I'm still dreaming, damnit. Here's my belated training post from last week.
Highlights from this week: A long run AND a ride WITH FRIENDS!
Monday: 6.1 miles easy AM. I definitely forgot how triathlon FORCES you to take your easy days easy. But it's actually great! Also, this was the first day of the rest of my life, aka the day I decided to become a morning exerciser.
Tuesday: 80 min bike (22 miles) AM - about an hour ride + my commute; bike commute home PM (6 miles). Tuesdays are the only day I'm going into the clinic at the moment and bike commuting is the best in the summer anyway, so my new Tuesday thing is riding for an hour (eventually more), stopping home and grabbing my backpack, and then riding to work. It's great! I rode up a nasty hill near my house for the 3rd time in a week which is just silly, then took a relatively easy route home. I also ran a mile with a patient at around 9 minute pace during the day because I am lucky enough to have a return to running patient right now...THE BEST!
Wednesday: 7.1 miles running AM with a little fartlek workout (8 x 1 min on/1 min off). In an extremely odd turn of events I decided randomly during this run to do a workout...an urge I have not felt in MONTHS and an urge I don't think I have ever felt at 7 am. I am truly becoming a new person! Didn't keep track of actual pace but looks like the on segments were around 5K pace. Also did this on a relatively busy pond loop so had to keep my buff up pretty much the entire time (that is still a thing here in MA) which definitely upped the challenge.
Thursday: 90 minute bike AM including hill reps with a friend from my Reach the Beach team! He is a pretty hardcore triathlete and has been given me a lot of advice over the past couple of months. I had commented on a Strava workout he had done on this absurd hill which I've somehow never encountered even though it's like 2 miles from my house....next thing you know we were arranging to ride it together the next morning, lol. As my Grammy would have said, this hill is "something else again". It climbs 313 ft in under a mile! Probably should have found this while I was training for Mount Washington but glad I know it exists now. Actually the descent was sort of worse than the ascent...scary bombing down a 10% grade into an intersection. Then we went out on the bike path and John attempted to teach me how to be a part of a group ride. I was pretty pleased that he felt like I could probably hang with the group he usually rides with - all very experience triathletes!
Friday: Split 7 mile run PM with a swim in the middle - ran not quite 5 miles to take the long way to my local lake, swam 2000 yds, then ran 2 miles home. The swim was kind of trash - it was hot so I didn't wear a wetsuit which = slow swim to begin with. There was also a pretty significant wind which was blowing waves into my face the entire way back AND I apparently didn't tighten the nozzle on my swim buoy enough because it was filling up with water. Very very slow. But I just find swimming so great that I didn't even care!
Saturday: 11 mile long run on Prudence Island with FRIENDS!!!! New England is slowly reopening with a lot of precautions in place (masks, etc) but we are now at the point where going for a run outdoors with 3 or 4 people seems like an OK idea. This was the 3rd year a few of my teammates and I have made a trip to this lovely island off the coast of Rhode Island, where we do a 10-12 mile long run on the beautiful and quiet dirt roads before we take the ferry back to the mainland. Last year at this run I remember I was just figuring out how biking impacted my running and I felt TERRIBLE. My legs were much more cooperative this year, and we were also lucky enough to have absolutely spectacular weather for June - low 60s with low humidity. We also went to brunch outdoors afterward (my first time at a restaurant since early MARCH) and what a delight. Never thought I would be so overjoyed about a pitcher of sangria and just shooting the breeze with some friends in the sunshine after a long run.
Sunday: LOL the silliest day ever. I somehow got talked into being a part of this virtual 26 x 1 mile relay that my club was doing on Friday night. Never mind the fact that I haven't done speedwork in like...forever...and I'm biking 100+ miles a week...I'm in? So I ran a flat out mile on the bike path near my house and a) managed a sub-6 (5:58) which b) is actually a road mile PR because I've never broken 6 on the roads before! LMAO! It was also extremely, extremely hard. I don't want to know what random passersby were thinking of me. But I achieved, and with that done, I did what anyone woudl naturally do which was to go home, change shoes, and head out for a 75 mile ride! This was my longest ride ever by nearly an hour and quite honestly I was a little nervous about it but it turned out extremely well. I still have a lot of work to do on the nutrition/hydration front but I managed almost 4.5 hours on the bike, by myself, without anything dramatic happening or feeling upset that I was on my bike at all. It was pretty great! The thought of running a marathon following that + another 2 hours is completely terrifying, but hey! That's what the next 3 months are for, right? I hope so...
Totals: 36.5 miles running, 120.4 miles riding, 2000 yd swimming. Total training time 13 hours!
Definitely started finding the groove with how to schedule and manage workouts this week. Doing shit before work makes SUCH a difference....this is seriously going to change my life (yes, I hear you all you morning runners being like well DUH). I also forced myself to stick to my plan this week (with the exception of the surprise mile time trial lol) and that definitely helped things go more smoothly. I felt like I recovered much better this week and never felt too beat up, which was a positive!
Goals for the upcoming/in progress week:
- work on long ride nutrition
- get a second swim in
- fit all of my training into 6 days so that I can go hiking on Saturday!
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