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It didn’t feel like 6 hours of training, but there it is… Mon & Wed I missed BOTH swims. Mon I turned off the alarm vs hitting the snooze button (Doh!) and overslept. Wed I got to the pool only to realize that I had forgotten my swim gear at home. (Doh!).
But I had a good 5k running with a friend at the Morristown Turkey Trot, clocking a 38:15, over 3min faster than the Swamp Devil 5k and a tad over 12:00 per mile. Slow, but a nice improvement over two weeks. I suffered a bit on the bike ride later in the afternoon, but it was good to get out for a bit. I think I went out way to hard on the bike, trying to keep up with Hootus, and that lead to suffering at the end of the ride.
The long “run” on Friday was my standard two-loops of Natirar with Tula. I wasn’t feeling it when I started so I just planned to keep HR in ZR/low-Z1 and ignore pace. I was surprised when I was having trouble getting HR into Z1 after a mile at under 15:00. I decided to push up the two hills each loop which did get my HR into upper Z1, but it never felt really hard. I was pretty happy with the pace results at the end of the walk and physically felt awesome; like I could have gone a bit longer. I think I’m about a week or two away from actually RUNNING during my shorter runs, or a true run/walk approach to my long runs. I’m also seeing HR drop pretty quickly after harder efforts, which is always a nice sign of improving fitness.
TRX classes are also starting to pay off. I’m feeling stronger in my core, arms and legs, and the exercises are getting to be a bit easier to complete without surgical area discomfort (core
, chest). HR is a bit lower during the workouts as well. A couple more weeks like this and I’ll be adding progressions to the moves. Yay..
Monday starts two big challenges. First, Fran starts at The Max Challenge, and I’m going to join her in the diet portion. I need to really clean up my diet, and want to support her, so this is an excellent time to do so. Second, the annual USAT Challenge starts up with a month of swimming in December. I’m going to use the swimming in December to pile on a lot of base HR (ZR-Z1) training without a lot of joint stress on my body. I’ll probably swim 3-4 days a week
, Mon-Wed with the masters group at the Y, and Friday evenings and (possibly) Sunday afternoons. I’m also going to throw in two 30 min base ‘walk/runs’ on the treadmill after TRX classes on Tues/Fri mornings. The rest of the week I’ll do some easy bike rides to spin out my legs and maybe one longer bike ride on the trainer or outside depending on the weather.
Total workout times will likely stay in the 8-10 hour range. I’m hoping that workload at my job continues at the same pace so I can keep up with this workout/recovery program. So far it seems to be working.