Weeks 37, 38, 39: Catching Up

The last few weeks have been hectic, and again I've fallen a bit behind on my updates here. Between work, the Church stuff and helping my brother move the non-training schedule was pretty packed which meant a pile of sessions didn't get done. As can be seen below, I even ended up having to skip one of my long runs so the running mileage took the biggest hit. Fortunately, without any formal goal races at this point in the season that's not a huge problem.

This week, thankfully, I managed to squeeze in pretty much all of the targeted runs and swims. Cycling mileage was pretty pathetic as last week's long run nudged out Monday's ride, Friday was lost due to an emergency that required me to be accessible for most of the day and Saturday's weather limited how far I could go. The runs had to be squeezed in around other things, but I only ended up losing a couple of miles (although I did have to do some of them substantially faster than normal to fit them in).

This morning's long run felt great as I was starting to get back into my normal routine. After missing the long run two weeks ago, I limited myself to 13.1 miles last week to work my way back up to the mileage. Today, however, the weather was absolutely perfect so I elected to ramp back up to 18 miles and try to get in at least one 20 miler before winter comes ;) It's so much easier to do these sorts of runs without the heat, and the 10C conditions made it a breeze. The only caveat, however, is that I need to get used to reigning myself in under these conditions again as I averaged a 4:32/km pace which is way higher than it should be (and it likely would have been faster had I not made a concerted effort to slam on the breaks a few times).

Week 37 Totals:
Running: 18.1km (11.3mi)
Walking: 0.4km (0.3mi)
Cycling: 167.6km (104.1mi)
Swimming: 7.8km (4.8mi)
Total: 193.9km (120.5mi)

Week 38 Totals:
Running: 38.8km (24.1mi)
Walking: 0.7km (0.4mi)
Cycling: 102.3km (63.6mi)
Swimming: 4.5km (2.8mi)
Total: 146.3km (90.9mi)

Week 39 Totals:
Running: 54.4km (33.8mi)
Walking: 1.0km (0.6mi)
Cycling: 61.5km (38.2mi)
Swimming: 8.8km (5.4mi)
Total: 125.7km (78.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1723.8km (1071.1mi)
Walking: 79.7km (49.5mi)
Cycling: 3862.4km (2400.0mi)
Swimming: 256.1km (159.1mi)
Total: 5922.0km (3679.8mi)

Fortunately, things are starting to settle down at this point so hopefully the upcoming week will work to plan a bit better. While I was flirting with the idea of running the Toronto Marathon in a couple of weeks, with the intermittent training over the last little while and lack of speedwork this season I'm leaning away from it. The concept was to try and squeeze in a ~3:20 marathon this year on my way to the 3:10 I need for a BQ, but I'm not sure that I'm in the shape for that right now. I don't really want to put the body through a marathon without being confident I can substantially improve on the 3:29 I did a year and a half ago.

What I might do is look for a good 5K and attempt to get under 20 minutes, as I'm in much better shape than my last PB at that distance (20:55) and with a bit of speedwork over the next few weeks I should be able to get there. My schedule has largely shot down all of the other target races for this year, so it would be good to put all of the training I've done to some use ;) The catch is that it's difficult to find shorter races at this time of year, as most of the ones I know are early in the season.