Monday, September 24, 2012

September 17-23: Continuing to Solve the Recovery Puzzle

In the four weeks since Ironman Louisville, recovery has slowly progressed, as evidenced by higher intensity and longer duration workouts slowly working their way back into my schedule. Last week, most of it was back in the picture - the swim speed sets, the threshold track workout, the long run, and the 3+ hour bike.

I was happy to see it on the schedule, but wasn't sure about how it would go given some residual fatigue that still has me napping a lot on the weekends. This left me puzzled about how it would all go.




(You didn't think that the alpaca blog appearance was a one-time thing, did you?)

It wound up all going alright, even the 8-mile run Sunday morning, which wound up being the fastest long run I've done since the spring. I am therefore tentatively declaring myself recovered.

That will probably bite me in the ass this week, but that's OK.

Monday: Rest day, desperately needed after a full week of traveling from city to city.

Tuesday: A 45 minute strength training session in the morning, 3700 yards of swimming in the evening with a bunch of 200 IMs included for variety and/or fun.

Wednesday: A 5.37 mile track workout of 2400 (13:00)-2000 (10:46)-1600 (8:44). Relatively speedy for me at this point, which was reassuring.

Thursday: A 45 minute strength training session in the morning, and a long nap in the evening.

Friday: 3 hours of biking on Skyline Drive with Beth and Tim.




I did a route similar to what I did in June, and managed to register a full mile per hour faster this time around. Progress. Minor progress, but still progress.

Saturday: 3400 meters of swimming with DCRP masters.

Sunday: An 8 mile morning run, with a negative split and sneaking in just under 10:00/mile average pace.

8 comments:

  1. A full mph faster IS progress! Skyline is fun. Lets go again!

    Also, your one month post-ironman workouts are more than I've done 3 months post-ironman. I feel extra lazy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. After I ran Hood to Coast a few years ago, it took me 10 days to feel back to normal. This included the soreness going away, my normal hunger returning instead of the "I want to eat everything in sight" hunger. I was tired and napped a lot too. But after the 10 days I felt back to normal!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Holy crap, has it been 4 weeks already? That is awesome progress and I can only hope for your next header that there are alpacas involved.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My admiration for you grows exponentially with each Alpaca you post :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. ALPACA!!
    You two are my bike heroes, riding that first climb up Skyline Drive. Hubz is threatening to make me do it soon ...

    ReplyDelete
  6. LOL! More alpacas and fewer kittens! :) j/k Love the blog ... I hope to try Skyline soon!

    Tara Lidell

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love the alpaca. I saw one at a wine festival once. Wow, recovery from an ironman takes a long freaking time. Scary.

    ReplyDelete