Week 32: Review

After a number of weeks of building up, I elected to take this week as a recovery week and back off a little to let the body repair itself. That worked out quite well, as the week was otherwise pretty busy so it would have been difficult trying to fit in the normal training volumes anyway. In the end, I ended up pulling back a little more than I would have liked, but for a week like this I'll take it.


Most of the sessions this week went relatively well, as the weather was decent and my more relaxed attitude made it a bit easier to enjoy them rather than fighting through. Sunday's long run was the exception to this, as the humidity was absolutely brutal and I had to cut the planned 13 miler down to 10 because of it. I normally go out in the morning, but as it was pouring rain at that time I elected to hold off until the afternoon. Unfortunately, when I did get out there I realized that the rain would have been a blessing.

The ambient temperature was reading as 32C with the humidity at a stifling 85%. Punched into the humidex formula, that works out to the equivalent of 49C (~120F) so it made things a lot more difficult. Adding to this was the fact that about 15 minutes into the run, the clouds cleared up and the sun came out. Needless to say, I went through the litre of Gatorade that I brought along pretty quickly. I wasn't too worried, as there was a community centre along the way that I normally refill my bottles at.

Unfortunately, when I got there the doors were locked so I wasn't able to refill my (now empty) bottles and had to fight through. To be safe, I rerouted along a main street so that I could find somewhere to pull into and get more to drink. I eventually came up to a McDonalds and took advantage of that $1 for any size drink promo they are running over the summer, and quickly gulped down a good portion of it ;) I poured the remainder in my bottles and continued on, but it didn't take long before the bouncing shook the CO2 out of the mixture and the valves on said bottles opened up and coated my back. I quickly drank what remained, and just headed back home.

Either way, I'm just glad that it was a recovery week as this could have gone a lot worse if I'd attempted to do a 19 miler in this weather. Unfortunately, there isn't really a practical way to carry any more hydration than I currently do so I'm pretty much stuck having to rely on stopping periodically to refill. I know when things are open on my normal schedule, but unfortunately when I pushed things back because of the rain I likely should have double checked those hours ;)

Week 32 Totals:
Running: 39.3km (24.4mi)
Walking: 1.3km (0.8mi)
Cycling: 81.3km (50.5mi)
Swimming: 7.6km (4.7mi)
Total: 129.5km (80.5mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1422.0km (883.6mi)
Walking: 70.7km (43.9mi)
Cycling: 3182.1km (1977.3mi)
Swimming: 206.7km (128.4mi)
Total: 4881.5km (3033.2mi)

As for racing plans, I elected to pass on Muskoka this year as it just wasn't worth the costs for a first shot at the distance. I'm definitely in for next year, however, and plan to do at least one unofficial half-iron race in the middle of the summer before hitting the sanctioned race in September. I am, however, now looking for an Olympic distance race (or two) in the coming months to take advantage of the training that I intended for the HIM ;)