Wet start to ride home

The swim was good today, back to normal, still.
2K 39:30, nice and easy and relaxed. Chatted with some of the regulars. A trio of kids showed up and took over the lane I was in. Since they had rockets installed by proctologists, I moved into the next lane where people were swimming more my speed. The fastest of the trio was doing a relaxed swim at about my all out pace.

I rode home from work for the first time. Linda dropped me and my hybrid off. The morning looked nice, and just as I was thinking about shutting it down and heading out, it started raining. I didn't care. I could see that it would soon pass. Sure enough, from the office over Deerfoot and it had essentially stopped. From the zoo on it was nice.

The ride home is almost exactly 30 K, and took 1:24, riding nice and easy, just riding along and enjoying the scenery. I worked just a bit to keep cadence high to help flush out my legs and get them warmed up for the monster ride tomorrow. And no, I don't know why mapmyride put that straight line to join the office (north end) to home. It screwed up the milage too, but I have the bike computer for that. I took the scenic route through Sandy Beach scoping out where we're planning to hold our company picnic. Somehow, the hill up and out of Sandy Beach doesn't seem so bad anymore.

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The 4am run, reprised, faster

Back on May 8th, I burst out the door at 4am for a 90 minute run (14/1)in the cold rain. Blogged here. This evening I did that same run in 80 minutes, 19/1. I pushed a bit harder on this run, aiming for a low zone 3 heart rate. In fact my average heart rate is 126 bpm over the 80 minutes. It's about 10.5 K.

There was no steady pace particularly. My heart rate was up and down. I'd start thinking about Vulcan a week from now, and my heart rate would increase. Then I'd think about what I was doing now it it would drop again. Or I'd pick up the pace just a little and the heart rate would go up a lot. I had a strong finish, with heart rate up in the mid 130's for the last 12 minutes. My feet feel a little tired, but legs are good.

Looking forward to a Friday am swim, then riding home from work nice and easy on my hybrid, and (sob!) my last massage from my wonderful therapist until she visits from Cortes Island. Sat is a major quadzilla breaking, lung burning, heart bursting ride with Susi and Jenna. Susi says that if she's going to be given devil horns she's gonna be worthy of them! She has such a route planned! I only hope these two fierce competitors don't push so hard to make the other beg for mercy that they drop me out in the boonies in the middle of the ride. I know Jenna can kick my ass in the pool and on the run, and Susi can easily outrun me. We'll see how close to the hurl zone I come trying to keep up on the bike. I seem to remember Susi saying that if I keep up she'll buy all the sushi I can eat. Look for deets on Sunday. If I have the energy to type...

Swim surprise

Well, I haven't forgotten how to swim after all. Faithful readers will know I've been a bit off my feed for the swim lately. Today was back to what I think of as normal. I'm really not sure what was different about my stroke, but it did feel smoother and better coordinated with my kick.

I didn't start off as strong as normal, but swam quite consistent 500 m splits.
First 9:40 (580 seconds)
Second 19:25 (585 seconds)
Third 29:11 (611 seconds)

My inner shark showed up for the first visit in a while. Didn't say where he'd been, just muttered about "secret shark stuff". He showed up just as the two girls in the next lane started some intervals that had them swimming just a little faster than me. For about 10 seconds. Ha! Together we picked up the pace, and left them behind. Then kept the pace up.

Toward the end I was starting to fade a bit, and without the competition of anyone in the next lane anymore, relaxed. I'd thought about carrying on for another 500 m, but decided it was more important to remember it as a faster swim that went well, rather than go the distance and have it fade into obscurity.

Did some core and flexibility work in the dive tank. We'll mark this down as a solid 45 min.

Accidently fast (for me) 5K

This morning was a 5K run in 36:04. Average heart rate of 121. I took lap readings on my watch every K, but then forgot to write the numbers down and then reset it for my ride this evening. The first K was about 7:45, the next two were under 7 min, and the next two a little over. I didn't mean to run that fast, honest! I just kept my heart rate nice and low and was aiming for a nice smooth stride.

This evening the weather web page said it was 18. Lying $#@! After work I drove most of the road to Nepal. Starting after you turn south again, the paving is done both lanes almost down to 586, or whatever the highway is that goes from Millarville to Okotoks. The pavement is nice and smooth, but you have to watch out for some sample cores taken out of the road. Why?? They still have to repave the bit leading south from 22X, and the east west jog.

