Ironman Training – Weeks 3-5

I am now 5 weeks into the 30-week training plan. If I had to rate the last 3 weeks, I would say they were acceptable. This last week was rough as I didn’t run at all. I don’t really have any excuse. Weeks 3 and 4 were pretty good.

I still can’t swim. I emailed the two pools that I can swim at to find out when they will be opening and no one can give me an answer. I am on a mailing list for a Master’s swim group, but I don’t swim with them as their pools are quite far away, but a recent email from them indicated that the pools they swim at will not open until the beginning of July at the earliest. I suspect my pools will be the same.

Due to being unable to swim, I am seriously considering deferring my Ironman entry to 2021. Even if the pools open on July 1, when you remove the 3-week taper, that only gives me 4 months to bring my swim up to the 2.4 mile distance and by the beginning of July, it would have been 4 months since I last swim. That is a very tall order!!

This realization that I may have to defer is impacting my motivation and is a large part of the reason that I didn’t run this past week.

I’m starting to think about how to approach my training if I do defer. I wouldn’t have any upcoming race to work towards. One option is to pick a sport, say cycling or running, and really focus on that, whether it is to build by cycling FTP or my running speed.