InnerTeub

Ha! Just kidding. This post is also about training. Fooled you!

So I’m back from vacation and internal life crisis and am back in the swing of things. Despite the increase in hunger and nap-needing, this has been a good week, training wise. The training is getting more “normalized” in that it’s ramping up, I’m recognizing the intent of the workouts more so, and I’m starting to see how they’ll relate to the actual race (this has a lot to do with the increase in length, funny how that works).

This week so far:

Sunday: 15k run, at 8:50 pace.

I actually failed this one pretty hard, doing just under 9ish miles at 9:13 pace. But that’s ok; I’m giving myself a *slight* break due to the heat, allergies, and snapping back into things-ness. I’m glad to be off a treadmill getting some longer distance in. I was very sore after this run, however, and I’m thinking my foam roller and I need to get reacquainted.

Monday: Crossfit/Swim

Hit up my morning crossfit group at 6am, where we were doing a 20 minute AMRAP (“as many rounds as possible”) of: 7 Wall Ball/25 jump rope (repeat).

Ok, a word about this: I cannot jump rope. Cannot. For me to be a good jump roper, I would have to dedicate an embarrassing amount of time to the art of jump roping, and while I may just do that, it’s … it’s just pathetic. And for this workout, you had to do 25 *unbroken* jumps — or 12 unbroken double unders, which I just cannot do so i wasn’t going to kill myself trying. Add this into wall ball, in which you basically take a 20lb beach ball, throw it up 10 feet, catch it, squat, repeat (QUADS OUCH!), and basically, it just sucks.

This is one of the Crossfit workouts that you look at and think “Eh, how bad can that be?” and then you hear a cackling in the distance that is your coach going “Just wait.” Which is all my way of saying this SHREDDED my legs and I was walking funny for DAYS after it.

Was able to get the pool that night — which is miracle in logistics, btw – and knock out 2x500yard time trials, plus a lot of drill work. It ended up being about 25 minutes in the pool total, but effort wise of getting there made it feel about three hours long.

Tuesday: Bike

Short AM bike ride: Warm up 10 minutes, then 10 miles as 20 seconds REALLY HARD, 10 second eh not so much. After the wall ball on Monday and the run on Sunday, my legs were toast – every time I stood up from my desk it would take three steps for my legs to remember how to bend at the knee. It was very attractive.

Debated hitting up the gym Tuesday night to lift, opted to nap instead. It was worth it.

Wednesday: Crossfit/Run (5×1 mile repeats on 3 minutes rest, @ 7:40min/mile)

Due to my work schedule, I couldn’t make the 6am Crossfit class – I had to get into the office earlier than I would have been able to. So I flipped it and did the run earlier in the AM. Due to the early hour (5am), I hit the treadmill for this, which I kind of think is cheating for repeats, but also makes it SO logistically easy that I also kind of don’t care.

Mile 1: 8min
Mile 2: 8 min
Mile 3: 7:59 (woo! heh)
Mile 4: 7:53
Mile 5: 7:47 (I was bored and wanted to be done, already)

So, not quite the prescribed pace, but I feel good about it nonetheless.

I swear I had every good intention of getting the Crossfit workout done in the evening, but well…well, let’s just move on to Thursday, shall we?

Thursday: Swim: 50 minute time trial./ Bike TBD

2900 yards total, in 51ish minutes. This is the longest I’ve swum since the Ironman. In 2008. Right. So I took it more as a “Just get the time in and don’t die” kind of swim, dealing in (mental) sets of 1000 yards, trying to increase pace each 1000. You’d think I would have rounded out the whole set to be 3000 even, but I swear it didn’t even occur to me in until JUST NOW. Apparently I was all “Oooh, look at me, doing 1 minute extra, gold star! gold star!” Dinkus.

Swimming is very “what have you done for me lately” kind of sport, and I haven’t done shit for it lately, so it was nice to get back into a groove for an extended length of time. Swim has always been my strongest of the three sports, and therefore I tend to blow it off more in training, which… I’m gonna try to stop doing, obviously.

Another Bike tonight, if I can stop playing on my blog and get it in.

Friday: Crossfit/Bike [TBD]

Hmm. Checking the CF website says we’ve got deadlifts and pullups on tap for tomorrow. I still am not sure what time I need to be in at work so I *might* have to swap this with Saturday’s run and go to the Saturday CF class, which is a workout of: 3x (400m run/21 KB swings/30 box jumps) for time. That one actually sounds like more fun so I might try to go anyway, just depends on how I can get my weekend squared away. Also will get in the bike if I don’t do it tonight (Thursday)

Saturday/Sunday: Long run (1:30) and a long bike of some kind. Still evaluating weather and scheduling options for when these will get done.

Anyway, for those that asked: that’s what this week’s IM training looks/looked like. I’m in post-swim high as I write this, looking at mounds of laundry that need to get done, but feeling great and looking forward to the training on tap for this weekend. Cheers!