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.
2 comments:
I just found this blog. I like how you keep track of your training here. Okay, so I'm thinking of doing a full marathon after I complete my next half in June. I really want to...we'll see. I'm trying to talk Scott into it, and so far he has NO interest. Good luck on the tri!
Thanks, Amy. The trick with the marathon training (at least for me) is simply avoiding getting injured. I did both my marathons with 5-1 run-walk (run for 5 minutes, walk for 1 minute, rinse, repeat) strategy and while they were still tough (anything over Mile 20 gets painful) they were more doable than I thought.
I used a modified Hal Higdon's "Intermediate" training schedule. Basically, I followed the mileage for the weekend long runs but during the week I did a lot more cross training (spin class, swimming, elliptical trainer) instead of running. I tended to "annoy" my more dedicated running friends when I told them I only averaged 1 1/2 runs for week for marathon training. :-P
http://www.halhigdon.com/marathon/Mar00index.htm
Feel free to ping me with any questions as you get into your training.
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