Week in Training

Finally some decent training numbers though I'm kind of cheating in counting that hike.  Except that that hike knocked the stuffing out of me it was so steep and I was doing a bit of power hiking.  I was sore for 2 days afterwards so I'm guessing it had some training effect.

Swimming had the 2 mile in the open water milestone and I felt like I was swimming a bit faster or at least a bit more efficiently.  There was a woman who was swimming at my pace for the first 2000 meters and actually she was a bit faster and kept passing me but she was swimming in such a zig-zag pattern that I kept ending up ahead of her.  At the end of both 1000 meter laps I passed her on the straight-away back to the beach and came in a nose ahead of her each time.  Was good to have someone to pace off, I'll push myself if someone is slightly ahead.  AND I came home from that and immediately took Strum and Lola for a 40 minute run.  I'll admit that all of that wiped me out for the rest of the day.

I had my first brick workout (bike then run) of the season and it was also a Lactate Threshold (LT) workout, ie intervals.  I picked a super steep hill heading up into the mountains and climbed as hard as I could to get my LT heart rate which it turns out is somewhat undetermined.  I had an official VO2 max test in a lab in winter of 2009 and that came up with an LT heart rate of 151 but I couldn't get my heart rate much above 143-145 because my legs started giving out.  Muscular endurance is not my strong point and I have a hard time getting heart rate up on the bike and sustaining it.  I've also read that max and LT heart rate varies with activity and my test was done running on a treadmill so cycling LT could be lower.  Anyway I warmed up for 20 minutes, did four 5 minute climbs at close enough to LT with 2 mins. rest in between then rode down the hill for a cool down.  I don't care for higher intensity interval type workouts but I know they'll help me a lot so I'm going to gut them out.

Running is still coming along.  I'm up to 45 minutes of 4 min. run/1 min. walk.  Next run I'll up it to 50 and once I get to an hour next week I'll increase the run interval to 6 min.  Hamstring is still at a very low level of pain and no piriformis issues except for a couple of days after the killer hike so that's good.  Can't take on the LT training yet for running but the longest runs that my training plan calls for are an hour so I should be able to manage those after this next week.

Big training week next week and no classes or agility trials to hold me back.  I always scale back agility training in July because it's so hot and the shift goes to triathlon.  My first race is a little sprint in 3 weeks.  It's a practice race but still I'm excited.  First big off road race is in a month and I feel like I'll be plenty ready as long as the running doesn't get derailed.

Swim:  5700 yards/2 hour, 5 mins.

Mountain bike:  20 miles/3 hours, 29 mins.

Run:  6.1 miles/1 hour, 38 mins. (4 min. run/1 min. walk)



Hike:  6 miles (approx.)/3 hours, 15 mins.


Total training time: 10 hours, 12 mins.