Jackie D - Week 37

Week 37 - starting Monday 28 May 2007

Scheduled hours: 15hrs 40mins
Actual hours: 15hrs 28mins

During the workouts in the first half of this week I felt a bit deflated. It was all from coming off the high of the weekend at Placid I know. After a complete day off on Monday it was time to do a brick. Following my thoughts on wanting to get stronger on hills I have decided that I am not going to use the flat canal path (which is so close and convenient for me for bikes or runs) unless it is recovery zone 1. So, I headed round some local roads just thinking of a hill near by and then riding it whilst thinking of the next bit of the route. My strategy was to push a bit up the hills and take as long as I needed to to recover on flats and downhills. Nothing majorly big but definitely not flat. I ran on the roads away from the house in a direction I don’t normally go. It had some rollers and I only went up side roads if I could see a slope! With this strategy I am going to end up doing extra exercise because I normally take the dog along the canal path but don’t think it is safe enough (or fun enough) for her on roads so there was extra dog walking for me this week.

I couldn’t quite believe that Wednesday had me doing another long run of 3 hours. Again, no flat for me anymore so I went down to Mendon Ponds park and did some loops around that terrain, running 10min and walking 1minute and looping back to my car to refill with water and Gatorade. I still didn’t really feel like gels so probably only took in about half the number I should have for that amount of time. Each one I did take I had to force down like a nasty medicine. I seemed to survive OK with extra Gatorade though.

Even more insanely, the next day had me doing another long bike ride of 6 hours in mid 80 degree temperatures. Actually whilst cycling you get a bit of a breeze so I was probably cooler than most! I couldn’t face gels at all so I loaded up with power bars and Gatorade instead. They seemed to go down well although I wasn’t really riding with any high intensity so will have to try again - just as I thought I had nutrition nailed I start changing it! I didn’t pee on the bike and I didn’t get the red chafing rash so think they must have been linked last weekend which makes for a bit of a dilemma. Oh, and about 4 hours in I noticed that my bike computer timer kept stopping for a few seconds at a time. So, I watched it a bit and it actually stopped for a few minutes at a time. Luckily I had noted the time on my wristwatch that I had set off and saw that I had done nearly 5 hours rather than 4! So, I just added 10minutes to the 6hours to allow for my water refill and pee stops and went by my wristwatch. I will have to look into that - probably a battery I guess. No problems with hitting the saltstick today though.

I swam at masters early on in the week and although I felt absolutely fine, however hard I tried, my times were really awful. Mary said she wasn’t surprised because I couldn’t have been recovered from the weekend but it was just weird (and frustrating) because I felt fine, just no power.

The second swim of the week was just plain FUN. I went in the lake for the first time this year. With my longsleeved wetsuit of course! They said the temperature was 67F and it felt absolutely fine. And I spotted a big fish - which I was reliably informed was a bass. It was SOOOO good to be swimming in a lake again and a great break from the pool - hope I can do both my swims in the lake next week.

An easy zone 1 recovery run made me start wondering whether my zones are correct. I ran an easy pace and breathing seemed fine but my HR stayed for much of the run in the late teens (over a hundred of course!). My zone 1 for running according to my chart doesn’t start til 124bpm. Hmm. At least I think I am confident enough now to train by feel I think.

The week finished with a sprint triathlon, the Pittsford triathlon. My first triathlon of the season. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun. My husband and kids even got up early to come and cheer me on. I love sprint triathlons because of all the different types and ages and abilities of people all out there to achieve their personal goals and have some fun. This was the first triathlon I did last year (and the second one ever, the first having been done 5 years previously) and despite all the long, slow distance stuff I had been doing I was keen to try and beat my time from last year. I achieved that, knocking off a couple of minutes which was great and gave me 3rd female place. I have yet to see the splits for this but could summarise how I feel about them right now as:
- disappointingly slow swim (aaarghh - I know same old broken record)
- much smoother transitions
- good bike except (a) couldn’t get clipped in so had to stop to do so (b) my chain fell off for the first time ever on the first steepish hill and I had to get off to put it back © I had to slow down to tell a marshall about a boy off his bike a bit further back on the course that I had passed.
- run much stronger than last year (I hope) and I felt I finished strong (and I even got a clip of me finishing on local TV)

Next week is another high hours one. In less enthusiastic moments I look at my schedule saying 6hr bike or 3hr run and I think - why? I know I can do that, I know I can do it on the actual course so why do I have to do this again. At these times I wish the race was next week. It is hard to take up your whole day for a bike ride - I don’t know how people with families and full time jobs manage to do it. I am a very, very, very lucky girl to be able to do this whilst kids are at school so I don’t miss too much time with my family.

7 WEEKS TO GO