Week 48: Review

This week was a lot more stable than the last, and fortunately all of my scheduled sessions went as planned. I did intentionally scale back the cycling a bit this week to strike a balance between the fitness benefits and staying motivated. While the 2.5 hours it takes to ride 80km is fine outside, it is mind-numbingly boring when sitting on the trainer. I won't be able to clock the mileage that I was last month, however I also want to make sure that this doesn't become a chore.

On a contrasting note, I expanded my Sunday run to 20km last Sunday in order to get myself over the 35 mile/week limit and stabilize at that point. Given the modified distance, I also elected to try a new route as well. Rather than the usual laps around a subdivision south of me, I did an out and back route that gave me a little more variety. As I'm not in a formal training schedule, I figured that now is the time to experiment with things a bit to give myself some more options once I do get into the program.


In addition to mixing it up a little, this route added substantially larger hills than my normal route provides so it made things a little more challenging. Given the topology of the Around the Bay race that I'm aiming for, working some hills like this into my schedule is likely good preparation. Either way, as things went well on this route last week I'll likely give it another shot this time around before I start playing with other options.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 58.5km
Walking: 45.4km
Cycling: 120.1km
Total: 224km

As noted above, the plan at this juncture is simply to hold myself at the current mileage so next week's schedule will be pretty much a mirror image of this week. It does look like the weather is going to be a little more of a variable in the upcoming days, but there isn't a whole lot that can be done about that ;)

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 20K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

One thing that I have been playing around with is the possibility of getting a VO2Max test done. The marathon is a delicate balancing act of various different physiological characteristics, so knowing where the various limits are would be quite useful. I'm still not 100% sure what my maximum heart rate is, and while my current estimate of 215bpm (my highest recorded heart rate) has worked well for me so far the extra stresses of the marathon could easily bring out the difference between theory and reality. Further, having a clinically measured VO2Max value would allow me to get precise readings on my caloric expenditure, thus simplifying the process of figuring out my nutritional requirements during long runs.