A Recovery Week - Yay!

Hooray for off weeks! I feel absolutely AWESOME. My total volume for this week is just ridiculously low compared to my on weeks. It's a fantastic chance to recover, heal, and see about fitting in a massage at some point.

So far, it's working great. I feel great and am having great workouts when I have them. In today's Master's swim class I felt absolutely awesome. And then I got totally schooled by some VERY good triathletes in my lane. Our intervals were on around 1:26-28/100m and while I was able to hold the intervals, I was NOT able to maintain contact with the others who were easily swimming sub 1:20s. As crappy as that is, I know I'm getting stronger and if you had told me in 2006 after I moved here that I'd be consistently swimming in the 1:20s I would have asked to take a toke of whatever you were smoking. But here I am, 3 years later and 40-50 seconds faster.

The only keys that currently come to mind are patience and to not be afraid to move up or down a lane to test the waters or when you need a recovery swim.

Weekend Workouts

Saturday saw a cold and rainy day in Colorado and along the front range. Originally having been slated to do a 120-mile ride, after having a come-to-Jesus meeting with my coach we will be reducing my bike mileage and increasing my running. That said, my 120-mile ride was reduced to first 3 hours and then 4 but since it was raining, I did 3 hours on the trainer and then a 2-mile run on the treadmill.

Sunday, I did a 12-mile run outside (the weather was MUCH nicer) and it was a really good run. I started to fatigue around mile 8/9, but gutted it out and was able to maintain a good pace for the entire middle set.

For the week, I wound up running a whopping 42 miles! Yay! And the legs felt good. 6.5 weeks until race day and I think I'm on a good track. Caught the problem early enough.

A Rather Decent Week

For all the running I've done this week, the legs feel like they're in good shape and the intervals I had to run on Tuesday and Thursday turned out pretty decent. I'm fatigued, but it doesn't seem like I'm as fatigued as I've been in the past.

On that note, after Master's on Wednesday I had a good chat with Laura (Billy William's fiance) and Kerrie/Glenn all of whom think that my training regimen has way too much volume. So I had a long chat with my coach about scaling back the cycling and upping the running here in the last month or so before my taper so as to get my running to a decent state because I feel like it's really been crap up to this point. I've not yet been able to complete a long brick - well I did one, probably 50/11 but that was so long ago. My legs shouldn't be so shot after a ride that I can't do at least some running.

So, we changed my long ride and long runs and it will be really interesting to see how it pans out in this last month or so. I'm not worred about the swim at all. I'm only slightly worried about the bike - to the extent that I need to make sure I take in enough calories and stay in Z3. My big fear is the run. With no bike, I'm not worried that I couldn't do a nice long run - but with the bike, everything changes....have to be smart and have to be prepared.