I'm less than 6 weeks away from my next Half-Ironman race - the Texas Man Triathlon on May 16. So I thought I'd do a "full" workout on Saturday to gauge where I stand. Started with a 7-mile run - 3 miles by myself and then met up with the Keller Running Club for the first 4 miles of their 7-mile route. After that I went to LA Fitness for a 3,000 yd swim + 2.5 hrs on the spin bike (15 min warmup + 2 spin classes with 15 minutes in between). I had skipped breakfast (was running late for the phase 1 run) - Big Mistake: I was starving by last hour of spin. Pretty solid workout - 1.5 x Half-Iron Swim, 5/6 of Half-Iron Bike, 7/13 of Half-Iron Run - which makes for a nice confidence booster.
On Sunday, I put in some more time in the spin room. (Unfortunately, even though the weather was pretty nice, I didn't have time to do a properly ride outside - we have 11:00 AM reservations for Easter brunch. :-) In total, 2 hours and 15 minutes completed - call it about 40 miles of riding. Normally, I would estimate it as closer to 45 miles (assuming a 20 MPH average) but I was definitely moving a little more slowly today and the intensity was down a notch (especially for the first 1:15 which was self-paced) - some recovery from yesterday's efforts. But even though the bike ride wasn't optimal, it still counts as time in the saddle and back-to-back days of riding ("50 miles" + "40 miles"). This is definitely welcome as my other big upcoming event is the Sam's Club MS-150 - a two-day 150-mile from Frisco to Fort Worth on May 1-2 (less than a month away).
Finally, today, I did my longest swim over six months - 4,000 yds in 1:28:16. This is about 4 minutes slower than my equivalently-matched "PR while wearing baggy swim trunks" (and nearly 13 minutes slower than my overall PR of 1:15:23). A little disappointing, but now I know where I need to improve. I'm going to try to get in my some more long (4,000+ yd) swims, and hopefully some open-water swims as well, before May 16.
