner, so the thought of cutting back to only 3 was a little scary! However, as I told the girls on Saturday during our long run, this cross training shit really does work. I figured with the much lower weekly run mileage runs north of 20k would be tough - but this week's 22k-er felt great. My legs were strong, and my cardio feels better than ever. I mean, it makes sense in so many ways, but I had to experience it to really believe it.

Love to hate Northshore. All those hills. Thanks to Nicole for the pic!

Oh, and this happened a couple of times. Starting to feel reasonably competent in the pool. Progress!

Almost put my swimsuit on inside out. AGAIN. I am so good at this.

This week, more of the same. Plan is for 2 swims, 3 bike, 3 run. Everything a little more intense. Fun, fun, fun!

Training update! In which I swim! More than once!

So I'm starting to feel like a real triathlete here - last week's workouts included three runs, three bikes, and for the first time ever, two swims in one week. And you know what? I enjoyed the swimming. Like, a lot. As in I was really tempted to go get in another one on Saturday or Sunday (although I didn't - I don't want to rush the swimming too much on top of everything else I'm doing and injure a shoulder or something).

Running (39k)

I'm not going to lie, the runs this week were tough ones. There was a descending ladder interval workout that took every ounce of willpower to not quit after the 3rd round kind of sucked. Then a tempo run that went really well, but tempos are always tough. And a 20k long on a bitterly cold day where I swear my butt froze solid - the heated seats in my car afterwards actually hurt while I thawed out. But the runs all got done, and done pretty much on target. A successful week!

My 'track' for the winter - an 800m loop on a quiet residential street.

Cycling (3 hours 30 minutes)

Cycling on the trainer has been amazing. I've made huge progress following the sweet spot base plan on Trainerroad - I'm now running through it a second time, with 30 points added to my FTP since the first go around. But the workouts don't really feel harder, which means I've definitely made a lot of progress. The difference in my cadence and pedalstroke is also huge. I'm getting very excited to get back out on the road this spring and see how all this work translates!

Gotta teach the kid not to cut off the top of my head when taking action shots.

Swimming! Really! (2 swims, ~2km)

I did a solo swim at the pool near work that went well, and a coached swim with my tri club which was extremely encouraging. The coach said my stroke actually looks pretty good, which is comforting, but also gave me some tweaks and drills to work on. My current plan is to continue to swim one day a week at lunch and then the coached swim, for two swims a week. Still getting comfortable with the water, but I'm feeling very good about it so far. I'll probably add a third swim to my schedule in a few weeks.

What's really fun is how much I really LIKE swimming! I've been assuming swimming would prove to be a sort of necessary evil on the road to doing a triathlon, but it just feels so good to stretch out in the water, and the whole lap swimming thing is nice and meditative.

Of course, I did manage to lose my first pair of swim goggles by leaving them in the changeroom at the YMCA. Buy stock in Aqua Sphere, y'all, I'm pretty sure I'm going to do that a lot more.

This upcoming week will be similar. 3 runs, 3 trainer workouts, and 2 swims. Can't wait!

The spring/summer race schedule is starting to come together. First up is an indoor triathlon at the end of February - 15 minutes swim, 15 minutes bike, 15 minutes run, go as far as you can in the time allotted. Then Around the Bay, of course, where I may or may not go for a PB (undecided on that). 10k at Mississauga for funsies.

And then, the outdoor triathlons start. I'm about 99% sure I'll do the sprint at Welland in mid-June as the 'let's try this out and try not to panic in the swim', then the sprint at Guelph Lake I the following week. In July, the Kincardine women's triathlon (super sprint distance), and then sprint at Niagara from the Subaru series.

Now I need to go track down some food. So very very hungry...

Out with the old, in with the new (year)

So, that's a wrap on 2014. Not a bad year, I have to say:

Run: 2176.3 km
Bike: 2563.0 km
Total: 4739.3 km (!!)

The run number is lower than I'd planned for the year due to injury downtime, but the bike number is about 2,000 km higher than I would have predicted back on January 1st. I fell pretty hard for cycling this year, that's for sure.

I should probably not be allowed to use photo editing apps.

Oh, and there have been a grand total of three (3) visits to lane swim. Including one this morning, just to make sure I went once more December than I did in November. There's a number that will be a lot higher in 2015!

Some good things happened (marathon, cycling, duathlon, some new PBs), some not so good things (hip bursitis I just couldn't seem to fully get resolved), but I'm ending the year feeling good and getting really, really excited about 2015.

