Triathlon Training Log: 7/1 - 7/7 (Week 2)

Man, I am exhausted.  This wasn't even some huge training week, but between the heat and having my folding bike in the shop, I got behind early and then had to try to catch up, and that's been a challenge.

Now I realize that what passes for heat in Connecticut is not actually hot by much of the rest of the country's standards.  But Connecticut is not really optimized for hot weather, and indeed, my house doesn't even have central AC.  So when I say that we've had 90- to 92-degree weather for the past couple of days, just keep in mind what that means.  Our house is a well-designed bungalow with lots and lots and lots of windows, and we live two miles from the beach and get plenty of refreshing breezes, even when it's hot.  But once it gets over 90, there's not much that we can do to stay cool except hide in the basement--where it's always nice, even on super-hot days--or hide in our rooms where we have the window AC units.  Granted, Stratford doesn't tend to see more than a dozen days above 90-degrees in an entire year, but those few days are never pleasant.


Swim
As usual, I swam twice this week.  Neither workout was particularly noteworthy besides noting that the YMCA's pool doesn't have an aerator--nor, frankly, would you expect that it would--so with the sun beating down through the now-open roof, the temperature in the pool has gone up to about 86-degrees.  Not exactly conducive to fast swimming.

I took Wednesday and Friday off this week, which allowed Sally and me to go to the pool Wednesday afternoon.  I wound up swimming with one of the local high school swimmers, and I just did her workout with her, though I don't remember exactly what that entailed.  We did a long kick set and a 500 yard timer, but other than that, it's kind of a blank.

We went to the pool again today (Sunday) after church, and I did a ladder set: 100-200-300-400-400-300-200-100, on a base interval of 1:25/100, and since it was so hot in the pool, I pulled the back half of that set.  Still felt like garbage in the water, but I suppose that I got what I came for our of it.

Swimming Total: 2 x swim workouts (2200, 2800 yards); 50 pts.


Bike
I also got on the bike twice this week.  The first time, I warmed up for 10:00 and then did intervals--that same 2:00 hard/1:00 easy set I did running a couple of weeks ago running.  I went through it twice on the bike with 5:00 easy spinning between sets.  That took me out to about 45-minutes.  I rode about 15-minutes at a steady, aerobic pace and then pointed my bike up Long Hill Road. That course rises maybe 250-feet over the course of something like a mile and a half.   The center piece is steep but the rise is fairly gentle towards the top.  Anyway, I tried to attack the hill fast and popped after I got through the steep section--hills on top of intervals proved to be quite a bit.  I still managed to ride to the bottom on the other side and then come back up the longer, gentler side, but it wasn't the kind of crushing hill work I'd been looking for.

But no worries.  I did hills again on Saturday with the Tri Club.  That time I rode and easy 9-miles to the Y, then rode another easy five with the Club, and then we went to Wolf Harbor Road and rode that climb five times.  My friend Ben said that thing gains about 140' over .6-miles, so take that for what it's worth.  Regardless, I enjoyed it, and it was a pretty good sized little climb for quick repeats.  We could go up it at full gas, and it took maybe a minute and a half--kind of an ideal  quick, full-gas exertion.

Cycling Total: 2 x bike rides (30.48, 26.92 miles); 57.4 pts.


Run
Eh.  I ran twice.  I still feel like I've got a little injury around my right ankle, but backing off some has helped, and anyway, I'm not feeling it in this heat.  I'll probably stay on the bike as my main workout, at least through mid-August, anyway.  That's typically when it starts to cool down around here.

Run Total: 3 x runs (3.45, 5.54 miles); 36 pts.

Total Training for the week: 143.4.


Well.  That's not terrible.  Hopefully getting my foldie back and adding my commute rides back in will help put me back above 160 pts for the next few weeks, though.