Rachel's IM Canada training: a late post for week 20 (of 24)

Posted by Rachel

Now I'm halfway through week 21 training, and I can hardly remember what I did in week 20. It was a step back week, which means I didn't do much. I think I needed a week of recovery and I felt much less exhausted beginning this week, although I should have biked more last week for sure. Can't change history though, so I'll just point out some of the highlights.

Run

We spent the weekend in Santa Barbara for a wedding and I got to run in my favorite running place! I had a great 10 miler that I didn't get any pictures of, but you can see the running path in the background of this picture (on the beach side).

Not too shabby of a venue for a wedding

Bike

As I mentioned above, I didn't bike much last week. However, my mother-in-law was coincidentally in Santa Barbara the same weekend as us and we all rented mountain bikes and toured around a bit. It was much better than a long road bike ride. 

Yes, I'm riding in jeans with a purse. Totally counts as IM training!

Swim

I stuck with 3 swims for the week, with Sunday morning's swim in the open water in SB. I was a little bit hungover and worried about the ocean waves, but it actually ended up being fine. I met up with a random OWS group I found on the internet called Ocean Ducks. They were SO nice and welcoming and having so many people in the water felt safer than going it alone. I highly recommend meeting up with them if you're there. I swam just shy of 2 miles and it felt really good! I found a small group that I stuck with out to the turnaround, then we all kind of separated on the way back. One of the girls in the group was swimming an open water 6 miler the following weekend (insane!!). She was obviously faster than me which was really awesome for two reasons: (1) I was able to sight her bright green cap the whole way back, and (2) I actually like getting my ass kicked in the water because how do you get faster if not by chasing people that are better than you? And if I forgot to mention it, the water was BEAUTIFUL- temperature and scenery.

This beach really exists. That tiny black dot between the shore and boat is me!

Because the wedding was Sunday night, we did the Monday morning 5-hour commute to work and the rest of the week was a complete whirlwind. I'm so glad we have tomorrow off. I'll update on week 21 soon. It is getting SO CLOSE....ahhhh!