(My Strava year in review video seems to mostly only include running stats, and I didn't start tracking with Strava until mid-January, so the numbers aren't quite right. But I'm going to share it anyway)

Why am I so excited for 2015? Because 2015 is going to be all about triathlon. I even joined a local tri club, because if I'm going to do this, might as well do it right. I'm starting an 8 week swim stroke clinic with the club in mid-January, as it's probably better to get advice/help with my swimming now before I learn all sorts of bad habits. Plus, it'll get me in the habit of swimming regularly as I try and figure out how to fit the third discipline into an already crammed full of work, kids, running, and cycling schedule. They say the fourth discipline in triathlon is transition - I say it's really scheduling!

Don't read too much into the 'iron' part of the club name. Iron distance tris are NOT in the immediate future!

Before the triathlon fun starts, there is Around the Bay. While my indoor bike training has been going really well, my run training didn't really get off to the start I'd planned, and I've done a grand total of one of the assigned workouts, so that's a bit of a mess. However things are looking up - my hip finally seems to be cooperating with speedwork, so I'm going to add that in and see what happens. I'll back off again if anything aggravates my hip. I'm still hoping to PB at the race, but won't be too upset if I end up just running it for fun.

And I still have to pick my June triathlon(s), of course. One of these days I'll figure that out.

Happy New Year, and here's to what I hope will be a great year of swimming, cycling, and running!

The Paincave

A few weeks ago Paul asked about my paincave set up, and I never got around to replying, so to make up for that here's way more information about the whole thing than anyone really needs.

Ready for a ride. Usually there's a second, larger fan, but it had walked off and since this was going to be an easy one I didn't bother to go find it.

Step one is the bike trainer, which I got at the annual Toronto bike clearance sale back in October. It's a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, which I chose largely because that's what Zindine told me to get for my needs and budget and he hasn't steered me wrong yet (one of these days he's going to start charging for all this free coaching!). It's very solid fluid trainer, reasonably quiet, and it's easy to get the bike on and off of it. I also really like that the difficulty of the ride is changed simply by changing gears on the bike, making it a realistic feeling experience.

Probably should have cropped the laundry out of the picture. It's a paincave/laundry sorting room, though, so it's more honest this way.

Now just sitting on the trainer pedaling is...not very exciting. I'm sure there are people out there who can do that, but I am definitely not one of them. I need a defined workout and someone or something to tell me what to do.

Enter Trainerroad.

The speed/cadence sensors on my bike communicate to my laptop via ANT+ (as does my heartrate monitor), and Trainerroad takes that data, along with my weight and the type of trainer I'm using, and translates it into virtual power numbers. I choose a workout from their huge library, and it tells me what to do and how hard to do it and for how long. It's really very cool. I'm just about finished the Sweet Spot base I plan and I'm looking forward to testing my progress before I repeat the plan again. I've done some really killer workouts using Trainerroad that I would never in a million years be able to do on my own. For $10 a month, it's totally worth it.

Garmin speed and cadence sensors at the top; ant+ stick in my laptop to receive the data at the bottom.

I like to connect my laptop to our big TV via HDMI so the workout is up there larger than life. Easy to see right in front of me that way.

I do also like to watch TV/movies or listen to music while I'm on the trainer. While TR does have a way to show, say, Netflix on the screen at the same time as your workout, I personally prefer to have my entertainment set up on my ipad. Just a personal preference thing, plus that way it's easier for me to listen via headphones, rather than having to crank the TV up really loud to be heard over the fans/bike/trainer noise. And with headphones I can watch stuff that maybe I don't want my kids watching/hearing. Put a show up on the regular TV and they are right there wanting to watch it with me, which limits my options.

TR on the bottom, Dr. Who on the top. It works, but I've decided it's not my preferred setup. Also, #nerd.

Typically I watch TV shows via Netflix for the first 2/3 of the workout, then switch to music. Having the ipad close at hand makes that a bit easier.

My usual setup - workout on the big screen, ipad on the barstool with headphones. The towel over the handlebars is 100% necessary. Trainer rides are disgustingly sweaty.

I use a random spare barstool to hold the ipad (and extra water on longer rides), and a measuring cup from the dollar store hooked over my handlebars for snacks, my phone, and any other random crap I think I might need during a ride.

Measuring cup hooked over my handlebars. Holding headphones, those random candy chew things all the races were giving out this year, and a couple of granola bars.

All in all, I've done almost 20 hours on the trainer since November, and I'm looking forward to many more. I can't wait to see how this all translates to the road in the spring!

Thumbs up to the #paincave

My year of running (2014)

After two weeks of no exercise, yesterday I got back on the bike and today I cautiously ran 5k. Both went well and my hip feels fine, so my fingers are crossed I've managed to get this thing sorted out. I'll keep things careful for the rest of the week, though, just in case.

Today I'm hooking up with Miss Zippy's year in review, because I want to write a bit about my year and I think the prompts will help me organize my thoughts.

