A few weeks ago I had a great week 10/11 summary typed up, then managed to lose it. I've been bitter about that, and busy, hence the pause. But things have been interesting.
I've actually been doing a little lower volume for the few weeks around the holidays. I've been hard at it since September and during the week of the 11th I started really feeling it. I had a talk with my coach and he dialed me back a bit. So I took a rest day (!) and then was looking to pick it back up when the windstorm hit. That caused a major problem for swimming. See the ProClub's pools didn't have power for a week. I managed to get into two other pools during that time, but that took a big bite out of my pool time. And after that week vacation time started, so I've been a little less regular in the pool.
The running volume has stayed solid though, and the bike has been decent. I'm pretty happy with where my running is at and I've been mostly enjoying it. It's nice to be able to run for an hour and have it be no big deal. We went down to Mt. Bachelor in Oregon for New Years and did a couple day's skiing and I got 3/5 completely off from training. Wow - weird. We got a good hour run in on Saturday in Sun River that was nice. They have lots of trails down there. They've got some ice and snow on them but it's still a decent running surface. The weather was cold but beautiful.
Three more solid months of work, then two weeks taper down before IMAZ. So basically now is when the workouts start to get a little more challenging. I'll be able to start pushing it on the bike a bit more, which I'm looking forward to, as well as really starting to crank up my long runs for the week towards two hours. The swim frequency goes down a bit but the volume continues to build as well. Giddy up.
I'm definitely looking forward to racing though. The time has been going by pretty fast. I'm excited to see what happens as we add some intensity on top of the volume that I've been doing. The whole idea is to build a very broad aerobic base then build on top of that. I don't think I've ever really had that before. And right now it's a little misleading. Since I've been doing zero intensity, I have no real speed to me. Basically I can go slowish forever, but not fast for very long. It takes a lot longer to build base than to build power, and that's what I've been doing.
And I'm pretty healthy. Still having some issues in that right shoulder but swimming doesn't seem to bother it more than, say, sleeping funny. Achilles got a little irritated from skiing (running doesn't bother it but skiing does, hmmmm...), and still a little bit of ankle pain (again, not from running, still not sure what that's about). And the weird foot thing I had was something called a "cuboid subluxation". One of the bones in your foot can randomly get out of alignment. The PT did some crazy ninja move and pretty much fixed it.
Oh the rain stopped...better get my run in. Anyway, here's the totals through the end of 2006...
| Totals for Oct 2-Dec 31 |
| Type |
Distance |
Duration |
| Bike |
1006.1 mi |
62:33 |
| Weights |
|
13:15 |
| Run |
220.6 mi |
33:43 |
| Stretch |
|
02:55 |
| Swim |
79843.4 yd |
28:05 |
| Rest |
|
|
| Core |
|
00:45 |
| Total Duration: |
141:16 |