Week Six - Still learning

I followed the planned workouts for rest last week, except that I snowboarded over the weekend. It is becoming more and more apparent to me that snowboarding is hard, and not necessarily a restful activity. AND, if I'm training for a half ironman, maybe it's ok to not ride so many moguls, trees and blacks. Maybe it's ok to spend more time sitting in the lodge. At one point yesterday, I was turning through some trees and stopped and my leg was shaking - I guess from exhaustion. Today, I am very sore - my upper right leg, shoulders, triceps, biceps. My swim this AM was really hard, even though it was a relatively short 2000 m. I am skipping a bike workout tomorrow and will hopefully be rested by the time I go to Masters swimming tomorrow night. What is the point of a rest week if I wear myself down over the weekend? :(

Total: 6:53, 28.5 miles
Swim: 1:00, 2200 meters
Bike: 1:35, 19.5 miles (all commuting)
Run: 1:18, 7.6 miles
Strength: yoga(1:15) + 45 minutes

Time off

I'm taking it easy this week and so far am greatly enjoying it. This is my week to sleep in and slack off. Yesterday morning, I woke up at 5:45 to go to the gym, went to the bathroom, and realized, 'This sucks, I'm going back to bed!' And so I did, for about an hour, and it was great! I still ran 45 minutes before work so I don't feel bad at all. And instead of Masters swimming last night, I went to a really nice yoga class. Aaah. :)

It's a good mental break, too, and a chance to catch up on sleep, work, and chores around the house. Of course, there's still not nearly enough time to get everything done! Anyway, some times it's important to do a workout, even if I don't really feel like it, but for a few more days I get a break from that.

Week Five - It's about the bike

Well this week I took a few days off during the week to make sure my legs were ready for riding in Moab. I didn't ride as much as I had hoped there, but it was definitely worth the trip. My Moab rides were kind of slow, but also very hilly and windy (3000+ ft climbing in 48 miles the first day and 2300+ ft in 31.5 miles the second day). Over the weekend I rode almost 6.5 hours. :) I wish I could ride all the time! Oh yeah, also my longest swim in a while was Tuesday - 3000 meters. Well, I am now definitely due for a rest week. I am also pretty behind on running, so in the next few weeks I will have to skip some cycling workouts in favor of running.

Here are the totals:
Total: 11:10, 93.5 miles
Swimming: 2:08, 5250 meters
Biking: 6:55, 85.75 miles (long 47.75)
Running: :47, 4.55 miles
Strength: 1:20

Moab base training!

I am pretty excited to be going to Moab this weekend with two of my great friends, Rachel and Michelle. We are going to have a great time. It's been ages since I've been on a roadtrip with just girls, and there is just something special about it. Plus Moab is a wonderful place and I love going there. I wish Chris could come, maybe it will still work out, but so far it looks like he has too much work to do.

The other nice thing about the trip is I will be bringing my road bike. I know, I will be sleeping right next to slickrock but not riding on it! But, it's better this way because my friends aren't mtn bikers, and I'm not really good enough to be mountain biking in Moab by myself. Plus it will make Chris feel less jealous. Plus, I can get in some super training!

I just looked up some routes from the Moab Skinny Tire Festival and Moab Century Tour. There is a loop into the La Sals I hope to do, it's about 75 miles with more than 4000 ft. of climbing. That will be killer for me but beautiful. I think it will be cold but hopefully no snow on the roads. So hopefully I can do that on Saturday, spend the rest of the day relaxing and recovering, and then ride another 40-60 miles on Sunday. I love the idea of devoting a couple of days to training, but getting to have fun with friends in the mean-time.

I'll have to not over-train leading up to this weekend, too, but still get in the important swimming and running workouts. Then next week, I promise, I will rest! Just because I love Moab so much, here is a picture of me on the Slickrock trail in 2007. I was scared to death at the time, but last year Chris and I returned and I rode the whole loop and only fell once in a stupid sandpit.

Week Four - Rest what?

So last week was supposed to be a rest week and I failed. It's hard to rest when the weather is so nice! I feel like I have to take advantage of it because surely it will get back to normal crappy winter sooner or later. I am due for a rest week - maybe next week because I have friends coming to town. Here's what I did last week:

Total: 10.05 hours, 73.5 miles! oops
Swimming: 1:20, 3175 meters
Biking: 4:27, 61.87 miles
Running: :44, 4 miles
Snowshoeing: 3:00, 5.6 miles (Lake Agnes - beautiful and challenging!)
Strength: 35 minutes

This week I was also supposed to do a bit of a time trail for each discipline. I didn't do the run since we went snowshoeing and my legs (and entire body/mind) were pretty tired after that. So I should probably do that at some point.

For the swim, I found out that my t1 pace is 1:35. I think this means I can swim 100 yards on a 1:35 interval for reasonable amount of time. This seems so slow to me in some ways, I don't know how people do 100's close to a minute. I have decent form swimming, I think, but am just not that fast.

For the bike, I rode 5.37 miles in 16:37 - about a 19.3 mph pace. This is nice because I was below my lactate threshold for this test (at least as far as I could tell since my HRM broke).

It's official! Boulder Long Course, here I come!

I registered for the half ironman in Boulder on Aug. 9 today!!! I know I want to do it, but hitting the "continue" button after filling in all my registration info was extremely nerve-wracking. What am I thinking? I've never run more than 10 miles before - and I want to run 13 after doing all that other stuff, too!? Well, I'm glad it's official now. The race was filling up so I wanted to make sure to get a spot.

In case you're unfamiliar, the race will be a 1.2 mile swim (1900+ meters), 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run. Whew!

Week Three - Success!

Well this week I completed all of the scheduled workouts! I felt like that was a good accomplishment. Chris and I went snowboarding Sunday though and my legs were beat after just a few hours on some blacks at Winter Park. So I guess I definitely worked them this week!

Weekly totals:
7:20, 43.66 miles
Swimming: 2 hrs, 5325 meters
Biking: 2:10, 30.3 miles (long 1:10, 18.3 miles)
Running: 1:45, 10.05 miles (long 1:00, 5.65 miles)
Strength: 1:20