Rachel's IM Canada training: week 8 (of 24)

Posted by Rachel

Given that this week was a multiple of 4, it means it was a step back. Woohoo! It's Saturday and I've already finished all of my workouts for the week, and it's another hour or so until we head to the winery and my sister and husband are taking naps. Hence, you get my weekly recap now.

Monday
am- 5000 yard endurance swim, which felt great!
pm- 1-hour trainer ride (Trainer Road English) + core. Trainer Road is really fun! Having the hour workout completely laid out in graph form, with speed intervals tailored to my current ability, is way more interesting than spin class or random training.

Tuesday
7 mile run, including a 9 x 400 track workout with 200 recovery and lunges after each set of 3. Every time I return to track after taking several weeks off (which is basically every time I go to track, at this point), my first 1-2 intervals are slow and feel like death. My last 7 400s were right where they should be, all in the 1:30-1:31 range.

Wednesday
5.1 mile easy run (8:33). Easy is a little harder the day after track. AND my hamstrings were sore from backwards lunges (no weights!). I've done many forward lunges with weights in my day but it appears we've identified a muscle weakness here.

Thursday
am- In the spirit of step back week, I skipped my morning spin + core. When the alarm went off at 5 am and Travers decided to bail, I took this last reprieve before beginning 4xbike/week next week.
pm- 4300 yard swim at master's practice. My body felt really strange swimming in the afternoon (first time this training cycle), but despite feeling slow my times were solid. In a set of 5 x 200 on 3:00, I was 2:25-2:30 on all of them which just doesn't happen at 6 am.

Friday
Good thing I had this random Catholic holiday off from work. Ok, that was intended to be sarcastic but actually, it was convenient because I was able to use a weekday to get my "long" step back ride out of the way. I biked 32.7 miles with 3200 ft of climbing, 13.3 mph. Again, no speed records here but there were a lot of traffic lights in the first 5 miles (every block, basically) and the climbs all felt really good without too much exertion at all, so I'll take it!

Saturday
10 mile run @ a comfortable 8:25. Last night I ate a dinner that was super high in fat and extra low in carbs. There may have been more wine than I planned, too. This turned into some serious stomach issues on the morning run. At least a I learned a lesson, and I've added to the list of foods that I will NOT be eating the evening before the IM.
After my run, my sister arrived for her short visit and we went hiking in the Oakland hills!

I trail ran! (Just kidding, I only did it for about 15 sec to get a cool picture in the eucalyptus trees.)

View from the hike. Hello over there, Mt. Diablo. My bicycle and I will be visiting you very soon...

Sunday

This will be my last (planned) rest day for a few weeks, unless I can convince my sister to run. In that case, I'll throw down a couple miles but it'll be all in good fun to run with my sister, who has been quoted as saying "I will NEVER run unless I'm being chased by something really scary." And now she's up over 2 miles per run. Never say never :)