Week 31: Review

Just finished up a wet 38K ride on the bike a few hours ago, which was pretty much par for the course this week. The last few days have seen tonnes of rain around these parts, and it's done a good deal to mess up my schedule ;) I elected to skip Friday's ride as the weather was unpredictable, and swapped around my long ride with my long run as things were supposed to be better today than yesterday. Unfortunately, that didn't end up being the case and today was pretty much wet the entire day (in retrospect, doing things as planned likely would have worked out perfectly).

As I'd only logged about 66K on the bike so far this week, however, I decided that I had to get out there anyway and at least make it to 100K. I watched the weather radar carefully, and tried to pick a gap in the storm system that would allow me to get in as much time as possible. It worked out well for the first 21K or so of the ride, however after that point the rain started coming down hard. I pulled into a gas station to get cover from the rain, and contemplated whether to continue on or call for someone to pick me up. The rain slowed down a bit after a few minutes, however, so I set back out.

Naturally, at this point the roads were wet again so I had to play it safe and keep the speeds down to avoid any problems (bicycle brakes don't work so well when the rims get wet). It didn't take long before it started pouring again, however, but there wasn't really anywhere to take cover so I kept going. I elected to take a slightly longer route home that ran through more urban areas (so there was somewhere to stop if necessary), which ended up being a good call as the electrical activity started picking up a bit. I popped into the plaza where the local Running Room shop was and took cover until things calmed down, and then set off to do the last 8K of the route back home. By the time I did get back to my place, I was thoroughly soaked and my lower back was coated quite well in road grease ;)

The one thing that was good, however, was that the sunglasses I picked up a few weeks ago did a lot to make it easier to deal with this weather. When traveling at 30-40km/h down the road in rain, the water can be a serious problem to maintaining visibility in conditions where you need as much situational awareness as possible. This was the first time I've used them in the rain, and my prior experiences with other sunglasses in this scenario have been that the lenses just get saturated with water and do more harm than good. Fortunately, Oakley's hydrophobic coating appeared to do wonders and the water just rolled right off of the glass which made things a lot less difficult than it would have otherwise been. I just wish there was a way to get this stuff on my car's windscreen ;)

I was supposed to do a 4 mile recovery run today as well, but after that session I didn't really feel like getting soaked all over again so I elected to skip it. This week was a recovery week anyway, and as recovery runs aren't really intended to apply training pressure the cycling and swiming I've been doing should achieve the desired ends. Other than that, however, I managed to get all of my running mileage in this week, including the 12 miler I did yesterday. While the stifling humidity made it a bit difficult, the relatively short distance meant that it wasn't much of an issue.

As for swimming, I covered most of the details in my previous post. Managing to squeeze in two sessions this week did a lot of good, and I'm going to try and do the same thing this week. Further, I managed to improve my technique and push myself a little harder this time around so I've made some significant progress. I've got the overall endurance aspect at this point, so it's just a matter of nailing down the pacing and breathing aspects so that I can do it continuously. I'm covering a lot more distance than I will have to in the race itself, but doing it in a pool and in a lake are two very different things.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 53.1km (33.0mi)
Walking: 1.3km (0.8mi)
Cycling: 104.3km (64.8mi)
Swimming: 4.6km (2.9mi)
Total: 163.3km (101.5mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,650.6km (1,025.6mi)
Walking: 188.0km (116.8mi)
Cycling: 2,669.6km (1,658.8mi)
Swimming: 14.6km (9.1mi)
Total: 4,522.8km (2,810.3mi)

The upcomming week is looking like it's going to be pretty unsettled as well. They are pretty much calling for rain every day, but the weather reports have been hideously unreliable lately so it's hard to tell whether that will actually pan out. If it does end up being as bad as predicted, however, I might take the opportunity to bring the bike down to the shop to get the drivetrain cleaned off. It's getting a bit messy at this point, and the water that got run over it today likely washed away some of the lubricant so getting all of the grease off and a fresh coat of clean oil on would likely be a good idea.

I'm hoping to squeeze in two 90 minute swimming sessions (vs. one 60min and one 90min I did this week), and will be focusing on trying to keep going for longer between breaks. Ideally, I'd like to try a few 200m intervals this time mixed in with a good number of 100m segments. Naturally, my ability to do this will be dependant on the traffic level in the pools and I might have to make the jump to a faster lane to pull that off.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Ride
Tue 10mi (16.1K) GA w/5mi (8K) @ LT, 2.7K Swim
Wed 30K Ride, 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Thurs 11mi (17.7K) GA, 2.7km Swim
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 100K Group Ride, 7mi (11.3K) GA w/8x100m
Sun 18mi (29.0K) LSD