You know triathlon season is kicking into gear when you have 3 showers in one day. First one was after a morning run with da boyz. I finally made it a full 1/2 hour of 5 mins. run/1 min. walk with only a few twinges of knee pain going up a hill. This was not the speed part of the day by any means but felt faster than I've been going, almost like a run as opposed to a penguin shuffle. Cody was not thrilled, he hates running on leash and Strummer kept trying to stop every 10 yards to sniff and mark but it's good exercise for them so I make them go with me.
Shower #2 was after Tabata sprints on my lunch hour. I'm up to the full 8 reps and wow it is a hard workout for only 2 minutes. My quads have felt like jello all week and about an hour before lunch time I start dreading them but I feel good the rest of the afternoon and my knee's been tolerating them so I've been trying to gut it out.
Shower #3 was after masters swimming workout which was a sprint workout. Lucky me. To be honest I hate sprinting and I'm bad at it and it hurts and wah wah wah but I made it through the whole workout and the coach even said my last sprint of the night looked like a good effort, good form, etc.-Shocking! It was not the normal coach though so I guess I had her fooled. Jane, my normal coach, has given me some good basic pointers for sprinting in the pool and once I remembered to use them I guess was able to fake my way through. I'll post the workout below for my own benefit so I have a benchmark for where I am with my swim times right now. I feel like I'm oh so close to being able to move up a lane but not quite there yet. In the showers I asked someone from the next lane up what their prescribed interval times were and there was no way I could have held them but she said no one in her lane held them either and they ended up swimming the 100's continuously with no rest. Even so, I couldn't have swum at that pace continuously so I've got to keep plugging away for a while longer. The woman from the other lane suggested I move up anyway and sit out for a 50 here and there and draft wherever I can and I'll get better faster swimming in that faster lane but I'm not sure I agree. I think it's better to do the workout you're capable of, get enough rest per interval and put more effort into each swim rather than missing all the intervals and swimming at a continuous pace with no rest the whole workout. I know at least one of the coaches agrees with that, not sure what the research or general consensus is but speaking from personal experience I seem to get more benefit from doing proper intervals.
Today is a rest day except for maybe more Tabata sprints. The protocol calls for 5 days per week but they're so exhausting on top of all the other training that I may have to phase them in. So far I've only done 3 days this week and I think 3 last week. If it wasn't for my knee issues I'd push through today's fatigue but I'm thinking maybe it's best not to push my luck and have a nice solid rest day. Plus I'm not into that whole self-flagellation thing and I'm tired today.
I've got to decide if I want to spend money on races this year and if so which ones. Decisions, decisions.
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Masters Workout April 24, 2009
South Boulder Rec.
Coach: Eenie
All distances in yards
200 on my own pre-workout, mix of free/non-free
Warm-Up:
8x50 on 1:20 (start slow and build up to fast by 4th interval then slow back down)
[my times started at :50 and went down to :45 then back up to :48)
50 easy
Main Set:
All distances on 2:15
As the distance gets shorter, pace gets faster
Work on pacing for the 100's, try to keep them all the same pace
8x100 [my time ranged from 1:42-1:44, mostly at 1:43]
6x75 [these were the hardest, times were 1:14, 1:12, 1:06, 1:07, 1:07, 1:09
big jump in time from 1:12 to 1:06 was because I remembered to use quick
short strokes]
4x50 [times were :44, :42, :44, :43]
2x25 [times were :20, :20 we cheated and took a shorter interval because 2:15 is
too long to sit around for a 25]
Grand Finale:
3x75 on 2nd person rest
Wear fins for all
first 75 is kick with 25 easy, 25 medium, 25 fast
second 75 is kick with 25 fast, 25 medium, 25 easy
third 75 is free, fast
75 cool down
Total: 2450 yards
Not a lot of yardage but a hard set.
Nice job on the workouts!!! I had to laugh when people were talking about taking less showers on Earth Day...um, clearly those people don't have multiple training sessions in a day!
ReplyDeleteCrap, I forgot all about Earth Day. Oh well, they were mostly short showers. And Earth Day is kinda lame anyway, too little too late or something.
ReplyDeleteGood job on the workouts! Sounds like a productive day. The tabata sprints have intrigued me since your wrote about them recently. Seems like they could be helpful for me in agility. If I could get my act together. No nearby schoolgrounds; there is a park with lots of grass not far from here. Maybe. Next week. Sure.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thinking on the intervals. I think research does, too.
ReplyDeleteI know the workout is more enjoyable when I can follow the intervals. Swimming for an hour at the same pace is boring, I can do that on my own.
ReplyDeleteELF the Tabata Sprints are horrible if you're doing them right but you feel so good afterwards. They seem like the perfect sort of thing for speed in agility. A grassy park sounds perfect, you don't need a fancy soccer field like I have, I'm just spoiled because it's a 5 minute walk.