| Weekly Workout Totals | 11/30/2009-12/06/2009 This week's totals are sponsored by my second race build of the season |
| Swim: | 14300 yards (8.12 miles) in 4.95 hours 26% of weekly workout time Approx. 1733 calories burned Canadian: 13075.92 meters Planned weekly hours: 5.08 & yards: 13800 |
| Bike: | Approx. 116.1 miles in 5.75 hours 30% of weekly workout time Approx. 3515 calories burned Total TSS=378 Canadian: 186.84 kilometers Planned weekly hours: 5.75 |
| Run: | Approx. 40.54 miles in 6 hours 31% of weekly workout time Approx. 2730 calories burned Canadian: 65.24 kilometers Planned weekly hours: 5.5 |
| Strength: | 2.38 hours 12% of weekly workout time Approx. 595 calories burned Planned weekly hours: 1.42 |
| All Sports: | Approx. 164.76 miles in 19.08 hours Approx. 8573 calories burned Canadian: 265.16 kilometers Planned weekly hours: 17.75 |
| Walking/Hiking: | Approx. 0 miles in 0 hours |
| Sleep: | 9.11 hours avg./night |
| Stretching: | 3.37 hours. Massage: 1 hours |
I changed my format to show the amount of time I had planned for each component (well except for sleep and stretching, because that is never planned in advance) because I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point I will not make my anticipated training hours. But who knows?
For right now (and this has been a trend since the beginning of my season, which was 8/31), I am typically running more than I planned much of the time because I start out being conservative in coming back from an event, then I realize that I am feeling good enough to ramp back up faster than I thought. Biking will stay on an even keel with my plans, since I am now relegated to the trainer, and well, as long as I complete the planned interval work, adding extra time isn't doing much for me. Swimming is a tough call--I've changed the plan so many times that I am never sure how much I need to be swimming on those Friday long swims. And my Sunday swim is completely optional, so my actual yardage can vary by 500-2500 yards in any given week! The strength work is off-kilter because of the extra things I am doing generally twice a week, which were unplanned, and are completely optional, and yet I have kept it up since the beginning of the season, to the tune of maybe :40 extra per week.
Things went pretty well last week. Mondays are always a bit rough, because unlike seasons past, in addition to Saturdays and Sundays being big training days, now my Fridays are as well. Although swimming 2.5 hours doesn't leave me as tired as running 2.5 hours, doing that amount of swimming and then another hour of running does. So my weekly fatigue pattern (with details about last week in particular) is like this:
- Monday: Feels great to swim in the morning, but I am at my slowest for the week. I am swimming 2700-3100 yards on Mondays. Feel pretty sluggish when starting to run mid-day, but I pick it up after about 1.5 miles in. Monday is an easy-ish run of :45-1:00.
- Tuesday: Feel pretty recovered from the prior week, enough so that lifting first thing in the morning feels good. Mid-day hard bike workout feels tough during warmup, but then the biking legs kick in and I usually hit all my power levels fine. My Tuesday ride is about 1:30 during the winter.
- Wednesday: Can usually nail a hard swim workout first thing in the morning. Wednesday swims are also 2700-3100 yards for the time being. Run legs have had some rest now, and I generally nail a good tempo run mid-day of around an hour.
- Thursday: The hard bike and run workouts are creating a good bit of fatigue, but I usually manage to get in another 1/2 hour of lifting in the morning, and then wonder if I can hit my power levels for the mid-day hard bike workout. I usually surprise myself and do just fine. It's another 1:30 ride. I make sure to stuff myself at dinner these evenings because Friday is a big day.
- Friday: Yippee, I am going to swim for awhile! Even though I've written workouts for these beastly swims (OK to me they are beastly), I sort of just get in the water and figure out what I feel like doing, which is a mix of some really long, straight swimming plus some intervals. I have to stop every now and then and do a little kicking because 6,000+ yards is a long time to keep goggles on my face. I bought some Swedish goggles to try out so maybe I don't look like an accident victim after these swims. I have become careful to take in calories and hydration during these festivals now, because if I have any desire to do another workout later, I need to keep up my intake. Also, I am eating a second breakfast of about 500 calories afterwards, which helps in recovery and setting me up for another workout. At first, I thought I wouldn't be able to run after say, 7,000 yards, but proved myself wrong. As long as I keep shoving in calories, it doesn't seem to be a problem. The biggest problem I have is that the more I swim on Fridays (it is just getting longer and longer with some breaks for races/events), the earlier I need to wake up because I need to be done swimming by 8:30AM. I did 7,500 yards last Friday. My longest swim. EVER. And then I ran for an hour, the same route I ran on Wednesday, and you know what? I was only slower by about 2" per mile!!!
