All in.

Enough with the drama. These posts were starting to get too depressing full of explanation or excuses depending on how you look at it. I'm committing to race on the 24th no matter what. I'm feeling good enough to train, I'll be good enough to race and that's that. It's too easy to get complacent and start believing all the personal complaints that bounce around on a daily basis. The training has been going well this week despite a few adjustments in location. My sacred pool is drained for maintenance. (sounds like a metaphor but it's not, I swear) Fifty meter skatepark.


Monday
was a much appreciated day off. There is a certain amount of guilt that goes along with being more consistent in taking your off days than with the rest of the training. Considering the circumstances I'll take it.


Tuesday
I was tired right after I woke up. I went in for the weekly massage and just felt like sleeping.

I checked the ocean by my house as I wanted to get in the ocean to do my swim workout which included 3 x500 T pace intervals. The water was full of kelp and seaweed locally so I headed up to LJ shores to battle the tourists for parking. The water was a little lumpy but the swim lane buoys were up which helps with siting. I swam easily for the first ten minutes then hit my intervals just going by stroke count and time. My stroke count is about 20 per fifty and that worked out pretty well to do 7:30 500s. It was tough swimming fast in the chop because when you need air, you need air at T pace, not a mouthful of water or a skipped breath. Nothing but reality for race situations. I finished out the swim doing some surges then 5 min easy/bodysurfing. Not a bad workout. It felt good to get back in the ocean.


Later in the afternoon I got on the trainer for an hour workout. This was not a magic day for me on the bike but I know it's in there. You just know. 10 x 90 seconds broken up into 30 second efforts then shifting up. 1:1 recovery.


Today, Wednesday.
I had some threshold work in the pool. I bit the bullet and drove up to the JCC to hit the 50m pool. They changed it around so now it's 25 (yd?). You really appreciate the long course swims when you go shorter. That's a lot of turning around. It was hard to judge my T pace on the short course but I started at 1:30 for 400 then faster for each 300,200,100 at race start pace at 1:20.
I felt pretty strong and smooth in the pool escpecially compared to the ocean swim prior. Like boarding on the groomers versus moguls. I hung out and watched the masters workout for a few minutes just to check the faster swimmers. A lot of fast guys with lots of technical flaws, go figure.

Later I got out for a 30 minute run with some 20s accelerations beyond race pace. I was working on technique in 5 minute sections. Really concentrating for 5 then off for 1. This seems to work well for me to break the run into smaller portions for improving technique, cadence, lean and arms.

I've been looking ahead at the training going into race day and it looks really good. This will be the first race that I'll be close to being undertrained (on paper). This of course due to my injury and subsequent inconsistency in some of the workouts. I consider this an interesting opportunity to race really fresh. This will be like a sprint distance effort, aggressive. I plan on attacking the swim, pounding the ride and running hard. I'm really familiar with the course. I've got the engine. Finally can say I'm looking forward to it.