Jackie D - Week 19

Week 19 - starting Monday 22 January 2007

Scheduled hours 9hr 00 min
Actual hours 9hr 16 min

Recovery week - or so I had assumed and had psychologically prepared myself for! I logged in on Sunday afternoon and found another 3 weeks of 11+ hours. Yikes. “Maaaaaaa..rrrrr…yyyyy??? You don’t mean that do you?”, I asked as my fingers clattered on my keyboard to email her. Log in again she told me. So I did. It turns out that Training Peaks had been playing up a bit and wasn’t updating properly and I was thankful to see the hours drop a bit and have a recovery week after all. Phewwww.

So, all in all an easyish week with runs not more than an hour and only one bike over that. Funny really that I consider running an hour to be an easy length run when 6 months ago I would have thought that was looooong. However, it did take me the first half of the week to recover from the previous Sunday long run. I think adding the extra time, compounded by the low temperature just taxed my body more than I thought it would. Monday my lower legs hurt, Tuesday and Wednesday my upper legs hurt. Not a bad hurt I think, just like the day after a hard weights session. Anyway a few days on and the soreness is forgotten.

I bought my first cycling DVD this week. Rides, session 1, the Rockies. I quite liked it ‘cos I was riding with all the big boys but I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the scenery. You hear all about how the Rockies is “the” best place to train but the bit they used for the dvd just seemed so brown. It makes me appreciate the beauty we have here - both with the snow in the winter and the lush green in the summer.

I was pleased with swimming this week. One of the masters sets had some 4x50’s IM order x3. I made the Butterfly! 50m is the furthest I have done fly and I had only done it once or twice on separate occasions and spent the rest of the session recovering. But I did 50m fly, 3 times. Yeh me! I WILL be able to do 100m fly by the end of 2007. I will I will I will. Then I will feel more like a real swimmer who casually puts sets of 100m fly in their logs.

I did my long run (only an hour) on Saturday afternoon this week instead of Sunday morning. I ran along the canal path where the snow was trampled but still pretty bumpy in places so it wasn’t easy going. The HR monitor on my Garmin is much more reliable/ sensitive than my old one and I was able to stay at practically the same HR (zone 2) the whole time.

The other run (of an hour) this week I ran/shuffled the trails in Mendon Ponds Park. It was cold and snowy with most trails not groomed and it was such fun! I took the dog and we just had a blast. The steeper hills were 2 steps up and slide 1 back down and the downhills were…..fast! And it was so pretty - I love the snow.

I made an effort with my nutrition this week. Weekdays were very good but I am not so good at weekends. It’s that darn Wegmans multigrain loaf with currants this week - can anyone resist eating the whole baguette in one sitting? Baby steps though, baby steps. That is something I think I can aim at for a few weeks - to really make an effort during the week and relax a bit on weekends.

The week ended with our monthly Ironman meeting on Sunday morning. One of the things on the agenda was a map and explanation of the Lake Placid transition area. As Mary was explaining it, I got goose bumps and butterflies in my tummy. It just made it all so close and so real.

For the next couple of weeks I have been warned that my schedule will look strange with long bike one week and long run the following week. Can’t wait - variety is the spice of life, if not the way to survive a Rochester winter!


25 WEEKS TO GO