1. Best race experience

Amy and I heading for the finish at Mississauga

For running races, definitely finishing my first marathon. Although the aftermath of that race (months of ongoing hip problems, yay) have soured me a bit on the distance and I'm not planning to repeat it any time soon. But the feeling of crossing that finish line, of successfully running for four damn hours, was pretty awesome.

But there's also the little matter of that duathlon I did. I mean c'mon. I discovered that biking is awesome, I'm surprisingly kind of good at it, and I got a giant shiny medal for an age group place, so that race is pretty damn high on my list for the year. Let's call the marathon 1a and the duathlon 1b, OK?

2. Best run

Any run with this guy. Because our kids are still too little to be left alone, it's rare that we get to run together, so when it does happen it's pretty special.

A close second was finishing my first ever 20 miler. It was a perfect day for running and was a huge confidence boost before the marathon.

3. Best new piece of gear

Is it cheating if my best new piece of gear has nothing to do with running?

Was there any question what my answer would be here? Man I love my bike.

I miss this. I'm enjoying the trainer, but there's nothing like a ride on the roads.

4. Best piece of running advice you received

Cross training can be awesome. Try new things, you might like (or love) them.

5. Most inspirational runner

Honestly, the people who inspire me most are my running friends - the folks who post their workouts on Daily Mile & Strava. I love that when I'm feeling unmotivated all I have to do is check out my online friend's feeds and get totally inspired to see people rocking their workouts. I have fast friends, slow friends, and everything in between, and every single one of them is inspiring.

And there's my #burlingtonskirtbrigade girls, who are always up for a run or a ride, give good advice, commiseration about injuries, and lots and lots of non-running related chat. Love you guys.

And finally my triathlon friends who were pretty instrumental in getting me set up with that whole bike thing, and I owe them many many many thanks for giving good advice and encouragement. I think Irina and Zindine won't rest until everyone has at least tried a tri...

6. If you could sum up your year in just a few words, what would they be?

The year I discovered cycling. And loved it.

So it's been an interesting year - I definitely did a lot of things I was not expecting back at the beginning of the year! Can't wait to see what 2015 has in store for me.

November in review

Hi internets! I'm still alive! Here's a quick post lunch hour post on how training is going.

Let's start with the good.

The bike

Things are just peachy keen on the bike. I've settled into a nice three day a week routine with the Trainer Road Sweet Spot base I plan. Three more weeks to go on that. I'm enjoying it immensely, and it's so nice to have a workout option at home now. The workouts are reasonably challenging without being too crazy, as you'd expect from a base building plan, and have focused a lot on cadence. Which is great, because one of my goals on the trainer is to bring my cadence up. It's been really interesting to play with how the same power on the bike can feel very different based on how fast your legs are moving, and I'm starting to get a much better feel for how pedaling faster is not necessarily harder.

It's a painful (and sweaty) sort of fun.

The run

I have been, not lazy exactly, but not particularly motivated to run this month. I ran a grand total of 87 km in November, which includes the 21.1 at Road to Hope, so clearly me and my running shoes are on a bit of a break. Which is fine. This has partially been a mental break, but partially because my bursitis-y right hip keeps getting cranky on me, and ideally I'd like to go into my ATB training plan with that settled down. My physiotherapist worked some magic yesterday that had me instantly feeling about 90% better (trigger point therapy is the shit), and I'm hopeful I'll be good to go when my plan is supposed to start next week - but if I'm not 100% I'll keep taking it easy and revise my plan.

Lift bridge selfie from some random run.

I am surprisingly relaxed about the whole thing, really. No pressure low stress running is nice, and it wouldn't be so bad to continue that for a while longer! At any rate, I'm taking a few days off of everything right now to see if that gets my hip back to 100% (and that includes no biking; complete rest, what a concept), and I'll reevaluate later this week.

The swim

Yeah, that hasn't happened. At all. It's partly because my one trip to lane swim so far really aggravated my hip, so I've been a bit reluctant to go back. And the other factor is I just can't figure out how to get it into my schedule in a way that won't make me lose my mind with exhaustion (8:30 pm swimming? By 8:30 I'm halfway to bed and asleep!). I dunno, I'm kind of letting it go right now because the whole thing was stressing me out, and this stuff is supposed to be my stress relief! My current thought is to tag along to some swims with Sam over the Christmas break (hey Sam, hope you are down with that plan!) and then find some sort of weekly coached swim to join in on in the new year.

Some ducks, because that's the closest I've gotten to getting in the water over the last few weeks!

So that's where I'm at. Crossing my fingers a few days of rest gets my body back on track and the training plan starts next week as planned...but I'm fully prepared to change those plans if necessary. Stay tuned...