Double the speed and some weights for fun...

I was itching to resume training today. I don't think I've taken 2 days off since I started training in January, and if I did it was right after the Florida half Ironman. My schedule for today was a 3500 meter speed swim, an hour long speed bike and a weight training session.

Of all three sports, I dislike swimming the most. Many times I have to force myself to get to the pool. Once I'm in the water and have done my warm up I'm okay. But leading up to it is a mental challenge. Today's swim was pretty good, of the 12 x 100 meter intervals I did, the fastest was 1:40 and the slowest was 1:48. I was actually pretty tired about an hour after the swim. Fortunately I was able to slip out at lunch time and get the swim in because I also had to fit in a bike and weights tonight. I decided not to do the swim this morning because I got to bed at 12:30 am after putting Reid's waterbed together and I really need a full nights sleep for recovery.

After dinner I went for my speed bike. For some reason I felt slow. Initially I was going into the wind and my speeds were sub 30 kph, which is extremely slow for me. The main set today was a 20 minute time trial. I decided to do most of it into the wind and up hills. I was thinking that my legs felt week because I didn't train on Monday or Tuesday and that my body was starting to peak, which really scares me. I knew I needed to do extra training today, just to bring it back to a level of exhaustion. At the end of my ride, when I was warming down, a pack of cyclists pulled up beside me. Because it was my speed day I figured that I'm allowed to race them. From the beginning I took the front, then after a couple of minutes, some of the big dogs passed by me. They figured they dropped me, but I was able to still catch them and tuck myself into their slip stream. I forgot how easy it is to cycle fast when drafting behind another rider. When we got to the end point, they looked back and I think were very surprised to see me still with them. In one way I felt like a "dick" trying to race them without provocation, but on the other hand I always like to see how fast I compare to others, plus a triathlete going against a cyclist is always fun. The triathlete has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Even with the wind and the slow 15 minute warm up and warm down, I still managed to average over 31 kph. One of the challenging things on the ride was to keep my heart rate up, at one point I was going at a 90% plus effort and the heart rate was only 143 pbm.

After the ride, I quickly changed and got to the YMCA for my weight training session. It went really well, I'm surprised how strong I'm becoming. When I weight train I work up a real sweat. I only leave myself about 20 - 30 seconds between sets and move quickly from one exercise to the other. Weight training is similar to swimming in that I don't like it, although I like it more than swimming, but during and after I'm finished, I feel great. Plus I love the results.

I had a good conversation with Jennifer, one of the personal trainers at the YMCA. She's doing the Canadian Ironman in a couple of weeks and we were exchanging all kinds of information and support. I didn't know if I'd see her before she left to Penticton so I gave her hug and told her I'd be with her in Spirit. Her goals are like mine, she just wants to get there healthy and have a good day at the race. The only difference is that we are both shooting for different finishing times.