Week 9/February/Busy Building Base

 A bit belated but here is what happened last week (week 9), which was spent mostly in Minnesota:

Swim: 5,050 yards

Bike: 224 miles

Walk/Run: 32.6 miles

Other: 3 hours

Total Time: 27:55

Minny limited my swim/PT to 0 hours from Monday-Thursday.  When I returned to DE I jammed in 3 pretty big days (5:28/4:40/6:04).  That last day, Sunday the 3rd was my first 6+ hour training day of 2024.

January and February look like this:

Swim: Jan: 17,500 yards;  Feb: 21,100 yards.  Beginning to ramp swim now.  Plan is to get to 30,000 yards or so in March.  My basic, overarching objective, swim-volume wise is to be able to comfortably handle 10,000+ yards/week by the time I pivot to predominately open-water swimming, which is usually around Memorial Day.  It doesn't seem like a big jump in February, but on a per day basis, Feb was up 29% vs. Jan.  Also compared to last year (post knee replacement) I'm way further ahead swim wise....

Bike: Jan: 1,046 miles;  Feb: 944 miles.  This is effectively the same volume/day (33.7 vs. 33.5 miles/day).  Last year I wasn't even able to tolerate biking until February so way ahead this year.  

RunWalk: Jan: 82.6 miles;  Feb: 100.2 miles.  Beginning to get my volume up where I want it to be.  Last year at this time I could only handle about 10 miles/week.  I plan to pivot to a bit more running as March rolls on by.

PT: Jan: 20:30;  Feb: 17:40. As I discussed in the previous post, I continue to invest a lot of time into flexibility/strength training--both months had a 5-day period in Minnesota where I couldn't do so.  Basically, most days I invest 1 hour or so into this Build Back project.

Total Time: Jan: 114:44; Feb: 111:46.  Pretty similar: 3:44/day in Jan and 3:51/day in Feb.

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All of this effort is predominately Zone 1--well below my Aerobic Threshold.  I clearly have a big Aerobic engine at this point as when I ride 17mph or so, my HR remains around 90bpm.  In March, I plan to climb up into Zone 2 for a portion of my training and try to get my speed up and then hopefully see my HR settle back down into relatively low numbers after the initial stress of introducing a bit more intensity.

Onwards and upwards!