This was the first week following the workouts and plan from my new coach. Overall, I think it went well. The most noticeable difference from my previous weeks is that the intensity was higher.
For my swimming, I had previously discussed with him that I didn’t really want to be doing complicated drill sets. I don’t think I have a lot of room for improving my speed and I was quite happy with my current pace. So in that vein, he only scheduled one workout with some speed work and the other two were my normal continuous swims.
For the speed workout, he wanted me to split it into three 500m sets with the first one easy, the next one a bit harder and the third even harder. The first set went well and for the second set, I did go faster, but it was tough and so the third set was done easy. The disappointing part though is that when I got home and looked at my times, for the second set even though I think I worked much harder, it was only about 30 seconds faster than the first 500m. That really only managed to cement in my mind that I should just accept my current swim speed especially since it’s more than fast enough to get me through the swim comfortably. In retrospect, I think the issue is that in trying to swim faster, I was losing what ever current technique I have.
On the bike, the mid-week workouts were quite complex with all sorts of intervals. I actually liked that though. I created custom workouts in Zwift and since I was constantly doing various sets and having to switch it up every 1-2 mins, it actually made the workouts on the indoor trainer much easier to tolerate. For the longer ride, the weather was very nice over the weekend so I was able to do it outdoors….always nice for longer rides.
The hardest run workout was a hill workout which I had to do on the treadmill. I hate running on the treadmill and when you combine that with a hill workout at 8-10%, it was not enjoyable.
My coach threw in a strength/core workout and I was feeling the effects of the crunches many days later.
I ended the week at just under 10 hrs.