Training Tuesday: more of the same

[ I know this is a day late but the draft was sitting on my computer at home and I couldn’t post it yesterday. C’est la vie. ]

My weightlifting training should have been pretty easy: I had a daily eating plan and a scheduled list of workouts. All I had to do was stick with that schedule. The effort involved, of course, came from actually lifting the weights (and, sometimes, getting my lazy ass off the sofa and going to the gym). That is one of the key aspects of the Fleet Feet TRI101 program for me: the training schedule is laid out, day by day. In theory, all you have to do is follow it and you will, almost inevitably, get better at the individual events. But what if you deviate from it… for example, by mixing in races? I guess I’m going to find out. My first multisport event was on Saturday: the brand-new Mountain Deux aquathlon (a rather stupid name; it’s a ~5K trail run followed by a 200m swim).

I signed up for two more sprints, too: the Tarpon Tri in Houma (200m swim, 10mi bike, 5K run; super flat course but August in Louisiana, yikes!) and the RaceVermont Sprint in Shelburne, Vermont (where I’ll get to see Julie and her family, and for which I had to rent a wetsuit— Lake Champlain is cold!) I am a little nervous about the Vermont race because it’s a longer bike distance than I’m used to, and the swim portion is 500m of open water. It’ll be a fun challenge though.

Workouts since my last post:

Tuesday: in TRI101 class, we had a 40-minute group run scheduled. It was 88° when we took off, but I still managed 4.0 miles in 40:04. I’ll take it, but maaaaan, I was sweaty when we finished. I also had a swimming lesson, which went poorly— I am still having a hard time getting my stroke and breathing coordinated, and the drills Lisi taught me mostly just made me frustrated that I wasn’t doing them well.
Wednesday: I took a short ride to test my new cadence/speed sensor. Just under 7 mi in about 31 minutes.
Thursday: I had a root canal around noon, so I wanted to get a run in early. A local group of runners meets at Bridge Street for a 4.5 mile run, so I dragged out of bed at 0515 to join them. There were storm clouds building when we stepped off, then we started getting a really impressive lightning display about 1.5 mi into the run, so we cut it really short. 2.67mi in 23:14, which felt great— that’s very close to my “good” 5K race pace. The threat of getting zapped by lightning obviously helped, given my pace on the last part of the race. I love it that the watch gathers enough pace data to show the two (short) intervals when I took a walk/water break— those sharp downwards spikes.
Friday I swam 600m: in 3 sets:100, 400, and 100 again. I haven’t been doing the drills that Lisi prescribed, which means she’s been fussing at me.
Saturday was the Mountain Deux. See my full report here.
Sunday I had planned to do a brick, but wasn’t feeling well so I punked out. The schedule had a programmed day off anyway so I didn’t feel too badly about it.
Monday I had another swim lesson with Lisi. She introduced me to the notion of holding a steady stroke count, as well as giving me a whole bunch of drills. I swam about 450m, plus at least another 300m or so of drills. Then for fun, I took a bike ride through part of Limestone County— beautiful country scenery, followed by a big rainstorm once I was safely at home with the gear put away. This was the farthest distance I’ve ridden so far, just over 12 miles, and after finishing it I feel better about the Vermont distance.