Schedule-wise, this week was a carbon copy of last week. Same workouts, same durations. I've had a little concern about my intensity levels. I've been reading more out of Going Long, along with this timely post from Gordo on his blog. Gordo has become the philosopher-king of long-course triathlon and is always interesting to read but passages like these got me thinking:
"You need to trust this protocol as you will be able to easily exceed. I'm constantly slowing myself down these days. Most people simply cannot follow this protocol -- they are too attached to their ego in training and racing. ...you can rush yourself back to last year's fitness, ... [but] my goal is to take myself into a whole new level of fitness. This is how I moved my IM run consistently under three hours.
...with the HR cap, there will be walking on hills -- if I can walk then so can you. Your humility will serve you well on race day."
My coach has been putting the word "easy" in the description of almost every one of my workouts. The workouts haven't been hard, but I don't usually finish them saying "wow, that was easy." My affinity for going fast, and my general idea of what "training" feels like tends to pull me up to higher intensities towards what's referred to as "tempo", where I've done most of my work historically. See, the weird thing about endurance sports is that working harder doesn't purely work. The idea is that your fitness is like a pyramid. The broader your "base" the higher you can build. So by doing a bunch of easy work, you're laying down a very broad base upon which to build upon later.
I did a better job on the team ride yesterday. Mostly. I rode with the slower group and kept my intensity down, except for a few climbs, and got a good solid workout followed by a good run. No matter how easy you go, when you start getting towards 3:30 of work, it's not easy. So that's OK. Anyway, my goal for this week is to do better at going easy. No fun.
Anyway, the swim today wasn't as good as the last two weeks. I didn't feel sharp muscularly and felt "splashy" in the water, meaning I had trouble finding my form. My 300s were in the mid-4:40s which isn't bad. I didn't do any 100s, I just added another 300 and then hit the weight room. The Sunday workouts are nice, especially when the time change gives you a free hour of sleep.
But the best news (for me) is that I'm a month in and (insert wood knockng sound here) I'm feeling good and healthy. My focus on getting 8 hours of sleep if at all possible is definitely helping. Coach says that we'll be adding a 5th run next week and starting our swim focus. Hmmm, I thought we were focusing on swimming...
| Week 4 Totals |
| Type |
Distance |
Duration |
| Weights |
|
01:00 |
| Bike |
92.0 mi |
05:21 |
| Run |
17.9 mi |
02:37 |
| Swim |
6600.0 yd |
02:15 |
| Total Duration: |
11:13 | |
|
Season Totals |
| Type |
Distance |
Duration |
| Bike |
269.6 mi |
19:03 |
| Weights |
|
05:15 |
| Run |
62.5 mi |
09:17 |
| Stretch |
|
02:15 |
| Swim |
25200.0 yd |
08:45 |
| Total Duration: |
44:35 | |