- Saturday: This is long ride day, and then I do a short transition run afterwards not because I need to do brick workouts (running off the bike is more a matter of running frequently and being used to running whether you want to or not than it is of practicing running after riding, and I have proven this to myself time and time again), but because it's an opportunity to get in another run so I may as well do it. This weekend when I woke up on Saturday morning, it felt like I had a hangover, and I have come to know this feeling as "holy fuck you've trained a lot already." AKA, training hangover. Last week, I had already put in 13 hours before Saturday, which I think is probably a new high. When training for "just" an Ironman, I start to "feel it" when my weekday training starts getting close to 10 hours, so 13 is a huge jump. Good thing I am getting used to it now because it is just going to get worse as the weeks go on! But mostly because of the swimming, so it's not as bad as it would be if it were due to running a whole lot more (although that will happen the last 8 weeks before UMC). Anyway, I got through the hangover feeling by starting my ride with Mountain Dew, and after my warmup, when I got to work on my power intervals, I did just fine (2:45 worth). I surprised myself by running really well afterwards for :40.
- Sunday: Right now this is my long run day, and I expect to be tired when I start, but hey, it's not a work day, and it's not like I have to ride 100 miles, so it can't be too bad, can it? I wanted to get in 15 miles yesterday. I had a little of that training hangover feeling, but not as bad as Saturday morning. I took a can of Coke, a bottle of Infinit and a 32-oz. bottle of Gatorade with me to the gym to run on the treadmill. I made a workout for myself because, well, if I write it down, I will usually do it. So I did 2 hours on the treadmill, even doing the last 1/2 hour slightly faster than predicted, then I headed to the indoor track to do 10' fast and 10' easy. I surprised myself for the 10' fast by running sub-10K pace, and then I kept going only just easily. There was this woman doing some sort of circuit stuff trackside, and she was on the track for a bit during my fast piece, and I just smoked by her. When I was maybe 3' into the easy part, she came blazing by me and well, my ego got the better of me, so I thought I'd see if I could pick it up, and I did and got just behind her so she could hear me breathing for maybe 1/8 of a lap and then I blew past her. Well that alleged easy 10' was not very much slower than the hard 10'! But I had fun! I ended up getting in 15.4 miles in 2:20 total. What was funny was that while I was on the treadmill I would periodically try and get it to show me my heart rate and it was in the dumpster! Either I am getting really fit or something! I swam 1,000 yards really easily afterwards and then spent like an hour in the hot tub.
So that is how my weeks go. It is key that I sleep enough to support this stuff, and I generally don't have trouble with that except Saturday night, I didn't feel like stuffing myself, and ate what I thought would be enough. Well, I couldn't fall asleep, so I got up and ate about 300 more calories, thought that would be plenty. Woke up an hour later and made a sandwich, and that finally did the trick. So I am finding that eating to support this new activity level is challenging, but mostly so because I am unused to doing so much this time of year. I generally get sick of the plethora of carbs by the end of my season, so staying at a high level of training has been interesting. The amount of rice I am eating is incredible! I am starting to incorporate more frequent snacks, since I don't enjoy eating a whole lot at once (unless it's sushi--in which case BACK OFF because I will eat anything in sight). So Saturday's grocery trip had me buying candy, cookies and chips. I gotta eat something! The thought occurred to me this morning that maybe I should consult with a nutritionist (or whatever they are called), but I have so much to do as it is and I don't feel bad and I am getting my workouts done and recovering as best I can from them, so I don't really know what they would tell me.
Anyway, when all is said and done, that was a helluva big week, and this week will be a bit more. As long as I can keep proving to myself that I can do the really big training for 4-6 week blocks at a time, I am good to go. Will it be enough for Ultraman? I don't know just yet. But I need to keep it going here for just a few more weeks before I get a nice taper (and I will taper EVERYTHING, not just running) for Goofy Challenge.
Whereas I will typically say "Ironman training isn't that hard," what I am doing now seems to be a little hard. I feel like I need to do more things perfectly than before. Like sleeping and stretching. Eating is coming along, too.
On that note, hope everyone had a great week!
