Week 24: Review

Managed to get a good deal of work in this week, although I did miss my Monday cycling session due to weather concerns. Rather than take the day off, however, I elected to go out for an 11K power walk (~8:17/km pace) so that the day wouldn't be a total loss. Walking used to be the mainstay of my schedule, and I kept it up in the earlier stages of my running but with the miles that the marathon training schedules require I havn't had the time to mix them in alongside the running and cycling. When time permits, however, it's a good way to squeeze in a few extra miles without the training load that running would impose.

Aside from that, I also got around to doing my first proper swimming session in a long time after my run on Tuesday. The last time I did any significant number of lengths was nearly 18 years ago, so naturally my technique was pretty rusty. I've certainly done some swimming since, but most of that was recreational in nature with little in the way of sustained efforts required for lengths. Breathing was naturally my biggest issue, and loosing track of that meant that I had to take rests frequently to let it catch up. I had no problem breathing over my right shoulder, but for some reason I was having a lot of trouble taking in air over my left. While I likely could have had a better session just sticking to the one side, I didn't want to reinforce bad habits so I forced myself to alternate.

Regardless, I managed to put down a little under 1100m in around 1h15m (including breaks as I had no way to time and record individual lap times), which is pretty slow but not too bad for my first time back. It did take a good deal out of me, however, as the cycling and running sessions on the next day were pretty difficult. That's somewhat to be expected, however, as swimming involves very different muscle groups than the other sports and I have a lot of work to do before I get my fitness up in those areas. I do have to find a proper training program to get myself to where I need to be, however for the time being I'll just go out on a regular basis and log as many miles as possible to iron out the wrinkles ;)

The one thing that is a bit frustrating is that I don't currently have any mechanism to record my telemetry from these sessions. I've used my heart rate monitor for walking, running and cycling and it was an invaluable tool when getting started in those sports as I could gauge the proper effort when I had no experience in figuring that out by feel. Unfortunately the 2.4GHz band that Polar uses for communication between the heart rate strap and the wrist unit can't penetrate water, so it won't function in this environment (both parts are submersion rated, but they don't do much good when they can't talk to one another).

I was looking at the Suunto Memory Belt (which stores HR data in the heart rate strap itself) a few months back, however from what I've seen it appears to be difficult to keep in place unless you are wearing a wetsuit. Swimovate's Pool-Mate device looks interesting, however without a way to upload the data to a computer its utility is limited (as it can only provide averages, and not detailed plots). Will probably have to wing it for the time being, but I'll keep my eyes open for electronic aides that may simplify this sort of thing ;)

Aside from that, I managed to do all of the runs as scheduled. We did an 11K group run on Wednesday rather than the 8K scheduled as the others needed a bit more distance, so there's an extra 3K on my weekly totals this time around (makes up for the 2K I missed last week). Either way, it was apparently national running day in the US on Wednesday so I'll chalk it up to celebrating alongside our southern neighbours ;)


I was playing with the idea of trying out a 100K ride on Saturday, however time constraints limited me to the 75K route that I did last week. Upped the pace a little versus last time (30.5km/h vs. 30.1km/h), although a lot of that was again gated by the traffic on Rutherford so I'll have to find a better return route. The group ride didn't materialize again this time around, so it was a solo ride once again. Either way, I'm hoping to give a 100K ride a shot this upcoming Saturday as the 75K rides have worked well so far ;) Just keeping my fingers crossed that the weather lines up to permit that!

Weekly Totals:
Running: 51.2km (31.8mi)
Walking: 11.9km (7.4mi)
Cycling: 137.4km (85.4mi)
Swimming: 1.1km (0.7mi)
Total: 201.6km (125.3mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,238.3km (769.4mi)
Walking: 164.4km (102.2mi)
Cycling: 1,740.2km (1,081.3mi)
Swimming: 1.1km (0.7mi)
Total: 3,144.0km (1,953.6mi)

The upcoming week is the last of my recovery program, so I'm going to have to solidify the details of my next training cycle in the next few days. If I do elect to go with the Toronto Goodlife Marathon (which I'm pretty sure will be the case), the 18 week program will begin as soon as this one ends. I'm roughly flirting with aiming to do the tri-a-tri race (375m swim, 10K ride, 2.5K run) in Orillia at the end of August, as it should give enough time to get a decent swimming base in so that I can get some experience with the transitions prior to (hopefully) racing some proper triathlons sometime next summer. Either way, I'll likely have another post tomorow or the day after with details on what I'm aiming on doing with the summer and fall seasons ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Ride (probably not going to happen)
Tue 7mi (11.3K) GA
Wed 30K Ride, 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 1hr Swim, 30K Ride
Fri 8mi (12.9K) GA w/8x100m
Sat 100K Group Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 11mi (17.7K) LSD