This past week may have been the best week of training yet; it just felt like I had great solid workouts in all three sports. Most weeks are good, but I typical only have killer workouts in one area each week.
Swimming – Got three good swims in, four would have been nice, but the quality of the swims was outstanding. Ended up with two 1.5 mile long course swims in well under an hour (which is good for me) and one 1.2 mile open water swim in just under 42 mins (which is fantastic for me). Regardless of how good my swims are, swimming will always be my weakness.
Bike – Got three great rides in, two really memorable ones. Thursday night as always was around 27-28 miles and averaged just under 20. Always some hard hills for me and the speed is just so impulsive. Saturday was a great 50 mile solo ride, no breaks, no stops, only riding 50 miles as hard as I could to see what would happen. The goal was to push out something over 21mph. I do have to thank Jeff Davis for suggesting that anything over 21 by yourself would be pretty hard because anytime I saw my speed drop below 21, I thought of that and just pushed through the pain as hard as I could. I was at a 21.3 average around mile 47, so I hunkered down on the tip of my saddle and pushed out everything I had for the last 3 miles. I ended up hitting 21.5mph for the 50 mile course. Just the weekend before, I did the same course with 4 guys and averaged only 0.1 faster. I now think we could have pushed over 22 if we’d wanted to. I followed this ride up with a 3 mile brick run at a 7:37 pace. The first 10 mins sucked bad, but I started to feel really good. I only stopped because I was trying to make it to breakfast with Kiki and the Meurers.
The third ride, Sunday (on my rest day, but I was feeling unusually good), was about 53 miles and averaged around 17mph. A bit slower than the previous day, but there was close to 4,000 feet of climbing this day as compared to the 1,200ish the prior day. I went out with a couple other guys and it was just fun to ride along, talk, and enjoy the ride instead of killing yourself for training. We stopped about midway at a little café/coffee shop and had espresso out on their porch. For some reason, I felt like a true cyclist in Europe training for one of the grand tours. Doug always puts together great rides.
Run – (wow, this is already getting long) Got 4 runs in. Brett kept me running this week, had he not shown up in the morning to run, I’m not sure I would have pushed out the runs I got. This was some incredible running by Brett too. I mean, let’s face it, if he can hang with me, he’s quit a badass right? HAHAHA, just means he’ll probably end up with a running injury like I so love to keep all year. Anyway, I got 6 easy miles on Monday. Brett and I ran an 8 miler (moderate long run for half IM training) on Wednesday at a rather fast long run pace of 7:53. We then started out for a 6 miler on Friday but felt great around mile 5 so we tacked on some extra making it an 8 miler at a 7:57 pace. These two 8 milers were great runs for both of us since the pace was around my expected race pace and well below Brett’s race pace. However, Brett might need to start recalculating his race pace… his running has really ramped up lately. My last run of the week was the 3 mile 7:37 paced brick run after my ride on Saturday.
In all, a fantastic week (however no off day, maybe I’ll take Tuesday off this week since it is an exceptionally easy day anyway). 4.2 miles in the water, a tad over 130 on the bike, and 25 running and all at pretty intense efforts. I just realized that the entire week of training is only 18.6 miles longer than a Full Ironman Race... hmm, that is going to kill us next year. I’d say this was a breakthrough week for Brett’s running too. Way to go man! GOOD LUCK to Lucas and Rachel on the on the crit racing this week and the Olympic Tri this weekend… these two never stop!
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