Swim
Got in the water twice this week. Tuesday was my regular thing, if a bit rushed. My daughter Hannah has voice lessons Tuesday nights, and my wife Sally teaches a barre class afterwards, and this--along with the routines of life like dinner and homework--tend to make Tuesdays hectic. I was lucky in that I managed to get to the pool early and get a jump on the night's work, but I only put in 2000 yards. I knew I needed to get home, so I could feed our kids and get them to bed on some kind of timeline. I did that, but it wasn't like Tuesday's swim was some glorious exercise.
Saturday was similar. Sally took the girls to see Cinderella, and I went to the pool. But by the time I got there, I only had about a half-hour left before they closed. I wound up getting all of 1700 yards in before being thrown out. What can you do? I suppose that this is what happens when you decide to take a Saturday morning off and have pancakes with your kids.
Triathlon training is the enemy of Family Time, unfortunately.
Swimming Total: 2 x swims (2050, 1700); 37.5 pts
Bike
I rode my regular commute three times this week, but I got caught out in a nasty rain storm Wednesday afternoon, and that sucked hard. Forty-degrees and rainy is no weather for riding, especially given all the mud and salt on the streets of New York. I was soaked to the bone and half-frozen by the time I got home.
Cycling Total: 3 x commute rides (30.6 miles); 30.6 pts
Run
I ran twice during the week, both times for just under a half-hour. Neither run was a record-breaker, but I felt like I got what I needed done. By the time Sunday rolled around, though, I needed to make up a few points because my swim Saturday had been cut short. This wasn't a problem, exactly, I'd been wanting to run a little further, but my left knee has been sore, and I wasn't sure how well it was going to hold up.
As it happens, it didn't hold up particularly well. I'd planned to run a little more than five miles, and for the first half of that, everything was great. However, once I turned the corner and started for home, my knee started really letting me know that it was there. I had the wind in my face for the second half of the run, and I think that's what triggered it--it tends to get sore running uphill--but whatever the cause, it hurt. Eventually I stopped and stretched and then slowed down, and that was better, but it was still frustrating--like pretty much everything else this week. Mile four in particular was tough, but I felt better after that and finished reasonably well.
Honestly, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. As long as I held my pace at around 9:30/mile, I was fine. It was only when I found myself picking it up that my knee ached, and since this was supposed to be a long, slow run anyway, that wasn't a disaster. It does make me think, though, that I'm going to have to take some time off, and that stinks. It seems like everytime I start running comfortably, something goes wrong, and I wind up having to start over.
Run Total: 3 x runs (2.6, 2.6, 5.4); 42.4 pts
Tri Training Total: 110.5 pts
I was averaging about 75 points through the offseason, owing mostly to the difficulties of training in middle of a bunch of continuous snowstorms. I'm no fan of treadmills, and I don't own a bike trainer, so it's been all but impossible to get any riding done. That said, I'm not really training for anything, so it's not like I'm on a schedule. As my kids have gotten older, it's been a little easier to get away to swim or run (it's never easy to get out for a decent bike ride), but our weekends are increasingly scheduled, to the point where I have no clue where we'd fit in more commitments. With that in mind, I'm not sure I'm racing this year--at all.
That's okay. I've done plenty of racing and don't particularly miss it. As I've said before, however many medals I'm supposed to have, I have at least that many sitting around somewhere. However, I'm still trying to increase my training regime and get into better shape, and this is Week 2 of that process. I'm on the schedule I set out, but if the knee keeps bothering me, that'll throw things off.
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