Week in Review: September 24 – September 30 2018

This week as almost perfect.  For the first time, I swam for 500m continuously and the only thing that would have made it perfect was if I was able to swim 4 days.  Since the pool was closed on Thursday, I only swam 4 days.

On the running front, I was able to hit 15 miles which has been a regular goal for the last several weeks, but just as importantly, I did all 15 miles without any walking breaks

Cycling was OK with a long ride of 2 hours.I was originally hoping to do a 3-hr, 50 miles ride, but I was a bit tired today so I rode for 2 hours

Overall, I was able to hit 8 hours of workout time this week for the 3rd week in a row

 

Goals for Next Week:This is going to be a lower workout week as I’m travelling to Fl early Saturday morning with the family.  I should get 4 days of swimming at 1,000m each, but I may only get 2 running days and 2 cycling days.  This is OK as I’m probably due for a lower volume week after hitting 8 hours for each of the last 3 weeks

First Major Swimming Milestone

On Tuesday I hit a major swimming milestone…..I swam for 500m without stopping.This was a milestone I was hoping to hit before I registered for Ironman Arizona in November but I have managed to hit it much sooner.  The reason for wanting to hit this milestone is that almost all of the Ironman 70.3 and Ironman training plans out there start with the assumption that you can swim 500m without stopping.  It is considered the base level of fitness needed along with running for an hour and biking for about 60-90 mins.

By being able to swim 500m without stopping, I can now meet the minimum fitness level in all three sports.  Of course, I need to be able to do it regularly and I will, but just knowing I can do it once is a huge confidence booster.

It’s hard to believe that it was less than 3 months ago (first week of July) that I learnt to swim freestyle with side breathing and right after the most I could have swam was 25m at a time before I felt like dying.

The next milestones I need to aim for and reach are:

  • Swimming a total of 1,500m within a session, with breaks.  This is a swimming mile
  • Swim 1,000m without stopping

 

Week in Review: September 17 – September 23 2018

The highlight for the week for me was my swimming.  I managed to swim 1,000m each day for my 4 swimming days, but most impressively, I managed to drop my rest time to 40 secs per every 100m that I swam.  I also extended my longest swim interval to 350m.  I can just feel swimming 400-500m is close.

On the bike, everything went well except for today.  The roads were wet this morning so I decided to try and ride indoors.  I managed less than 15 minutes and I just couldn’t do it anymore.  So, I then tried to go ride outside and I was so scared of the wet roads, that ride lasted less than 20 minutes.  Eventually this evening the roads dried up and I managed to do a third ride of 23 miles.

I managed to do one 6-mile run, but overall, I couldn’t make it to 15 miles for the week.

 

Goals for Next Week: My focus is going to be swimming.  I will continue to do 1,000m workouts, but I would really love to do a 500m segment without stopping.

Week in Review: September 10 – September 16 2018

This was a very good week.  There was only one hiccup in my workout plans.  This was a Florida travel week and so my bike rides would be in an indoor gym.  Unfortunately, the hotel I had reserved had a key card issue where none of the key cards were working and so to get into your room, you would have to go to the front desk and someone would walk you to your room to let you in.  Since they couldn’t tell me when it’ll be fixed and I would be there for 4 nights, I didn’t want to stay there.  So I ended up staying at a different hotel which did not have an indoor bike.  As a result, I only got in 2 bike rides this week.

On the running front, I didn’t manage to run 5 miles each of the days, but I did run 6 miles one of the days and so my total after 3 running days was 15 miles. I’ll take that!

My swimming is what I felt best about this week.  For my Tuesday swim I could tell it was great.  I was resting less and it had me thinking that I was getting close to being able to swim 400-500m without stopping.  By Thursday, I was able to do a monster swim of 1,000m and more importantly, I swam the first 500m with only a single rest.  For the entire 1,000m, I only rested 4 times swimming about 250m between rests.

For the very first time, I felt good about my swimming progress.  This week I am going to aim to swim 400m without stopping.  I think I can do it.

On the bike, I ended the week today with a 50-mile ride in 2:50.  That is 17 mins faster that it took me to ride 50 miles two weeks ago.

 

Goals for Next Week:  My main goal for this week is to swim 400m without stopping.  I’ll also be shooting for 1,000m each of the 4 days. I will aim to run 15 miles this week. I expect cycling to be pretty typical with 18 miles on the week days and 40-50 miles on Sunday