I went to enter Sunday's long run into my online training log and realized I hadn't entered a single workout for the week. Great way to start out the new year. So I'm going to go back to posting a weekly training post. Though lately I'm having (more) doubts about how useful time/distance metrics are. Speed work brings the numbers down but is probably more beneficial or at least as important as long slow workouts. I've been pondering a way to track the numbers so they're more useful but haven't come up with anything solid yet.
Highlight of the week was biking on trails in shorts on Thursday. Was in the 60's and sunny, warm, fabulous. Then back to snow on Saturday, just a light layer of less than an inch but enough to make the trails slippy for Sunday's 'long' trail run. Knee was plaguing me for that one but got better after a while and I managed a whopping 5.2 miles including some short but steep hills. I may need to take Lola into the chiropractor so he can adjust my knee. My regular chiro. is awesome but that's the one adjustment he doesn't do. He doesn't like it in general but it works a charm for me and dog chiro. guy doesn't even charge me when I come in with Lola. Did I really just type all of that? Life takes us down weird and unexpected paths.
Swim: 6700 yards/3 hour, 4 mins.
Mountain bike: 18.32 miles/1 hour, 48 minutes
Run: 11.25 miles/2 hours, 39 mins.
Total training time: 7 hours, 31 mins.
I keep forgetting to weigh myself at the Rec. Center, will have to remember for next week. Got to a weight I was happy with and lost interest with the scale.
It looks like August 2 was the last time I posted a weekly training report and I was still on a walk/run schedule. I can't even remember when I made to transition to running with no walking and I'd forgotten I'd even been doing it. I was feeling a bit like my running was still so slow and going nowhere after Sunday's run but now I realize I've come quite far to be able to run 5 miles with no walking. Barely even noticed my hamstring either. By this summer's races I should be running like a runner again.
Got in 2 agility training sessions as well. Strummer was 100% on the dogwalk for both of them. First session I had quite a few reps., maybe as many as 8-10, and I had the stride regulator on for all of them. Second session I only did 3-4 reps and took the stride regulator off for the last rep. I set up a handling exercise for practicing weaves and he did awesome with the weave entries but my handling, wow, I'm out of practice. Was much better by the second session though. I've got a USDAA trial this weekend, better get a couple of more practices in so I feel sharp for those tournament classes.
Funny at using the dog chiro instead of human - that's awesome! :)
ReplyDeleteI agree that straight time/distance isn't very useful. If you also had HR data or some way of measuring intensity of the workouts, you could see how much weekly time you spend at which intensities. Doesn't Garmin do this for you? I take it you don't have one.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, you could make sub-categories for each sport based on workout type and record time spent on long steady efforts, speed/intervals, whatever other type of workouts you have.
The dog chiro is also a human chiro but to me he's the dog chiro since my other human chiro doesn't do dogs. Hmmm, this is getting even more ridiculous sounding.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a Garmin but I do have a HR monitor. I don't use it for swimming or mountain biking on trails but I do use it for bike intervals. I'm only just now starting to feel like I can do the sort of running that would involve a HR monitor and still I'll probably wait a couple of months for that. A power meter would be even better but those are too spendy right now.
I'm toying with the idea of tracking intervals separately but I need a simple system that has meaning. No point keeping the data if I don't have a goal or use for it in mind. And I'm having a hard enough time tracking simple mileage/time, I need a system that's simple enough that I'll follow it. I have a free Training Peaks account, I'll have to look through and see if I can track HR on the free log.
Even tho you haven't posted stats since August, you're still much better at it than I am.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I had a nice weatherproof box in my yard where I could just stand and write notes whether I'd be any better at writing what I'm doing.
It sounds good, but probably not.
So--good for you for tracking it!