It's amazing how new challenges seem in retrospect versus before you've been through them. My coach fills out my schedule about two weeks at a time these days. He's pretty active in managing my workload, so he'll put together a block of work, see how I'm doing, then adjust from there. Just before I went to Mt. Bachelor for New Year's, my schedule for these two weeks came up. When I saw it for the first time, I just kind of stared in disbelief. 5,000y swims. 2 hour runs. Multiple 2+ hour bike sessions. Most days with three or more hours of work. Workloads of 18+ hours.
So now I'm at the end of that block, and like most things it doesn't seem so bad. Last Sunday I had a 1:45 run scheduled. It went okay but I felt really beat up afterwards. Both my knees were sore and I was just generally hurting later on Sunday and into Monday. I had a 30 minute run on Tuesday, then a 90 minute run on Wednesday. That went okay but I was still a little ragged.
This morning I had a two hour run on the schedule. I ran for 60 minutes with Deb on Friday night, then 45 minutes (easy) after my ride yesterday. I wasn't sure how today was going to go, and as an added challenge it snowed a bunch more yesterday (yes, I live in Seattle, no this is not normal) and was still freezing cold. So the streets are really slick. I managed to run last night, but any run much over an hour is tedious around my neighborhood. It's very hilly, which makes it hard to keep the heartrate steady, and you kind of have to contrive a route to get the time in. You do this by running large zig-zags or circles of 5-10 blocks at a time. It kind of sucks. So for today's run, someone suggested the newly opened East Lake Sammamish Trail. This turned out to be just an amazing day. I got started around 9. It was 22 degrees, but with the sunshine, the fresh snow, the glass-still lake, and the straight, flat trail pretty much all to myself, it was just great. I wish I'd had a camera with me. The trail, like most trails around here, is a converted railroad passage. And even though it goes between the houses along the water, much of it is very secluded. Not only did the gravel help with traction, but it made for a much softer running surface, which probably explains why I'm not feeling any real negative effects. Anyway, my plan was to run really easy - 9 minute miles or so - but as I was going my pace kept ticking up at a steady HR. So I ended up doing 14.3 miles in 120 minutes, which is an 8:24/mi pace. Now, 8:24 isn't terribly fast, but I did all of this at a heart rate of about 142, just cruising for the most part. Last 15 minutes got kind of hard. But I've never run that far before. Moving around today, I can't believe I ran almost 40 miles this week. That's not a big deal for a lot of people, but given my running history, I never thought I'd do something like that and ever walk again. Good times.
Yesterday was a long day too. I had 4 hours scheduled on the bike, but there's no way you can ride outside. Soooooo, it was 4 hours on the trainer in the basement for me. Todd brought his trainer over and rode with me for a while, fortunately it was the last half, that helped a lot. It didn't turn out to be nearly as bad as I'd expected but it was a long time nonetheless.
The weeks are really clicking by. I'm getting excited to race. My new schedule just went up and it looks like I've got 10 more solid days before I get some downtime, but the hours aren't nearly as big as these two weeks.
Oh, and I crossed the 100,000y mark in the pool this week too. Over 60 miles in the pool since October.
| Week 15 Totals |
| Type |
Distance |
Duration |
| Weights |
|
00:35 |
| Bike |
161.0 mi |
09:00 |
| Run |
38.7 mi |
05:41 |
| Swim |
10300.0 yd |
03:25 |
| Total Duration: |
18:41 | |
| Season Total (since 10/1/2006) |
| Type |
Distance |
Duration |
| Bike |
1333.1 mi |
83:17 |
| Weights |
|
15:20 |
| Run |
310.3 mi |
46:56 |
| Stretch |
|
02:55 |
| Swim |
108993.4 yd |
38:05 |
| Rest |
|
|
| Core |
|
00:45 |
| Total Duration: |
187:18 | |