Monday, November 30, 2009

Week 49: Review

The warmer than average November weather continued this week, and while we did get some rain we still have been fortunate enough to avoid snow so far. Unfortunately, the rain on Wednesday and Friday meant that I missed all but my long ride, and a combination of cool temperatures (~4C) and a strong, cold wind meant that I didn't end up going as far out as I would have liked. Either way, rain isn't much of an impediment to running so I managed to nail all of my scheduled miles this week and get a nice clean 40 miles.

I was originally going to try and do a simple brick session on Saturday by combining my long ride and the 4 mile recovery run. Near the beginning of my ride, however, I was stopped at an intersection and a nasty gust of wind managed to push me past my tipping point. While I'm pretty good at unclipping in emergency conditions, as I was already at a full stop my guard was down so my reaction time was slowed down enough that I didn't get my right leg out in time. I would have figured that after 6000+km on the bike I'd be over making ameteur mistakes like that, but apparently not :oP Naturally, zero-speed falls like this aren't a big deal so I just got back up and continued on. Either way, when I got home I figured it made more sense to clean off the scratches on my elbow (just superficial) so I elected to just reschedule the 4 miler for the next day.

This, in turn, moved my long run back to this morning. I was feeling a little tired at the beginning, so I intended to shorten it to 14 miles. Fortunately, once I got going it was actually pretty comfortable so I ended up doing the full 16 miles that I had planned. I did end up overdressing a bit, as when I checked the weather station before setting out it read 1.5C with a 30km/h north wind. As such, I switched over to long pants and a long sleeve base layer and ended up cooking for most of the route. While the ambient temperature and wind were cold, the sun was out in full force and more than offset their effects.

As for swimming, things pretty much went as scheduled. Thanks to some high school gym classes using part of the pool, my Tuesday and Thursday swim sessions were a little more crowded than usual. That meant that I had to move from the medium lane into the fast lane, so it did a bit to push me a little harder ;) The downside is that it limited what types of drills that I could do, as I had to avoid getting in other people's way so slow stuff like kicking drills were out.

It was also a bit of an issue as many of the swimmers spilling over from the slow lane didn't appear to be familiar with the protocols of sharing a lane very well. On the Tuesday session, for instance, when I popped my head up at one point I barely avoided ramming into two people on flutterboards kicking side-by-side while they chatted :oP One would think common sense would at least prevail in these circumstances, but apparently not...

Week 49 Totals:
Running: 64.4km (40.0mi)
Walking: 3.1km (1.9mi)
Cycling: 51.4km (31.9mi)
Swimming: 10.2km (6.3mi)
Total: 129.1km (80.2mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 2,429.9km (1,509.9mi)
Walking: 222.2km (138.0mi)
Cycling: 3,882.8km (2,412.7mi)
Swimming: 140.0km (87.0mi)
Total: 6,674.9km (4,147.6mi)

Tonight's triathlon swimming clinic will be the last session, so we're going to do a shorter swim than normal and then head out for drinks afterwards to finish things off. I still havn't figured out what I'm going to do after that. I did get a lead on a decent masters swimming class out of Thornhill from one of the other group members that I'm thinking about, however I'm not crazy about the idea of spending finite training time/energy on strokes that won't be useful for my races.

As for the schedule this week, it's again going to basically be the same as previous weeks. Those planned cycling sessions are more than likely just wishful thinking, but if mother nature remains agreeable I'll take every opportunity that I can get. With that said, the city has brine trucks out spraying the roadways during my run and corner markers for the snowplows are starting to pop up, so I will probably be bringing the bike into the shop either this week or next in order to prepare it for the trainer.

Tentative Schedule:
Mon 16mi LSD*, Tri Swim Clinic
Tue 2.5mi Swim, 7mi Recovery
Wed 6mi Recovery, 30K Ride
Thurs 2.5mi Swim, 7mi 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.

1 comment:

  1. definitely another plus to the masters swim.. people that know how to lane swim, and you're in a lane that's speed appropriate. swimming twice with the possibility of 3 times per week if my schedule allows it means that i don't bother going to public lane swimming. much less frustration.

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