The Test Before the Rest

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Sorry I didn't post yesterday (thanks for noticing!), but it was one of those days. Actually, it was the typical "boil your workout down to the essentials" kind of day due to the occasional time constraints that kids and life put on you. I had about 90 minutes to get back and forth to the Princess' preschool and also get my workout in, but manage something I did.

1100 Fartlek Swim Set

If I'm remembering correctly, the assigned set here is some 1900 yards. To get it down to 1100 (oops!), I lopped off two 200 yard drill/kick sets and another 200 yards off of each of the warmup and cool down. Not a long term strategy for success, for sure, but one that is sometimes necessary in life. What did I do? The "meat and potatoes" of the swim set -- specifically, 6 x 150 yard Fartlek swim intervals in a 50 yard build and a 25 yard descend pattern. I continue to struggle with what build means in swimming -- especially, as I seem to have about a half-dozen speeds and all I do is switch from one to the next to the next until I'm sprinting and then, not surprisingly, descend to a sluggish crawl more slowly on the backside. But, either way, I felt it, and that remains the key at this early stage. With only ten seconds between sets, I didn't really have time to fully catch my breath, which is a good thing -- all the more work on improving my VO2 max, which is, in layman's terms, the body's threshold level for exerting and still using oxygen efficiently. The more you work on your lung's resistance, the more they can take down the road, just like anything else.

Plus, I also wasn't concerned about trimming this workout because I knew I had a swim/bike brick planned for the next morning. For those not familiar with triathlon terminology, a "brick" workout is one which combines disciplines, similar to and often in the same order as you would in a race. In my case, where I'm eschewing the run for now, my brick workouts will almost always be swim/bike. In terms of what I was trying to do Saturday, it was my full long-swim workout as prescribed for the weekend, followed closely by a hard 45-minute bike ride. I planned on putting in maximum effort, knowing that I would be taking Sunday off, doing one power interval set on the bike on Monday, and then leaving town for a week. Considering the travel is international and there's no guarantee I'll see any exercise until the following Monday, this brick workout was meant to be intense... It did not disappoint.

1300 yard swim/45 minute bike

I got to the pool about 9:30 on Saturday morning, only to observe a crowd there as large as I've ever seen -- not normally a good thing, especially if you're planning on putting in a good 45-50 minute swim in one of the eight available lanes. The good news is that no one was in the pool yet. The bad? At 10am, an "indoor" triathlon was going to get underway and the pool was going to close. Yikes! Needless to say, I stripped down to my suit, jumped in with my goggles half-off and started swimming as hard as I could. My goal for the day was 1800 yards, but that simply wasn't going to happen in 25-30 minutes (when they would kick me out). A strong (read: not me) triathlon swimmer covers a mile (1750 yards) in 25 minutes. I am more like 35 when I'm really laying the wood.

The good part about the time pressure is that I discarded the pleasantries and I swam HARD. I kicked hard and long, stretched and pulled with all my might, and completely ignored the maelstrom going on around me as they readied the pool for the upcoming race. After about 1200 strong yards, I noticed that they were starting to empty the pool. I managed another 100 yards, bringing me to 1300 in about 27 minutes (which I am pleased as punch about). It wasn't a bad effort, and I probably burned close to as many calories and built up as much lactic acid as if I had gone 1800 at my normal pace, so the effect was roughly the same.

With timing being everything, I passed by a childcare worker on the way in who notified me about a needed diaper change -- I changed quickly into my bike gear, freshened up the Pea with a new set of drawers, and headed for the bike.

Man, is doing the disciplines in combination a different world. I mean I have felt STRONG on the bike these last couple of weeks. I know I got my bum kicked by myself from last spring, but still, I completed every workout as planned, went up and down hills with aggression, and hit all of my speed milestones. Today I nearly passed out after about 15 minutes -- no joke.

First of all, it was quite apparent how hard I swam -- when I mentioned lactic acid earlier, I meant it. My hamstrings and thighs felt like molasses, slogging through all of the pedaling rotations and struggling to make it up even the smallest hill. At least three different times, during the most challenging of inclines, I nearly came to a complete stop. I'm not going to lie -- writing this blog kept me going at least once. I am determined to admit when I cut workouts short on here, and I just didn't want to do that today. I have a week off (sort of -- I have one more ride on Monday) and this was the first time I had combined the swim with the bike. I'm allowed to struggle through it a bit, but I didn't want to allow myself to stop before my prescribed 45 minutes, even if that meant I rode at 14-15mph (a full 2-3mph slower than on Thursday). Thankfully, as I recall from many races, my legs started to get back under me by about 10-15 minutes in and, while I remained slower than my bike-only sets, I got to a good 15mph average seven miles in and finished the 12 mile set averaging 16mph in the 45-minutes of time I had allotted. I was completely spent, soaked to the bone, and literally sat on the bike seat draining a 16 oz water bottle, but I did it and now I have Valentine's Day with my family and a day off on Sunday. I trust further that it did my body and my preparedness some good. At least I certainly hope so...