A vision for my life - Because what we focus on expands

Monday, September 17, 2007

09/17/07: Thur - Sun Update

Thursday was another 3100 yds with the masters group - more anerobic sets:

wu: 200 x swim, kick, pull

8x100 all out on 2:30 (fastest 1:30; most 1:45 - 1:48)

6x50 kick all out on 1:15

50 easy

6x100 all out on 2:30 (fastest 1:40; most 1:45 - 1:50)

50 easy

5x50 kick all out on 1:15

50 easy

4x100 all out on 2:30 (1:45 - 1:52)

On Friday I did a short, relatively easy 45 brick: 30 minutes on the bike and a 15 minute run. I took Saturday off, since it was a recovery week and I was doing a 1/2 on Sunday.

The 1/2 was a dozen or so of us, and fortunately was really more of a long workout than it was a race. Why fortunately? Keep reading...

We met at 6:45 on Landrum, set our drinks on a table, and set-up our cars as T-2 (Bike to run). Once everyone was set, we rode three or so miles over to the beach, where a couple of people had very nicely volunteered to watch our bikes while we swam. We walked ~1.2 miles up the beach and it was time for the day to begin.

The ocean was MUCH more choppy than I would have liked, but what are you gonna do.....We started swimming, and I felt like a cork in a washing machine. I spent quite a bit of time fighting against the water, before finally remembering one of the biggest lessons from the TI clinic: RELAX. Once I was able to relax my arms a bit, swimming got much easier. I'm not sure if I got much faster, but either way, I made it back to Mickler's Landing where we started in about 50 minutes, which is a really good swim time for me. (Speaking of swimming...stay tuned.....I promise to blog about the TO clinic in the next couple of days....lots of good stuff to share)

Out of the water I didn't feel the least bit tired, and my heart rate was exceptionally low when I got on the bike. YAY. It was time for 6 8 1/2 mile loops on the bike, including Jacksonville's version of hills...The Palm Valley Bridge. In the middle of each lap we had an over and back on the bridge, totalling 2700 feet of climbing according to my Garmin. Between the bridge climbs and the wind that kicked up, my bike average was just over 16 mph.

My nutrition on the bike worked great. Instead of swallowing salt tablets every hour, I gave Nuun a shot yesterday, after reading about it on a couple of peoples' blogs. Tasted great and seemed to work really well. I'm definitely going to stick with it. As usual, I alternated sipping water (this time with the nuun in it) and Perpetuam every 10 minutes, and had a gel every 45 minutes. The time on the bike seemed to go by reasonable quickly, although the wind on the last couple of laps became a bit cruel. The total bike mileage came in at just over 54 miles, a bit short of a true 1/2 IM distance of 56...like I said, this was really more of a long training day than a race....

Once off the bike, time to run a 1/2 marathon, or at least that was the plan. The run was an out and back, over the same bridge that we rode over. The way down wasn't too bad, although I started getting really hot from being in the sun so long, even though I was drinking so much water. I was running a mile at a time, then taking a minute to walk, which I what I plan to do in the IM - walk the aid stations.....Once I got to the bridge I walked up it, ran down the other side, and did the same in reverse coming back over.

Once I came back over the bridge the combination of being out in the sun all day without shade and all of the climbing, which I'm definitely not used to, did me in. On the way back I was jogging 4 minutes and walking one, just trying to get back to where we started. I had planned the day as a 6 hour workout, and looking at my watch realized that if I had done a 2nd loop I would have been closer to 7-7:15.

While I certainly could have done a second lap, especially if it was a race, I knew if I did it was going to take me several days to recover from the extra exertion in that heat, so I called it quits after the first 6.5 mile lap. I decided to lose the battle and win the war so to speak.

Although I'm a little bummed that I didn't go the entire 1/2 IM distance, I'm pretty sure that I made the right decision to call it quits after a really good, long brick workout, instead of senselessly beating the hell out of myself.The last thing I needed coming off of a recovery week was to feel totally exhausted for several days, especially since this coming week is a 14.75 hour week.


Speaking of...just three more hard weeks of training, then it's taper time....YEAH BABY....

Stay tuned, next up is the TI clinic report and the week in review.....

5 comments:

The Stretch Doc said...

you made the right call.. save your self for the last 3 big training weeks.

Nuun is good, only thing that got me was no calories and hard to carry other stuff to make up the diffence but I totally like it and it works good.

Dr. Iron TriFeist :) said...

Better to save it for race day. You're training is coming right along!

Congrats on the new timer, by the way.

Tea said...

I agree with you and the other comments. Good move saving yourself for race day.

Michele said...

Good call and still an awesome workout.

Unknown said...

Great job bud! That's a hard decision but I would have to think even in hindsight that it was totally justified and the right decision to make. Don't forget you just did a Century the week before!