It's been two weeks since my last post. I'd like to think that this is a result of my fairly intense schedule leaving little time for posting. That's not true, but it has been a high volume two week period.
I've had several break through work outs in the last few weeks. The session I'm most proud of was a 3K swim last Thursday. I also did 1.6K the Tuesday before that and 1K on friday. So 5.6K for the week, which destroys any previous volume. The key here was getting my stroke in order and really moving much more efficiently. This came after I really started to get my back and lats into moving me forward. As soon as I could do that, heart rate, VO2 and perceived effort all came down to manageable levels. Having assumed that swimming would be a big limiter, I now feel much more optimistic.
Biking sessions were more mundane. Last Saturday, I did 69 miles at an easy 124 BPM. Yesterday, I did 80 miles at an even easier 122 BPM. Last week it was freezing. Yesterday, it was alternatively warm, cool, cold, rainy, and it even hailed. These weren't the most taxing sessions, but I think they did much for establishing some mental toughness benchmarks. Today I did a short 15 mile ride, again at 122 BPM, while it was very cold and very windy. Again, not a hard session, but one to remember when it gets warmer in the summer and it's time to dig deep to get that extra speed. I did the ride on the new tri bike and I wasn't terribly happy with the speed that I felt I was getting through an aero position. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'm confident I can get it dialed in before too long.
Running was the other area where I felt I had some break through sessions. I don't have data for what was probably the best run so far this year, my hrm ran out of batteries. Last Tuesday, 4 March, I hammered 13.1 miles in 145 or so. The weekend before, I did a semi-slow 8.8 miles (after the 69 mile ride remember). Today, I put it on the line and went out and did 21 miles in prep for the marathon that's coming along in less than three weeks. It was a slow day, 9:38 a mile, but it was a high volume weekend, so, I'm not too worried about picking up the pace for the marathon. That pace works out to a 4:10 Marathon or so - and I'm shooting for 3:45. (As an aside, I'm planning to go out for the 1/2 marathon at around 9:00 pace and then bring it up to around 8:30 for the second half. If I can do that, I'll show up right at 3:45.
I think that's most of the news from the last few weeks. I'm doing a VO2 ma test this coming week to figure out lactate threshold and hr zones, etc. Hopefully I'll be able to dial it in a bit better afterwards. In any event, minus the tri bike speed, I'm pretty happy with progress to date. Even better, I get two days off in advance of VO2 and can probably start to taper a little bit with an eye to the marathon. I believe I'll try to do a club duathlon next saturday, which I hope should be fun. I'll post results....
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