January 23-29: Double-Digit Training At Last

Oh exciting day! Last week, I finally cracked double digit hours for training. 10:25 for the week, to be exact. I’m pretty sure this week will surpass that mark, too. Here’s how everything went.

Monday: A nearly 2 hour running/strength training/stretching session with everything broken up all over the place in the morning. It wasn’t killer, and it was certainly fun to run 3 miles, go lift heavy things, and then run 2 miles on the treadmill pushing it as fast as possible at the end. Fifteen minutes easy on the bike trainer in the evening per the PT’s instructions

Tuesday: Another 15 minute easy spin on the trainer first thing in the morning per PT’s orders. DCRP masters practice in the evening to log 3300 meters in the pool.

Wednesday: A 6.2 mile evening track workout that was quite fast for me, with 8x800 holding an average time of 3:58. More discussion on this coming in Thursday’s post.

Thursday: Started the day with a 1 hour zone 2 bike trainer session. Added on 30 minutes of medicine ball/core work.

Friday: The coach I work with knows that I have every other Friday off work, and usually uses this to give me some extra training fun. I just about squealed with glee when I saw a 2:30 session, starting with a 7 mile run and finishing with whatever biking time I needed to reach 2:30. The weather looked like it would turn beautiful around 11 am, and I was excited for this.

Then, Thursday afternoon, I was informed that rather than having the day off work, I would be meeting with super-important government person who had asked to meet with me specifically. So…time to plan for a 5 am start, including laying everything out the night before.

(Obsessive? No, of course not)

Since I would now be relegated to the trainer in the pre-dawn hours, my coach kindly sent a 1:30 trainer workout to give me something besides Good Morning America to keep me occupied. This workout included 3x(5 min hard gear/low cadence-3 min easy gear/high cadence-5 min moderate gear/moderate cadence-2 min spin easy). Using a hard gear and low cadence is…well…hard. My legs were totally toasted by a little bit after 8 am.

Saturday: 30 minute CXWORX class, which focuses on core/glute/hip strength, 15 minutes of upper body lifting, and 4300 meters of swimming. I could so feel the past four days by the time I got to the swim, and completely missed my goal HIM pace on some 300s. Now perhaps 20 seconds wasn’t enough rest after each 300 for holding that pace, and I was only about 10 seconds off (4:40 instead of 4:30 in long course meters), but I was still disappointed. And tired. Really tired.

Sunday: Rest day. And perhaps the first rest day that I’ve completely relished.

Worst part of the week: A complete rearrangement of Friday’s training session, which should have been awesome, but would up being incredibly tiring because of a last-minute meeting. That said, this meeting was exceptionally informative and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, even biking on a mild, sunny day in January.

Best part of the week: Beating my own expectations for 800 pace at Wednesday’s track workout. By a lot.