Week 36: Review

As has been the case for the last little while, things have been crazy busy this week so getting everything in has been a challenge. On the running front, I had to move things around a bit, but I did manage to squeeze in pretty much all that was planned. I did have to chop a mile off of a couple of mid-week runs, but other than that I managed to get things in at the appropriate pacing. Regardless, I did manage to click over the 1000 mile mark for the year on Sunday :D

Sunday's 18 miler was a bit on the warm side, but fortunately not nearly as bad as it was just a few weeks ago. The cool weather we've been getting lately has spoiled me a bit, as running and biking with the temperatures in the teens is so much nicer than the hot and humid we've been enduring lately. On the upside, I was able to pace myself a little better than last week - averaging a 4:45/km pace rather than 4:33. Looking back at the telemetry, I was pretty much bang on the 5:00/km target until the half-marathon mark when I picked it up a bit. I tend to have a bit of a backwards pacing instinct - the more fatigued my legs become, the faster they seem to want to go :P

Like last week, this long run was done with my Garmin rather than the Polar. After transferring my telemetry from Friday's 5 miler I noticed a (nearly inaudible) hissing noise coming from the unit. To be safe, I've pulled the (new) battery out of the unit and contacted their support department to get guidance on what to do about these symptoms. Searching over their fora, there were a few mentions of similar symptoms but as those were covered under warantee (they all came from the factory this way) there isn't much detail on what was wrong (they sent it in, it came back fixed).

Other than the sound, the unit is working flawlessly so I don't think it's anything major. Looking at the unit I think one of the battery pins isn't quite contacting the side of the battery, and the gap is small enough that it's arcing. I'm not sure if it's a matter of the new battery being a little smaller than it's supposed to be, or if the pin has gotten bent back a bit, but if it is either one of those issues it should be a relatively simple fix. With that said, the way that products are made nowadays even simple things can end up being complex to actually repair.

On the cycling front, myself and a couple of guys from the group managed to get together on labour day for a short 50K. Tried to talk them into something a bit longer, but unfortunately they haven't been out a lot lately so they wanted to start back carefully. Either way, we headed out just before 8am and while it was a bit chilly (11C), once we got moving that was quite comfortable. It ended up being a good thing we kept it short, however, as it started pouring rain for the last couple of minutes ;)

Other commitments meant that Saturday's ride had to be cut down to 55K, and Friday's to 30K. Wednesday's ride didn't happen due to weather, so my net cycling mileage this week is pretty pathetic. Either way, not much that can be done about that as none of those constraints were particularly mutable.

On the upside, the pools have finally switched back over to the fall/winter schedules so I don't need to try and shoehorn two hours work of work into 90 minutes. My normal pool was unfortunately down for maintenance this week, but another close by facility has a nice three hour session available so that helped. While I shortened the sets a bit given the reduced time constraints, I kept them at moderate distances (1.5-2K) in order to squeeze in a bit more distance than normal. I'll see how this holds out, and if it goes well it should help me to continue improving.

Week 36 Totals:
Running: 54.7km (34.0mi)
Walking: 2.4km (1.5mi)
Cycling: 135.2km (84.0mi)
Swimming: 9.0km (5.6mi)
Total: 201.3km (125.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1612.5km (1002.0mi)
Walking: 77.6km (48.2mi)
Cycling: 3531.0km (2194.1mi)
Swimming: 235.1km (146.1mi)
Total: 5456.2km (3390.3mi)

The next couple of weeks are likely to be even busier than it has been, as the dedication for our new church is happening on the 23rd and I'm taking care of photographically documenting the associated events. I've been recording the entire construction process from the start, but the final preparations mean that the changes are coming fast and furious and it's a lot more work. With the workers scrambling to get everything done in time, the schedule is somewhat dynamic and planning around it is a bit more difficult than normal.

The side effect of this is that I'm going to have to skip the Lakeside Olympic triathlon next weekend that I wanted to do. Next weekend is looking pretty packed with preparations, and heading out of town for something like that would be difficult to fit it. As that's the last race of the year around these parts, that pretty much means that I'm not actually going to be able to fit a triathlon in this season. Unfortunate, but I've enjoyed the training either way and made improvements that should form a solid base for next year's more ambitious targets.