Jackie D - Week 25

Week 25 - starting Monday 5 March 2007

Scheduled hours: 12hrs 15mins
Actual hours: 12hrs 25mins

Pretty much on schedule this week with the only difference being masters swimming session which is always well over an hour.

My run on Tuesday was er…interesting. I was on the treadmill at the gym and we kept having power outages. They only lasted a second each time and in fact on the first one I only noticed the lights flickering. But they must have got fractionally longer and of course when power stops briefly to a treadmill it er..stops briefly. It is a bit disconcerting and I did nearly lose my balance the first time. However, I was half way through my workout and I just hoped the staff didn’t realise the impact and then decide for safety reasons to haul us off. Suffice to say I did unwind and attach that safety cord thing and just carried on. Luckily it all returned to normal within about 5 minutes.

Swimming was good this week. My first workout (I only swim twice per week) I chose one of Mary’s with a lot of fly in it as I am determined to improve this. I have still not done more than continuous 50m but there were lots of 25m with rest and IM so there was a fair bit in total - all good stuff. I also think I could have done just a few more strokes than the 50m if I had tried, but the workout didn’t call for that - I shall try sometime and see. My second session was masters and I found out something about my breathing. I can comfortably breathe bilaterally but if pressure is on to keep up speed I tend to breathe every 4th stroke. Well, some of the sets were 100m’s breathing every 3rd, then 5th then 7th stroke. I could do them easily enough (OK every 7th wasn’t that easy) but what I did notice was that I lagged behind my lane mates more than usual. I am not bothered about it particularly, but it was interesting to note.

Long bike was 2 hours 45 minutes, inside on the trainer and I am SOOOooooo hoping that is the last long ride indoors. I have seen people out cycling lately and that is going to be me next week. Luckily the weather looks like it is going to cooperate. I use an old bike on my trainer and as I hang it up in the garage each time I pass my new(er) bike and I have noticed that I am talking to it much more lately - things like “soon, baby, soon”. Hope this is normal behaviour for us demented ironman trainees.

We had our monthly Ironman meeting on Sunday morning at 8.30am. The group run at Mendon is normally at 7am but a few are now running at 6am. Well, I figured that as mine was scheduled for 2 hours I would have had to join the daft souls at 6am which would actually be 5am ex-real time as the clocks went forward overnight and that was just too much to cope with - so I ran on Saturday. In the midst of lovely temperatures above freezing and the thawing of the icicles on my house roof I thought it would be great to take the dog and go along the canal. Big mistake! Beyond Pittsford village centre it was just thick ice where the thaw had started but not got far. I backtracked after just a few metres and went round the roads. I don’t think the dog was too impressed as it wasn’t much fun for her - not to mention the fact that this was the longest time she had come out with me running.

Recovery week next week!

19 WEEKS TO GO