I really wasn't sure how much I wanted to ride tonight, so I put Estela in the car and drove down to the top of the new pavement. I figured I'd do some hill work. It took me half an hour to go 7.25 Km. Uphill. Into the wind. Freezing my toes off. There was no way it was 18. I'm sure glad I had a sweat shirt in the car. Only 10 minutes to come back that same 7.25 Km. Map my ride says I went up 250 m in that 7 K.

Nice and smooth swim

I could have slept more today. Something about all this rain, and fairly big workout yesterday. Felt pretty good getting into the pool. Still getting used to these goggles. Once they seal, they're fine, but there's a hollow beside my nose that is difficult.

Swam 45 minutes, but wasn't tracking distance. 2200 m at best and maybe only 2150. Although I was still slow, I was feeling much smoother as far as my arms were concerned. I started at 18 strokes per length, and fairly quickly went to 20, then to 22. Kick was a bit of a shambles.

It was a funny sort of tired. My heart rate was pretty low, and arms were going around pretty good, but they didn't want to pull any harder. I could have kept going. Otherwise they felt fine. Breathing was good. Shoulders good at the time, though they're a bit stiff now.

I didn't know my butt could read

Here's the story. The IGP™ says 3.5 to 4 hr on bike, aiming for min 100K. Well, call me a weenie if you feel you should, but 8 C and rain is not an incentive to ride outside. I don't mind cold. I'm not thrilled about rain because of visibility issues but I suppose I could cope with a light warm rain. But cold AND rain? Nope. Change tires and set up trainer.

My bike computer is set to get milage off the front wheel, so I've no idea how far I actually went. My thought was to make this a fairly tough workout and try to replicate riding outside as much as I could. I wore my helmet. I stuffed the bento box full of bites of Cliff's bars. Loaded up the water bottles, and put one in my jersey pocket. Didn't ride the 10/5 the IGP called for, but when up and down hills pretending I was on the 22X course. The first two hours were more pretending I was going into the wind, and going uphill. The second two hours was the ride back, assuming no wind but more downhill and high cadence work. I tried to go from hill to high cadence quickly.

I had a bad bit at 2:15 or so, then settled down again. A little over 3 hours and my butt made it clear that 4 hours was going to be it, and not one second more. I had sort of been thinking about going 4.5 hours just to be sure of going 100 K. At the end of the ride I had finished my two bottles of energy drink, and almost one more bottle of water. Sweated like a stuck pig, with a small puddle under my bike. I had to put a towel over my bento box or I would have had Cliff bar soup. At one point I bent over to pedal standing up, and a small river poured out of my helmet.

Even so, my average bike hr wasn't all that high at 113, so I suppose I should have pushed harder. I did manage to get up to 144 briefly by pedalling like mad. Average cadance was 76, which is pretty close to my outdoor rides. 3837 calories.

5 min transition.

Ran 5 K in 44:32 average hr 133. Legs felt great. Running in rain is ok, but I was one wet soggy puppy when I got home.

Weekly totals
Swim .66 hr
Bike 5 hr
Run 5 hr !!!!!!
Total 10.66

This was a bit of a rest week for me, and with all the running I didn't feel the least guilt about dialing back on my swim. I'm having a weird upper arm soreness. Not sure what I did, maybe slept on it funny. We'll see how it feels during the swim tomorrow.

Weird throat feeling during swim and run

2K swim 41 minutes. It was odd that it felt like I couldn't get a good breath. You know that feeling like there's a belch half way out, or like there is food part way down but won't go up or down? Or something at the top of your shoulders is tight and is almost ready to click? All through the swim, and all through my evening run.

The plan was for a spin on Tues evening, but I was beat and went to bed early. The plan was to run Thursday morning and spin Wed night. However it wasn't raining, but was supposed to rain tomorrow. So I figured I'd run tonight, and spin in the morning.

Ran 5 x 18/2. I don't know how far I went and don't really feel like tracing it out on mapmyrun. However I chugged along at what seemed like my normal pace. My breathing was a bit more laboured than my heart rate would lead me to expect. My legs felt nice and steady with only the slightest of twinges. They were getting pretty tired at the end so I'm glad I didn't try to make it to the 2 hour mark. It was a nice evening for a run, and Fish Creek is beginning to bloom. Walked 3 minutes before, 5 after, and stretched for a while. Bedtime!