Monday, March 22, 2010

Spring for a Week

Last week was the first week for official Ironman training and proved to be a kick-off for some rockin' spring sunshine and warm temps. It's all a distant memory with today's dreary grey skies, steady rain, and a dropping 39 degrees to match. But, back to last week! It was gorgeous everyday with sunny, pure blue skies, and warm air in the high 50's and 60's! Perfect biking weather and I sailed through every workout with a huge grin and straight up joy in my soul! All while working everyday, subbing has been busy recently. By the way, people in Rochester seriously break out shorts and flip flops when it hits the 60's!

Re-cap of last week's workouts: Let me say that I LOVED every second out there! It felt like re-uniting with my long lost friend of "triathlon training." I know I'm a dork, I've admitted it many times on this blog, but I was so happy to slide right back into tri training again. I'm not going to do a weekly post of my specific training, but this is a general idea of my tri training schedule, although the time and distances will increase considerably along the way.

Monday: 2100 yard pool workout
40 min. run

Tuesday: 1 hr. 10 min. bike
2050 yard pool workout

Wednesday: 1800 yard pool workout
1 hr. bike

Thursday: Brick (back to back bike/run workout)
1 hr. 27 min. bike/15 min. run

Friday: 1 hr. 43 min. bike (followed immediately by a recovery run)
25 min. run

Saturday: 11 mile long run at a 9:00 pace

Sunday: rest (ahhhhhhh)

I feel recovered from the marathon completely by now. In addition to marathon training, I have been swimming since December, but first just once a week and then twice weekly for the past couple of months. This was my first week to bike since November. It felt great to be back on the bike and I know my speed will build over the next 23 weeks of Ironman training, with several shorter tri races and running races in the mix. Last summer I got to the point where it didn't hurt to run after biking, my legs were pretty conditioned for it. Thursday I felt all kinds of pain in all my muscles and tendons for that 15 minute run! In Friday's run I didn't feel any pain, instead my legs felt like lead cylinders that couldn't move anything but slow! Good times. :)

Kudos to my training partners: Colin biked with me three times last week-one day after a working a night shift and only 2 hours of sleep! Another day Colin and another friend of ours biked with me. The long run was done with my normal Saturday running group and I even met a couple new people that day. Two swim workouts were with friends. That left me with only one solo bike workout and one solo swim workout. Not bad!

Coming Soon: A blog post about the sheer misery of today's cold, wet, rainy, muddy bike ride. Did I mention it was miserable? Lest you think I'm "Sally Sunshine," today completely sucked and the run wasn't too hot either, but at least I had a running bud, thanks Colin. :)

4 comments:

Jen said...

Awesome workouts... I can only dream. Can you believe i still ahve not even gone to look at bikes... busy... busy.

Tina @GottaRunNow said...

Glad you liked some of the recipes I posted! Looks like you're going to be very busy in training. Here's hoping for plenty of energy and more sunshine!

Kate said...

wow!! that's awesome. the fact that you love training for that makes you a winner already! enjoy your sunny week! we are getting one more shot of cold weather next week down here in GA but after that spring should be settling in. i CANNOT wait! i bet you can't either!

Sandy said...

Wow! Great start to your training, Kirsten! I know what you mean about workouts being lousy...feels like I've made a career out of sucking everytime I go out lately. My training partner told me I run like an elephant pounding the pavement. Sometimes I just feel like giving up. Kudos for hanging in there through rain, cold, and wind!