Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Starting the Two-a-Days

Swim Day

1 x 150 warm-up
5 x 100 (50- 5, 7, 9/50-swim)
2 x 200

total yardage- 1050yds

It was dark and my stroke felt like a million pieces. That's how it always is first swim back. Well, the million pieces part at least. I haven't been out of the water too long but it still takes some time to make the freestyle smooth and easy again.
One of the mental toughness aspects of the next 17 weeks will be the swims. You see, my plan has no pure swim days. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday involve a swim and either a bike (M) or run (Tu/Th). The plan also says to alternate am workouts between swimming and the other discipline, but I'm not sure how often that's going to happen. I'd rather swim in the morning. It's easier and safer than running around my neighborhood in the dark early morn. So three days a week I'll be getting up early and hitting the pool before school. This will teach my body to get up and go tired, which comes in handy at Oh Dark Hundred on race day.

Ride Day

time- 1hr and a few minutes
distance- 17mi

Great ride today. My normal lap for this distance will be up to the base, up Kolekole (Big Climb #1 for me from the first training cycle), then a loop back to the house. Not too challenging, but not super easy. I'm looking forward to getting it under an hour, which I think is do-able. My climb felt good and quick. I'm having gear change issues with my rear ring, which I had adjusted last weekend but is still acting up. When I stopped at the LBS on Saturday I told them about it but then the bike wouldn't do it! Don't you hate it when that happens? "No, really, the chain tries to click off the big ring on to the next one! I swear!"So this weekend I'll take it in again and ask them to look at it. Wednesday I'll just avoid that gear.
I'm already feeling stronger on the bike. I'm looking for an 18mph average come race day, and I think I can put in the work to get there.

2 comments:

  1. I think just swimming in the am is better anyway, it will always be the first discipline you do, unless you do a reverse tri, so get used to doing that one on not totally warmed up muscles, while you're still waking up.

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  2. I talked to a lady at the bike shop about how cool a reverse tri would be. She agreed but said, "Do you have any idea how many triathletes would drown if they had to swim at the end?" I said I did and that would help me move up even further on the podium! Then we both laughed.

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