Author: Derek

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

The best part of this week was my swimming.  It’s odd to think that.  I wanted to swim 600m each day and I managed to do that, even doing 650m one of the 4 days.  A couple weeks ago when I was getting frustrated and not seeing any progress, I decided to create a spreadsheet to track how I was doing.  The statistic of interest was to see how much rest I was taking for every 100m I swam.  Here is what that looks like since I first started swimming 2 months ago:

I only logged swims that were done in a proper 25m pool so I can sure the distances are correct.  As can be seen, my rest time per 100m swam has some down drastically.  The goal is basically to get that down to zero.

For my swims, I can actually manage 100m without a rest at the start and then 1-2 75m swim sets and then I’m down to 50m at a time as I get tired.  I can sense though that I’m getting close to 100m sets and if I can make that, it would go a long way to swimming 400-500m without stopping.

On the running side, I am still unable to run 3 days of 5 miles each, but I will keep trying.

Cycling was OK, but I didn’t get my long ride done today.  I got a flat and had to spend 15 mins changing the tube and then by then I was just not mentally ready to ride for a couple more hours.

 

Goals for Next Week: I’m travelling this week so I wouldn’t be able to do proper measured swims, but I’ll aim for swimming time and work on doing 15 mins for each swim day.  I will again shoot for running 5 miles 3 days a week.  One of my cycling days will need to be on an indoor bike so I’m not hopeful, but I will aim to at least get in a 40-50 mile ride on the weekend

 

This was a mixed week.  I had an unexpected 1-night  business trip and that threw a wrench into my plans.  But, in the end I still managed 7 hours of training time.

Cycling was the best where I got in all the planned rides with a long ride of 50 miles today.

On the running front I only managed to run two days and one of those was only for 1.5 miles as it was on the treadmill at my hotel and I just couldn’t stand to run any longer.

I have been frustrated with my swimming recently and so I decided to try something new….neoprene shorts.  I know they are a crutch, but the way I look at it, I only plan to do 2 triathlons, an Ironman 70.3 in April 2019 and an Ironman in November 2019 and both will be wetsuit legal.  I bought a pair of Tyr Hurricane Neo Shorts Cat 1.

I swam with them on Saturday and I loved them.  Typically I can only swim 25m at a time and must take a brief breather.  With the neoprene shorts, I was able to swim 50m at a time.  My arms were actually getting tired.  That never happened before as I guess I wasn’t working them as much.  The neoprene shorts are allowing me to swim more and give my arms a better workout.  I plan to continue to use them for a while and perhaps even permanently.  I’ll see how it goes.

 

Goals for Next Week: I need to get my running back on schedule so I will be aiming for 5 miles a day for the 3 running days.  I don’t’ expect my cycling to change much from last week so 17-18 miles on the week day and at least 40 miles, if not 50 miles on the weekend.  With my swimming I’m going to bump the distance to 600m each of the 4 days.