08/22/07: Catching up - Last Weeks Review

Better late than never......

Last weeks plan was for 15 hours, and I trained a total of 11.9 hours :(

Overall I ended up trading some intensity for volume, which I would have been better off doing this week, since it's a recovery week; sometimes you just have to go with what you have:

Swimming
Plan: 4.25
Actual: 3.0

The weeks group swims were great. I'm grateful we were able to land Benji as our coach.

I showed up for Sunday's ocean swim and was greeted by a pretty choppy ocean with a strong current, although swimmable. I started swimming and swimming and swimming and was going nowhere fast. It took me around 8 minutes to go 150 yds or so on the way down, and 2 minutes for the return trip. Unfortunately the waves got HUGE and were cresting right on top of us.

After getting pummeled to the bottom and held there by a wave for the second time, I figured I'd had enough. The other 5 or 6 people seemed to have the exact same idea. So much for my hour ocean swim :(

Since UNF was closed for maintenance, there went the weekends long swim....oh well, what are you gonna do.....

Cycling
Plan: 6.5
Actual: 5.39

The usual mid-week rides both went according to plan. For a change of pace, I went to Clermont to ride some hills with friends on Saturday. Let me start out by saying all of Florida is not flat.

Saturday's ride was supposed to be 4.5 hours, although ended up at 3.75, which was fine considering the rolling hills and Sugarloaf. Sugarloaf is only 300 ft high, but rumor has it is at an 18% grade = steep. No matter how many gears you have, there aren't enough. Even with compact cranks and a 12-25, I was going ~4 mph with a cadence of 40 something going up Sugarloaf. Speaking of, compact cranks rock....I was loving them in the rollers........If you don't already have them, I'd stongly recommend looking into them.....

Given the steepness of the climb, we did what any intelligent group of cyclists would do....climbed it twice :) Gotta love a challenging, thigh burning, lung searing, threshold pushing climb!

We ended up doing 55 miles with ~2500 feet of climbing...Fun.....

Running
Plan: 4.25 hours
Actual: 3.5 hours

With the heat and training volume, my legs have been just too dead to do a long run and ride in consecutive days on the weekends, so I switched my long run from the weekend to Wednesday.

Good plan.....my 2.5 hour long run on Wednesday went great, even though I started the run at 7:30 PM and finished at 10 PM. I went 15.95 miles, keeping my HR in zone 2, averaging 9:24 min / mi.

The other thing I did well was forced myself to run for 15 minutes after Saturday's long ride, as much as my legs (and lungs) really didn't want me to. No one ever said this was supposed to be easy.

Moving my long run to Wednesday left me with an hour form run scheduled for Sunday, which I was going to do after the ocean swim. With the swim cancelled, the weather REALLY hot, and my legs done after Saturday's climbing, I bagged the run.

One key to training is realizing when rest will be more beneficial than training, and this was one of those times. Although I'd never skip a key long workout, trading in a short form run for some much needed rest seemed like a good idea at the time, and in hindsight it was.

Taking off both Sunday (for the most part) and Monday gave me some much needed rest. I was exhausted through my entire last recovery week last month. This time I feel pretty good headed into recovery week.

Base 2 Summary and a Look Ahead
Taking a look back at the last three weeks, the quality of the workouts was great; unfortunately the volume was off a bit.

The weeks should have had 12.75, 13.75 and 15 hours. I ended up with 12.12, 12, and 11.9, obviously going the wrong way.

Running and cycling were very much on target, with swimming being the apparent culprit in my training hours being a little light the last couple of weeks. I think trading the hills for some volume last week was a good plan, since it's rare that I get an opportunity to train in hills.

I had an excused absence from week 2's swim, and can't do much about weather and pool maintenance this past weekend, so overall swimming was as on target as it could be.

Looking back over the last three weeks, I don't see anything I would have changed, except for maybe moving the long run to mid-week a bit sooner....

Now my favorite part of training (and Lori's).......RECOVERY WEEK...YAY

Recovery week is the perfect time for reduced volume and slightly increased intensity = RACE!! This weekend in the HOT, which will probably live up to its acronym once again.

Last year I was 43/49 in my age group, going 3:23:35. I had an abysmal 49 minute swim (49/49) followed by a decent 1:24 bike and 1:05 run.

Although this year I'm doing the HOT as an un-tapered B priority race, my goal is still to go sub 3, with a 40 minute swim, 1:18 bike and 55 run. Add a few minutes for transitions and I'm right at 2:58. My other goal is to keep my heart rate in zone 3-4 for the whole race....lower volume + higher intensity = good end of Base 2.

See you at the finish :)

Live with purpose....Enjoy the Adventure