Notching up the volume.

When I looked at the schedule for the week, the first thing I noticed was a slightly different daily schedule and a slight increase in the volume. (11 hours this week vs. 9:40 planned last week)


I'm writing this post on the new laptop. I got this on Wednesday and am stoked to have it all loaded with Garmin Training Center, Training Peaks WKO+, and Power Agent. I'm going to be more consistent with going out training with my G305 and Ptap and downloading to Training Peaks/Training Bible. Time's going to be tight and the expectations are high, so hoperully all the data and feedback will get me to a place where I'm making the most of the time I do train. Of course not taking into account all the time spent tweaking on the posting and data. At least I can do it when its dark and cold within earshot of my daughter. I'm sold on data.


Monday:
A great day off and I felt awesome and strong even after a slightly harder than planned. I love to ride hard and am looking forward to some long hard rides in the hills!


Tuesday:
Ride 2:00 Z1-2 (honest)

I headed out from Fiesta Island and was determined to stay within the training zones as I was solo and wanted to be disciplined. I wanted to stay between 180-210 W. Easy enough on the flats but the route included torrey grade and the del mar bump. I wanted to see how well I could control HR vs. watts on the grade and I was able to hold steady 225W with NO heart rate(138-140) variability for the 9 minute climb. What's wierd is that my wattage was in endurance zones for the ride and HR was in recovery zones. Got to ask Jim about that. I also experimented with riding some slightly bigger gears meaning lower cadence~70's.

Wednesday:
Swim 1:00

What a wakeup call. I headed to Nado 50m pool to do 1000m time trial. It was pointless. I got through the warm-up and was feeling OUT OF SHAPE. I think it was a combination of being out of the water (sick) for a week and pushing off the wall half as much. I figured I'd pace myself and suffer for the first 200m then get in a groove. Wasn't happening. I called it after 500m in 8:53.

That's what...1:47's, swallowing water and throwing cement. Determined to stay in the water for 60 minutes I went back to past workouts and did 4x100(30s) and 8x50(20s) form on EACH one. Felt good for not throwing in the towel completely, but was really shocked at how badly I swam. Swimming is the new limiter! Perfect, now I have two limiters out of three!

Run 0:50
I wasn't tired at all from the near drowning and was psyched to run 8x20s strides on a hill.
I have a perfect spot 15 min from the house. Warmed up on the run over and did some drills then the repeats. Cool down on the way home then over to the bleachers for 2 sets of 10 jumps, 10 lunges ea. leg, hopped back to start. Good Run!


Thursday.
Run 1:15 Z1-2

I chose a new flat course for these runs as I want to be able to repeat the effort and compare pace/HR. I left from the MVY, then out to FI for one big loop.

8.21 mi.
Avg pace 9:07
Avg HR 145
Max HR 165

Felt pretty beat up after this long run of the season so far. Not worried about the pace. just wanted to keep it in the Zones.


Friday.
Swim 1:00
2000m

Luckily I felt better for this swim and made it through the first T-pace workout of the season.
Not too difficult when your threshold pace is 1:47/100m. Just for comparison last year it was down to 1:38/100m. completed the workout as planned but not easily.
Time for some swim focus!

Saturday.
Run (Intervals) 1:05

First time to Kevin's workout in a long time. This is one of those workouts that you get excited about the night before and then in the morning you want to avoid like shit on your shoe. I let those negative thoughts pass on through and just show up. Kevin always gives some inspiration before each session. this time he talked about the secrets to getting faster. Guess what? no secrets! Consistency and be willing to get out of your comfort zone. This really means, be willing to get out of your slightly uncomforatable zone and into the really uncomfortable zone, that's all.

I was still a little sore from thursday's long run but fired up. after the usual "warmup" about 15 minutes. we did:

3x3minutes
1x6minutes
2x2minutes
4x1minutes Total interval time: 23 minutes

I actually spent 33 minutes in zones 4 and5
I hit 180-181 bpm on almost all intervals and my legs were definitely soaked on each one. Good session but I was cooked the rest of the day.

Sunday:
Ride: 3:11 50 mi.

Froze my ass off at 7:00am 43 degrees. It just sucks when its like that. good ride but a little boring solo especially when your constantly thinking about how cold it is. I was a little sore from saturday, and happy to keep it zone 1-2.

Going to work with Jim on the swim this morning. He's got the underwater Coach Cam. Hopefully we'll be able to "fix" something!

Power update (not measured in watts)

Finally getting a break to post a meaningful update on the training. This last week has been more significant because there was some problems. The week prior went relatively smoothly with some easy runs, swim golf, capped off with a great Run clinic with Jim on Saturday and a Muddy 2:30 MTB with James on Sunday.

Run clinic.
This was a new take on the run clinic this time. I learned a lot of new stuff regarding dynamic warmup and drills. I was also really happy to get some tape of me running. Jim filmed us and broke it down one by one afterwards. Things checked out pretty well but we identified two good areas I can easily work on.

1. MORE LEAN
2. Keep elbows more in front to eliminate tension in the upper back. This will probably allow
my spine to stay more in line and make it easier to accomplish item 1.

Its also good to have some baseline footage at this early point in training. Thanks Jim.
Neuromuscular Pathways....On!

Last Week 12.02-12.09

Monday.
Off

Tuesday.
I had a swim and a run on the schedule.
Run was 30 minutes easy and got it out of the way at sunrise. I woke up not feeling so good, but made it through the run. By the time I got home that little queeziness felt like I got punched in the stomach. The rest is far to graphic. Begins with D ends with A and lasted for two days. I missed an important workout on Tues. which was the 1000m time trial in the pool to figure out T-pace. I was out until Friday when I was finally "confident" enough to get on the bike.

Friday.
I had a two hour ride scheduled and felt more comfortable riding on the trainer close to home.
I ended up doing 60 min's on the trainer including some SLD's and some solid Z2 steady. I had to make something out of nothing and knew the SLD's that I missed on Wed. needed to be done.

Saturday.
Finally feeling 100% I headed out for a 60 min run Z1-2. I felt the best I've felt on a run in a long time. Not that my pace was smoking in relation to HR...because it wasn't, I felt this way because my legs felt really strong. I attribute this to being pretty consistent with strength training. I've been getting in one to two sessions with the second usually happening after a run.
There's some bleachers at the Little League park next to my house. What I'll usually get in is some dynamic lunges, A-skips, Step-ups on the bleachers and bleacher Jumps. About two sets of two minutes each. Usually to fatigue not failure. (I'm going to start counting these)

Sunday.
Ride 3:00 Z1-2
Freebased my Base training.

I was happy to see that it was clear when I woke up because three hours in the cold rain makes for a long ride. I was happy to get out riding again with JW. His work ethic is second to none and Lord knows it pays to hang with successful people. The intentions of this ride went by the wayside as we ended up in rolling/hilly territory right off the bat. We had talked about riding flat up to Pendleton but got sidetracked. We ended up doing a pretty fun improvised loop and kept it pretty close to zones until I asked James where the ten minute hill was that he does his intervals. Next thing I know, we're halfway up with the wind in our face. I did my best to keep it under 230 watts and rode it like a chick (sorry girls). This was a beast of a hill and great for future workouts. At least I didn't attack it. I felt a little guilty for breaking the workout but the stoked feeling I had after a fun ride made it go away pretty quick. I'll do better next time.

At this point I'm working on my goals for the season. This includes race goals as well as training goals. I've also got my race schedule figured out and will post this after it's confirmed with Jim after our next phone meeting tonight.