Thursday and Friday workouts

Posted by Rachel

And we continue on with peak week.

Thursday:
Morning - 45 min strength training = 15 min core + 30 min strength. The strength excises are mostly legs, and mostly using my own body weight (although there are a few with weights). I try to avoid arms at all costs due to the fact that my shoulders get really large. I feel the same way about large shoulders as I do about accessories- I think they look great on other women but not really on me. (Although, thanks to my fellow female bloggers, I did get some great accessories for my last birthday which have been complimented at work.)
Afternoon- 7.5 mile run. Generally my Thursday run is a slogfest, being tired from the activities from the previous days as well as morning strength training. So I leave my watch at home and just move as slow as necessary to stay on a forward path. Since the last 4-7 hours of the Ironman will be this type of run, it seems good to practice.

Friday:
Many of you know that I swam competitively for a long, long time (age 9 through 2 years of college). By the end of that time, I was so burnt out. I just hated swimming and the thought of getting in the water and the fact that my times had improved only marginally (or not at all) for 3-5 years. Ever since quitting 11 years ago, I still to this day pretty much refuse to get into a pool 'for fun'. It's just not fun for me. However, the sport of swimming is now another story. It turns out a few years off can do wonders for your attitude. Friday morning master's swim practice at our gym is now my favorite workout of the week! This morning it was a bunch of 50s and 100s, which I usually scoff at for being way too short of a distance. But they were all hard/sprints on really short time intervals and this workout completely kicked my butt (in an awesome sort of way). 4000 yards.

Random stories:

-If you're a consistent blog follower you know that we signed up for IM Canada. The swim is in a lake called Alta Lake. I was changing the water cooler at work yesterday (which yes, I can lift to the surprise of many colleagues) and I noticed the brand of water:

So the water isn't from Canada (it's from San Leandro), but I think it's an interesting coincidence that I'll have drank gallons of Alta water before even getting to the start at Alta Lake. I hope it's not a (bad) sign. (For the record, I'm totally ok with swimming 2.4 miles in open water, but I'm terrified to do it with 2,000 at the other people all trying to go the same exact way).

-I found out yesterday that we have to tackle this during the swim-bike transition in the Oakland triathlon:

 

Unfortunately I had no idea that I was training to climb 3 flights of cement stairs while soaking wet. Guess it's a good thing I did those stairs on Tuesday at track after all. As if it's not bad enough that T1 is 0.2 miles long, I was really hoping they'd add something like this.

(So now that I'm done being dramatic, I do now realize that we have to cross train tracks and this is the only way. I just had to get my complaint out there.)