IM Canada: Week 23 – Chen’s version (i.e., taper is the bomb dot com)

Posted by Chen

Well, folks – we’re here! I’m typing this from the huge wraparound couch in our lovely rental townhome in Whistler. Exploring this city has been beautiful so far, but before I can get to race weekend, I suppose I should recap week 23 to round out this blogging experience.

Workouts in week 23 were amazingly short and normal-person-like. It was great. I don’t have a ton of time right now, so I’ll just get right to it. The next time I blog, I will hopefully be writing an exciting race report!!!

IM Canada Week 23 Recap:

Monday: 

• PM: Trainer Road – Cloudripper. After skipping my ride on Sunday due to the wedding in Chitown, I opted for a longer workout with some intervals in the middle at 95% and 105% of my FTP. 31.39 miles in 2:00:00 (15.7mph)

Tuesday: 

• PM: Medium-long run on the Bay Trail: 12.55 miles 1:38:29 (~7:51 pace). After also skipping my medium-long run due to the wedding, I decided to make up for it. After my first warm-up mile, I realized that my legs were feeling pretty good (probably due to my weekend ‘o laziness), so I thought that combining my long run and my tempo work for the week was a good idea (for the first half only; the second half was completed at an easy pace). I ended up accidentally PRing my 10K (45:40ish) in that first half, but in retrospect, this was probably a bit aggressive less than two weeks out from race day.

Wednesday: 

• Rest

Thursday: 

• PM: Swimming 2500 yards (average pace of 1:41/100yds) – this ended up being my fastest overall swim so far! Taper magic, I suppose. This included:
• 500 swim (8:35); 500 pull (8:55); 500 paddles (8:20)
• 5x100@2:00 (1:42, 1:40, 1:40, 1:38, 1:38)
• 10x50@1:10 (0:47, 0:46, 0:46, 0:47, 0:46, 0:46, 0:46, 0:46, 0:46, 0:46)
• Immediately followed by stationary biking hill intervals: 14.62 miles in 45:00 (19.5mph)

Friday: 

• PM: Easy treadmill run 4 miles in 34:02 (~8:31 pace)
• Immediately followed by swimming 2000 yards (average pace of 1:49/100yds)

Saturday: 

• AM: Biking through SF before dropping my bike off to be shipped to Canada: 22.65 miles, 1500+ foot gain, 13.6mph

Sunday: 

• AM: Swimming 2000+ yards with Brandon, Katie, and Matt. While I started out by doing my usual swim/pull ladder, the workout eventually devolved (or evolved, depending on how you look at it) into a bunch of randomness with the group. This nonsense including swimming 4 across in a single lane, circle swimming in a purposely-close manner to simulate race start conditions, swimming as hard as we could for a 25, and swimming as far as we could without breathing. It was hilarious and awesome, and a great way to (almost) close out training.