Week 44: Review

For the early part of this week the weather was pretty bad once again, making it difficult to get out on the bike. Monday would have worked, but as I did last week's long run in the morning I figured it wasn't wise to risk heading out for a bike ride (especially considering I also had the Triathlon swimming clinic in the evening). Unfortunately, both Wednesday and Friday saw heavy rain so there wasn't much of an opportunity to safely head out on the bike.

Things cleared up a bit for the weekend, so I managed to get rides in on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately while Saturday ended up being decent, the forecasts were showing unpredictability and there were some very strong winds out so I stayed on a route close to home to play it safe. As this meant riding on residential roads rather than arterial roads, however, it was difficult to get a good workout in so I called it after a couple of laps and headed home after a little less than 15K.

Sunday, however, saw near perfect weather (clear skies, ~16C and only moderate winds) so I put my long run off to today and took the bike out instead. Unfortunately I couldn't get out until about 2:30, and as the sun goes down pretty early this time of year that limited how far out I could go. I wanted to head up to Newmarket and back, however that's between 80-100km (depending on the route) and I simply didn't have the time to pull that off. As such, I headed out for my normal 50K route and figured I'd play it by ear.

As I headed north via Jane, I saw that the fall colours were pretty much out in full force at this point. Unfortunately, there aren't a whole lot of trees along that stretch as it's mostly farmland so when I got up to Kettleby, I headed through the town and took Keele back. That is a much hillier route than Jane is, but it goes through a few pretty dense forests so the scenery on the way back was quite impressive. Either way, it was a good workout as it's been a while since I've taken that particular set of hills ;)

Running-wise, I ended up missing a couple of sessions (Tuesday's 8 miler and Saturday's 4 miler) due to logistical reasons, however that's not such a critical thing in base training so I'm not too worried about it. The speedwork session I did on Thursday was a little rough as I did some relatively intense breathing exercises in the pool a few hours earlier, and that resulted in a couple of side stitches when I was pushing it on the road. Fortunately, I fought through and got all ten of the scheduled intervals out in respetible times.

Like Sunday, today's weather was pretty much textbook perfect for my long (16 mile) run. Due to this, it was a bit of a fight to try and keep my pace down as everything felt so comfortable, but other than that the session went quite well. I'm not likely to push my long runs much further than this until I start formally training again, however I would like to get my mid-week distances up a bit more and settle at a 30-40mile/week level.

In the water, things went quite well this week. I'm starting to get the hang of the proper stroke at this point, and it's feeling a lot more natural. It's going to take a while before it's ingrained enough that I don't have to think about it, but it's taking less and less effort to accomplish. As the technique drills last week worked out well, I decided to continue doing them this week despite the clinic being back. As such, after each of the 3.25K swims I did a short technique session (450 and 800m respectively) to work on my problem areas. Aside from the second session's effects on my interval session, this worked out quite well so I think I'll keep up with it for the time being (although I'll probably try squeezing the running in before the pool if possible).

Week 44 Totals:
Running: 40.3km (25.0mi)
Walking: 1.7km (1.1mi)
Cycling: 78.8km (49.0mi)
Swimming: 8.7km (5.4mi)
Total: 129.5km (80.5mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 2,142.8km (1,331.5mi)
Walking: 211.0km (131.1mi)
Cycling: 3,481.0km (2,163.0mi)
Swimming: 91.4km (56.8mi)
Total: 5,926.2km (3,682.4mi)

As I didn't manage to get all of the sessions in as planned this week, I'm going to aim to try and do the same thing I intended to do once again. The focus at this point is getting used to longer mileage in the mid-week sessions, so getting comfortable with a pair of 8 milers rather than the 6 milers I've been doing is the main focus.

Mon 16mi (25.7K) LSD*, Tri Swim Clinic
Tue 2.5mi Swim, 8mi Recovery
Wed 40K Ride, 10K Recovery
Thurs 2.5mi Swim, 8mi GA w/10x100m
Fri 50K Ride
Sat 4mi Recovery, 100k Ride
Sun 16mi (25.7K) LSD
* Counted towards this week's mileage, as it was simply postponed from yesterday.