Charging Forward

Saturday's interval run (4 x 1 mile repeats) was great - felt good before, during and after. During the run, while I was focused on HR and pace, I also did some thinking (more thinking during the recovery times) and came to the realization that given my schedule and abilities, I'm not going to be able to get in every training session. I'm not going to nail everything like I did when I was on vacation. And I can't beat myself up for that. I just need to keep charging forward.

My bike is at the shop, getting a new rear tire. I just bought a new pair of running shoes (same as my old ones) which I'll start breaking in after Sunday's race. And I'm feeling pretty good.

Sunday's weather is supposed to be partly cloudy and in the upper 50s. Mentally, I'm ready. This is going to be a good way to start the season.

Charge!

Back At It

The last week and a half have not been good for my training. I came back from vacation, and 12 hours after arriving home I was in the office. And I worked. And I worked. And I worked. And in the middle of this I felt a cold coming on and did everything I could (successfully!!!) to ward it off.

But the constant long hours of the week, plus working the entire weekend (8 hour days plus 3 hours of drive time both Saturday and Sunday) took its toll on my training...which, in effect, became nonexistent.

But this morning I did what I hate to do (get outside before the sun comes up) and got in a 40-minute run. This was, mind you, much shorter than what my coach had planned but given an early doctor appointment this morning, it was what I had time for. And not only did I start before the sun came up, I finished (seeing only one runner and one car the entire time) before the sun came up.

It feels good to be back at it.

Retirement? Permanent Vacation?

I took a week of vacation last week. While cruising around the Caribbean I thought to myself, “I could get used to doing this all of the time.”

And when I realized that I was nailing every training session my coach had planned for me last week I thought, “I need to be doing this all of the time.”

I wasn’t wild about the cruise ship’s outdoor track (dodging other passengers, hurdling deck chairs) so I did my running on the treadmill. My cycling was done on a LifeFitness RevMaster, which I’d never ridden before. While I like the StarTrac Spinner, the RevMaster was nice, with a bar that simulates aero bars and a computer that picked up my HR monitor and also displayed cadence.

Granted, my coach set this up as a recovery week, but I still had one session per day. He also knew that I wouldn’t have access to a lap pool, so it was all cycling and running.

And now that I’m back from vacation and back to work, I’m once again finding it difficult to hit those sessions with the same regularity and intensity as I did last week.

Guess I gotta keep on buying those lottery tickets.

Eureka! (again)

I haven't posted in about a week, mainly because I've felt a little derailed in my training.

I was talking about it this morning with my friend Heather, who is also a triathlete, and we got on the subject of the "Eureka!" workout. You know the kind. Everything falls into place and you just feel great about it. When training has been off-kilter for a while, the eureka workout can bring you right back to where you need to be.

Tonight I had a eureka workout. It was a 15-minute warm up, then 4 x 1 mile repeats in HR Zone 4 with 3 minutes recovery between each, then 20 minutes of cool down. Since the streets are still a mess from the recent snow, I did it all on a treadmill. My mile splits were right around 6:45. And my recovery was good. The only problem I had was going slow enough to get my HR back down for the cool down. I kept wanting to go faster.

So hallelujah! I feel like I'm back on track. I've got a short recovery run tomorrow morning and a swim session tomorrow night. And the coach is going to videotape me so we can begin to really work on whatever it is that's holding me back with the swimming. I have a feeling he's going to be surprised at what a disaster my form is, but at least he'll know exactly where I'm at with the swim. It isn't pretty, but at least it'll give us a jumping off point for improvement.