Week in Review: November 5 – November 11 2018

The plan for this week was to make it a recovery week with much less training time and that is how it ended up.  I ended the week with just about 5 hrs of training time and it included 2 swims, 2 runs, and 2 bike rides.

The 2 runs I did were quite a contrast.  Wednesday’s run was in warm and humid FL at about 77F while Saturday’s run was 40 degrees cooler at 35F

For the coming week, I expect my workout volume to also be reduced as I’m flying to Phoenix on Saturday.  I’ll be there to volunteer for Ironman AZ so that I can register for next year’s Ironman AZ

 

Goals for Next Week: The weather this come week is going to be brutal and so I expect all my bike rides will have to be indoors.  I will be aiming for at least 3 swim days of 1500m each, 3 run days for a total of my normal 18 miles, and 2 bike days of about an hour each

 

Week in Review: October 29 – November 4 2018

This week was another great week.  It ended with 9 hours of training for the second consecutive week.  The highlight of the week though was the swimming milestone I hit where I was able to swim for 2000m without stopping.  It was just a week ago that I swam for 1500m without stopping so hitting 2000m just one week later was great.  I really wasn’t expecting to hit that until nearer the end of the year.

I ran for 18 miles again, doing 3 days of 6 miles each.  I will continue to stick to that level and will probably only jump to 20-21 miles at the beginning of December.

This week I only managed to bike 2 days.  Last week Tuesday I started my ride but my headlight failed after a few minutes and wouldn’t come on.  I had to abandon that ride and I only ended up doing 2 rides for the week including a 2-hr, 32-mile ride on Sunday

I managed to join a local cycling club, Lone Star Cyclists and they do Tue/Thu rides and a longer Sat ride.  I can’t do the Tue/Thu rides with them as they do it in the evenings and I need to swim then, but the long Saturday rides are perfect.  It will help with monotony of riding alone, allow me to explore new routes, and to be a bit safer as I’ll be in a group.  I plan to try my first ride with them on Saturday November 10.  They would have multiple groups for each ride covering different distances and different paces.  I will end up riding with the faster/longer group but for my first ride, I’ll probably go with a middle-of-the-pack group.

Goals for Next Week: After doing two weeks of 9-hrs, I plan to make this week a recovery week as I’ll be in FL and that always impacts my training.  I’ll also be swimming in a small hotel pool.  So, I will aim for 3 days of 45-mins of swimming, 2 days of running and a 2 days of cycling including a group club ride on Saturday

Fourth Major Swimming Milestone

Just a mere week after hitting a major milestone of swimming 1500m without stopping, I managed to up that to swimming 2000m without stopping yesterday.  This carries a lot of significance as the swim portion of the Ironman 70.3 is 1900m and knowing I can do 2000m this early in my preparation is a great confidence booster.

In my blog entry a week ago, I mentioned I was hoping to swim 2000m, with breaks, by the end of November and swimming it continuously by the year.  So much for shattering my goals!  I didn’t start off the week trying to do this, but on Monday I did my swim and like last week, I swam 1500m again without stopping.  I felt good afterwards and was sure I could have swam more, but mentally, I had 1500m in my mind and I stopped at that point.  Tuesday I swam with a single break.  When heading out to go swimming on Thursday, I knew I was going to sleep in on Friday and so I could swim a bit longer and not have to worry about getting to bed, but even then, I was only planning to swim 2000m with some breaks.  But as I swam more and more and coaxed myself into going just a couple more hundred meters at a time, and then once I got to 1500m, I figured I had to go all the way.  I did it in a touch over 56 mins.

I’m not breaking any speed records, but if I can swim at the same pace for the Ironman 70.3, I would come in well under the cutoff of 1 hr 10 mins.

So my milestones thus fare are:

  • Sep 25 – Swam 500m
  • Oct 3 – Swam 1000m
  • Oct 26 – Swam 1500m
  • Nov 1 – Swam 2000m

I don’t have any more distance milestones until after my Ironman 70.3.  My milestones will now be based on speed and pace.