What's that I glimpse on the horizon?

A finish line, perhaps? We're getting mighty close. We leave for Florida in 5 weeks, and this week is the very peak of our training schedule. I already feel beat down and it's only Thurssday! Tuesday morning we did 2 x 20' continuous swims to get us used to sustaining long distances at pace in the water. We've been doing 30' every Sunday for quite a while now, so it wasn't bad. I definitely welcomed the change from the hard intervals of the past two weeks. I'd been having a real problem keeping a good pace since most of our practices are shorter intervals with rest. I tend to go out too hard for the ones where we are supposed to be doing "race pace". This past Sunday was the first swim where I didn't feel the need to do a recovery stroke for a length during the long swim. I just hope my muscle memory can remember that pace in the excitement of race day.

Speaking of long Sunday swims this week we decided to do an 8K St Paddy's Day race as a little warmup! It had been on our calendar for a couple months before I had realized that it was in the middle of our hardest week. Weekends have been cursed so far and it was no different on Sunday. 70s on Wednesday and Thursday, below freezing on Saturday and Sunday. It was about 31 when we lined up at 9:00 for the race. I worked on my pace and didn't push it very hard even at the end. I was looking for some consistency. However, I missed every mile marker on the course so I have no idea what my splits looked like. Finish time was 45:20, good for just over a 9:00/mile pace. I would be thrilled with that pace during the final 10K of the triathlon. Not likely coming off the bike, but my under 60:00 goal should be attainable.

After the long run on Sunday I felt justified to skip one of the Tues/Thurs runs this week. I ran home from swim practice on Tuesday morning, and we are going swimming tonight so I probably won't get another in. I don't feel too guilty about that ...

Saturday is another long brick with a swim thrown in at the end! Of course it will be 70s today and tomorrow then high of like 53 on Saturday. It can't continue like this for much longer. I hope.