Building

We're into week #2 of a three week build cycle. The training schedule we're following is built around a basic four week, 3/1 periodization timetable. Three "build" weeks in which the workouts get progressively harder/longer followed by a rest week to let the body rest and re-adjust to its newly established baseline. The theory is that after the rest week your body can resume harder training more easily than working straight through. In fact it's supposed to work significantly better than doing a straight linear build without any protracted rest at all. We'll see.

I ended up taking Friday off trying to kick this cold (it was a rough day). By Saturday morning I wasn't sure how things would go, but it was so incredibly nice outside that it would have been a shame to let it go to waste. 65 degree days in January don't come around too often! The workout was our first organized group ride. We met out in Vienna at a bike shop near the W&OD bike trail. The first hour or so was spent in the shop talking about basic bike maintenance, trail etiquette, and pedal technique. The latter was pretty useful. Then we all went out for a 60' ride on the trail. The group rides will be helpful, especially when we start doing bricks, but it's a pain to load up the car with 3 bikes and spend more time driving to the trail than actually on it. This weekend we have to drive even further out. After that they've promised some more rides in DC and MD. I'm just waiting for the rides in Rock Creek where we won't even have to load the car up ...

Sunday was a busy day. We started by heading up to Takoma for a 30 minute swim. Sunday swims aren't following any set routine or drills, just swimming straight for 30'. It really helps to find a comfortable pace. I struggled early in the swim to do that, mostly because I'm still mucking with my breathing. Taking a breath on the left still feels really unnatural. I start out breathing every 4 strokes (same side every time), but then the heart rate gets up and I find myself wanting to breathe sooner. That translates to breathing on the right every other stroke. I'm trying to get into a groove where every 3 strokes, alternating sides, is the norm. I think it's actually affecting my stroke significantly. After a hard swim there are muscles in my left shoulder that are more sore than their partners on the right, probably due to the fact that I'm using a different stroke on the left to raise my body slightly as I turn to breathe on the right. Plus there's a knot around my right shoulder blade from turning my head to that side every time. Anyway, all of that aside, I was able to squeeze out 1400 yards in those 30 minutes. Not bad considering that 1650 is roughly the distance we'll have to hit in the race. My newly chosen swim goal is to get the race distance in under 30'. I think that's definitely attainable.

After getting back from the swim it was a 45' run. I hadn't run nearly that far since the 5 Miler in mid-December. I went roughly 4.5 miles, which is keeping with my 10" mile pace goal. For now. It wasn't easy. We haven't incorporated any speed or interval work into the run workouts yet. I think that comes this week. Hopefully that will start helping my pace. Right now I'm just focusing on hitting the workout times knowing that the speed will have to wait.

Following the run I headed down to Arlington for a short gym training clinic by one of the coaches. It was basically a weight and core training routine with the triathlete in mind. Lots of core work with some targeted weight training involved. We spent a lot of time on modified yoga and pilates-like drills with other isolated stretches and core work on those big rubber training balls. Some of this stuff was no joke and I knew enough to watch and not attempt. I'm going to try to incorporate this into the weekly routine starting next week, going slowly to start. My abs still hurt today.

So, that was Sunday. I was beat and slightly sore on Monday. Luckily it was only a 30' bike session. I'm still doing those at the gym on the stationary bikes, but that will change sometime later this week when we get a new bike trainer. With the winter coming on strong and 2 budding triathletes in the house it will more than pay for itself in training time not lost. I just can't wait for the first time somebody in our building stumbles on one of us spinning furiously away in the basement! It doesn't hurt that we will be training on our own bikes; there is no way I can get the gym bikes to be set up like my own, and you can't use bike shoes on most of them (you can on the spinning bikes, but I don't have the right cleats). Plus I'll finally get to fit and try out my aerobars. They're nothing special, but I hope they'll get me a better position on the bike. That may require another bike fitting, though.

Today was Tuesday, and you know what that means! 4:45 wake up call and in the pool by 5:30. Liz is still feeling the ill effects of being sick, so I encouraged her to sleep in and try to kick this thing instead of making it worse. It was a different workout today. We started with 2 sets of 300 divided into 100/50/100/50 segments. We misunderstood the RI instructions and did the whole 300 in one shot. We were supposed to rest between each set of 100 or 50. Oops!! The 50s were easy pace, the 100s were build intervals on 25 going easy -> moderate -> race pace -> sprint. We had 35 people in the pool this morning, and 6 in our lane alone! That made for some, um, interesting pace problems on the longer intervals. Unless everybody is swimming the same speed people are going to be swimming into each other, or slowed down, or waiting at the end of an interval. Steph said that we had a run scheduled for after the swim, and I thought she was being a liar. But she wasn't. At least for the Level 2 schedule. I've been following Level 1 purely for the running side of things. I'm really starting from scratch there. So, I got suckered into heading back out for 25' run (was supposed to be 30'). We'll see how that goes and determine if I should make that a weekly thing ...