Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Changing it Up

Since I started training for triathlons some years ago I have always followed roughly the same pattern for my workouts. Swims on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at lunch. On those days I run in the evening. On Tuesday and Thursday, I run at lunch and bike in the evening, and on the weekend it is long run on Saturday, short bike, and long bike, short run on Sunday or I take Sunday off. Going into this training cycle I am going to try and mix it up a little and try and do a few single, concentrated workouts throughout the week.
Yesterday I had to go for blood work which required 12 hours of fasting. For me going 12 hours without food is a challenge and I need some distractions. My problem is I wake up starved and can't wait for my breakfast so I needed something to keep me occupied from 4:30 AM when I get up until the lab opened at 8:00 AM, so I went for a morning swim. Surprisingly I was quite pleased with my workout as I was able to really work on some drills and not worry about taking up a lane. After an hour I had done a little over 2,000 metres and it was 7:30 AM and I was ready to get the blood withdrawn. In the evening I ran a nice 6.25 miles in 44 minutes. The legs were pretty fresh considering I had done eleven miles on Saturday and 9.5 on Sunday, both a around a 7:05 pace.
Today I swam again, logging 2,600 metres. Tuesday is a less busy day at the pool as apparently most people follow the same schedule I do for their swims. Again it was nice to have not too many people in the pool. Swimming back to back left me feeling pleasantly tired, but not totally bagged. The added bonus was I hit the bike for a challenging workout tonight with fresh legs and it really was evident. I whipped off a 40 km ride in 1:11 with lots of intervals and some big gear work.
So I think I may have something here. My big issue with the big may be related to the fact that I am attempting too many ambitious workouts on tired legs. With that in mind I will try and mix things up a bit and keep it a little more varied. There are some limitations with swimming pool hours but there are still some opportunities to work within those limitations.
Have a great week!

1 comment:

Grellan said...

That triathlon schedule looks very demanding on your time - no rest. Then again if you want to perform at the IM you gotta put in the work.

Your training looks to be coming along very nicely.