Swim, Bike, Run and then Swim Again

My training last week went much better than the week before.  This cold has abated for the most part (still stuffy but not suffering) and I'm feeling a little bit of energy returning.


On Wednesday I had a swim on the schedule and went to the pool in the evening.  Paul was out of town and Sydney had gone to masters swim in the morning so I was on my own.  A couple of my other triathlon friends had talked about joining me there but that didn't end up happening.  To be honest, it was totally fine by myself and I was able to concentrate on my workout and bang it out in a really good time.  The workout was listed as 45 minutes but I was worried that because I'm (REALLY) slow in the water it would take me alot longer to do than it would the average person.  In the end it took me 48 minutes!  I was pretty satisfied with that.  I love the swim workouts and left feeling that awesome combination of tired from a good workout and satisfied with how I did.

Thursday's workouts were a bike with strength training session.  I had hoped to get up in the morning and crank out the bike workout but it just didn't happen.  Instead I hopped on as soon as I got home from work at 5:15 because it called for an hour workout and I had to pick Paul up from the airport at 7:30.  This workout was really hard!  It called for intervals at different rpms and I was having a bit of an issue with my bike trainer.  I think the wheel at the bike is too tight because I had trouble finding a gear that didn't burn my legs out quickly.  Coupled with the fact that my seat needs to be raised because of my new, shorter, crank arms it made for a miserable workout.  I got it done though, and now that Paul's raised my seat and I've figured out how to reduce the resistance on my back wheel I'm looking forward to the next bike workout.  After picking Paul up and getting some dinner out I had to crank out the strength session.  I'm glad to have all of the equipment at home that I need because I can assure you that I would not have dragged myself to a gym at that point.  I also learned that it's way better for me to just get my butt up earlier and get what I can done in the morning if I can help it.

On Friday Sydney and I got together to do our run workout together.  We were supposed to warm up for 15 minutes then do fartleks.  It was so cold out but we headed out onto the slippery sidewalks in the evening to get it done.  We took turns picking random spots to increase our speed on.  I wouldn't go so far to say that it was fun but it certainly made the time go by quickly.

Saturday called for another swim and this time Sydney came with Paul and I to the municipal pool in the morning.  We had another great workout scheduled that included 4 x 50 where the focus was on distance per stroke.  My first 50 saw me take 54 strokes.  By the last 50 I was down to 50 strokes.  I thought that was pretty good until Syd reported that her stroke count was 36!  WTF?  I thought maybe I was counting it wrong but Sydney reminded me that she is 10 inches taller than I am and therefore has a wider wingspan.  We also had to time ourselves doing 100m at a vary hard pace.  My time for 100m was 2:16.  I'm anxious to see that number come down over the next few months!  Altogether we did 1500 meters and were done in about 45 minutes.  It was great timing since the pool started to get busy towards the end of our workout.  It's a bit of a strange mix of people that go there given the location.  There are no lane markers so people are a little all over the place and people show up to do some strange things.  The older European couple making out in the shallow end was definately the weirdest thing Saturday.  After a good breakfast I did 45 minutes of strength training while watching the finale of The Apprentice on the DVR.  The rest of my day was spent out Christmas shopping and preparing for Sydney's Ironman Cozumel slideshow party.  The party was awesome and deserves it's own post - stay tuned.

Overall last week's planned training was 6 hours and 55 minutes of training and I completed 5 hours and 35 minutes.  An explanation of why I didn't do my planned Sunday ran and recovery spin will be included in the post about the party. ;-)