What I remember.

No apologies from the world's lagging-est poster. Training has been keeping me staggeringly busy along with the world that is my other life. Training has bumped up to 15 hours a week and really has been more like 25 when you count all the management, negotiation, drive time, clean up, wash down etc. I digress.

Workouts are actually going well even though there has been some selective substitutions from the schedule. This happened this week by simply moving a ride from a three sport wednesday to thursday, bumping a gym session for a home strength session. It adds a bit of fluidity to the schedule at the expense of rigor. Just important to keep everything moving forward without getting too stressed out if something unespected comes up and a workout is not feasible.

Still in the depths of base training there is little excitement as Z1 runs and slow bikerides do little to float my boat and fitness gains at this point are subliminal. Sometimes the existentialist in me finds deep meaning in these lackluster efforts but lofty thoughts are soon replaced by clockwatching.

Sunday was some exception.

Hilly run/ 60 min./ Z1-2_Z2-3 on hills

The run started hard. I was tired. Z3 felt like race pace. I lacked perspective and wanted performance. I started to get into some negative thoughts, like how training has left me slow. I fought it off and stayed positive and counted the days until Temecula,119 to be exact, and decided to be patient. About 3 miles into the run I felt some PE breakthrough and started clicking some sub 8 min miles at 148 bpm (solid Z2). Finished with:

7.24 mi@ 8:14 avg pace w/ HR 153 avg. repectable.

Saturday had great promise

as I was looking forward to getting in 4 hours preriding the RR course in Boulevard with JW. First of all Boulevard is DEEP. 75 minute drive time. Always up for an adventure with some good times and fair amount of suffering, I was psyched. My anticipation was even higher since most of my riding has been out and back from the house or on the trainer, pretty boring. Santa Ana conditions were supposed to be dying down so I was more worried about the cold. Halfway there I was getting blown all over the road. James was plenty aware of the situation and we just charged it. I brought all the cold weather gear but forgot one thing in the car.

we did one lap (22 miles in 1:30) as it was too dangerous and just plain sucked with gusts to 40 mph. The shoulder was beat up pretty bad and wind was blowing us around into the lane. The first lap was brutal with almost all the climbing into the wind. Standing made it twice as bad but was necessary to keep from stopping. Once again Z3 wattage felt really hard and was tough to get into a rhythm and develop some momentum. Did I mention the wind? I was probably up for one more lap but James was justified in calling it off. No way was I going solo. I was beat when I got home and considered going back out to ride but dragged my ass onto the

RACK

to get in another 90 min.'s as my hourglass was running low and it was the best use of my time. I was done with another hour and a half with some steady Z2 and peaks in short efforts in Z3.

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The rest of the week was a repeat of the previous week with planned volume up to 15 hours from 13. Two rides, 5 runs, 4 swims, and 2 strength sessions.

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The swimming continues to progress but can still feel my stroke shorten up on the left side when I get tired. Still I'm guessing my TPace is down from 1:47/100m to 1:40-1:42 based on PE on 400m set last week. My goal is to get it down to mid 1:30's by April. I might do some filming this week if time permits.

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Bring on some tempo!