Sunday, April 28, 2013

This week past: A tale of two days, twice....

So, M-W this week I dutifully set out to execute what I call a transition week.  By that, I mean I'm trying to transition from my lassez-faire approach to training over the last couple of months to one a fair bit more rigorous.  I wanted to begin to prepare my body for my IMLT build, which will commence on June 1st.  So, I was looking for somewhere north of 20 hours of work and I was very keen to begin to build my bike volume.

However, as Monday turned into Wednesday a deep body fatigue arose.  I've been stepping on the gas  a bit over the last couple of weeks and I really felt it.  Muscle fatigue and stiffness in the morning (the wrong kind).  However, when I did my workouts I was surprised to see some pretty solid results....I was confused by this.

I've concluded that I am suffering a bit this year from the significant de-training that occurred with my extended mountain-climbing focus back in Dec and Jan.  As I've stepped up the volume, the lack of my traditional high volume base has, I think, come home to roost (of course, my advancing years may be another equally valid explanation).  The apparent contradiction of my reasonable race results and training test sessions I think is due to the relative emphasis on quality.  At the end of the day, I think I've done enough to fake it at short-course but as I begin to prepare for IM, my lack of effort is being exposed.

So, I decided I need to back off on Th/F, which I did.  I bagged 3 workouts (2 swim and 1 run).  I was prepared to write the week-off.

and then I woke up on Saturday to glorius weather for once.  I had a fabulous 5.7-mile, very demanding trail run and then went out and hammered out a 55-mile bike ride.  I felt absolutely fantastic--what a great ride!

Today (Sunday), I got up early and another solid 6 mile run and then went out for a 30-35 mile ride.  However, I got lost.  Not just a little, but a ton.  I've never been so lost.  To compound things I was on extremely technical and up/down roads.  Over 4 hours later I finally rode home having recorded 68.9 miles!  Not what I intended, and I do feel a bit more sore tonight that I would want but here are the stats for the week:

Swim: 4,750 yards
Bike: 231 miles
Run: 32.5 miles
Time: 22:11

I'll share with you the plan for the month of May in the next day or two....Lock and load--it's triathlon time!

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