Whew! These last three days tired me out. The weekend + totals were 8 miles running, 108 miles biking (two days) and 2,700 yards in the pool. It was a fun last weekend before classes. In between workouts, I was able to spend time hanging out with friends. Saturday night, we went to the race track to watch some ostrich, camel, and quarter horse races.

I have finally fallen into a good schedule that involves a lot of group work which will make it easier to stick to. In addition to easy 30 minute runs weekday mornings I will hopefully do the following.

Monday: Pool Workout
Tuesday: Speed Work at the Track
Wednesday: Open Water Swim-Bike
Thursday: Pool Workout
Friday: Off
Saturday: Long Run-Group Bike Ride
Sunday: MS 150: Training Ride

If I stick to that as much as possible I will be ready to rock my October races!

Swim, Bike, BBQ?

The plan for this evening's workout was a 1 mile open water swim and a 20 mile bike ride, followed by the bi-weekly tailgating barbecue. The weather chose not to cooperate. I ended up swimming one 1/2 mile loop then holding off on the rest of the workout because of lightning. I was expecting this to be a nice easy swim. I had been swimming much further in the pool recently. One mile should be a piece of cake. Not the case. Don't let the picture below fool you, the water was choppier than it looked. I was surprised at how awkward I felt when swimming in slightly choppy water. I think it is easier when the water looks bad to begin with. At least then I know what to expect.

The weather than cancelled my bike ride did provide some beautiful photo opportunities. There was a clear rainbow over the swim hole which didn't come out in the pictures, and the clouds were amazing.

Swimming Take Two

Wow, my arms are about to fall off!! I just finished my second swim practice of this training season. I don’t know about everyone else by I have a love hate relationship with swim coaches. I love how I feel after a hard swim practice, and I know that I will improve so much faster when I train with other people, but I absolutely want to die during practice and dread going every week.

Today was no exception. The office I was working at today is about 50 minutes from the pool on a good day which meant I needed to rush straight from work, to the pool and hope the rush hour traffic held off. I barely made it and hopped into the pool only 100 meters behind the other three people practice today.

I cheated and only did an 800 meter warm up so I could start the workout with the group. The main workout involved 1400 meters, three different strokes, and muscle-ups on the side of the pool. By the final 200 meter “sprint” I was struggling just to make my arms move in the proper directions. I hope that two and a half months of this will help me meet my swim goals at Ironman Austin in October.

Highpoint: learning my swimming ineptitude does not extend to breast stroke.

Lowpoint: realizing that breast stroke mandatory triathlons don’t exist. 

Back in the Pool

I will be happy to see the end of the Olympics this year because it means I will get more sleep. I keep telling myself it will be an early night but end up watching all of the Olympic coverage before going to bed. The only day I didn’t see all of the coverage was when I passed out on a little love seat around 9:30 and woke up almost 3 hours later with a horrible crick in my neck.

It is Friday morning and most people would be able to look forward to sleeping in for the next couple days. That is not the case for endurance athletes in Louisiana (except for all the badass athletes that are not affected by heat). For me this coming weekend means two days of waking up 1-2 hours earlier than I do for work in order to run and bike. At least on weekends I have time to take a nap midday if necessary.

Yesterday evening was the first time I went swimming with swim group and coach since my race in the beginning of May. Starting June 1st I was no longer allowed to swim at my normal college pool because I am not taking any summer course. So I only have been swimming once every 1 or 2 weeks in the lake. My longest swim was 1 mile and the rest were half a mile or less. Swimming in the lake has helped my spotting but I am back to bouncing off the lane line when splitting lanes in the pool. Luckily this weeks altercation witht he lane lines didn't draw blood.  Horray improvement!!

Next post will involve a recap of this weekend's Red Dress Run!

Heart Rate Monitor

Yesterday, I pulled my heart rate monitor out of the closet, for the first time in years, and took it to a speed-work with me. I always assumed I was in pretty decent aerobic condition. I have run two marathons, a couple half-marathons, and just finished my first half marathon with acceptable times.

 The walk from my car to the track brought my heart rate up to a whopping 127 bpm.  A very easy 1 mile warm up jog hit 182, and the hardest of the 10x300 workout peaked at 192 bpm. Eeek!

Today's swim-bike workout was not as scary. A half mile open water swim averaging 152 bpm followed by 10+ miles on the bike averaging 157 bpm.

 The coach told me I need more long slow runs and I need to run my slow runs at 70% heart rate. My internal response, “Screw that. I just ran 8 miles at 8:45 pace. I don’t need slow training.”

As usual, I am wrong.

After spending a slow day at work researching heart rate training, I am willing to admit it might have some merit (imagine that). The most convincing article I read was Working Your Heart by Mark Allen. How I currently understand it, 60-70% of your max heart rate is the intensity at which your body is able to convert fat to fuel and if you consistently train at that heart rate you will be able to run faster at that heart rate. As much as I want to believe that I am just too good for long slow training, if it a 6 time world ironman champion isn’t too good for heart rate training I can hardly claim to be.  Maybe I will acquire some patience along the way.