Weekly Summary

What a kick ass week of training!  Some great highlights this week....


-six x swim workouts, 3xrun workouts (2 as part of bricks), 3x bike workouts, 1 x strength workout.
-Two back to back strong rides on Sunday of last week and Monday of this week.  Both with new friends fromm the Tri-NE club. 
-a lackluster performance in the time trial on tuesday when it suddenly occured to me that you can't ride 80 miles in two days, do two hours of swim training in that time as well, and expect to perform at your peak on the bike.
-6!  Yes SIX swim workouts this week!  I really want to get up to speed on my swimming!
-my first open water experience in a wetsuit.  Loved it and can't wait to do it again.
-two brick workouts, and one long run.
-skipped one optional run workout on thursday as my calves were a mess.
-skipped one strength training session to preserve my calves and because I really piled on the volume this week and I decided to listen to my body and back off.  Thats why my swim volume is so high, when I shyed away from running and strength training for a few days I was in the pool for all of those days instead.

Lots of really great things happened this week.  My training volume this week was a bit on the high side though so I need to keep an eye on it.  Definitely the lesson learned this week is that its ok to tweak my training schedule to train with other people and be social, but its not ok to do that at the expense of overtraining too much.  I new to triathlons and I need to remember that when piling on the training volume.  Too much too soon is a recipe for an overtraining injury.  I also need to not ride my bike on Monday's prior to TT tuesday's.  Its not a recipe for success in the TT and I enjoy doing well in the TT.  Its a bummer though as I also enjoy riding with other people whenever I can.  I suppose its all a tradeoff.  But I'm getting all wordy again and this is supposed to be a quick summary so here are the details....

-6! pool workouts.  Which included two sessions with my coach and my first open water session.  Total of 4 hours and fifty minutes in the water this week.
-one strength training workout for one hour.  I skipped the other one schedule for this week as I was definitely on the edge of injury if I didn't behave myself.
-16.18 miles of running.  Three run workouts...   one being the TT brick on tuesday, a 7 mile trail run on Saturday that was lovely, and a 5 mile brick run on Sunday.  Average pace of all that was 8:47.  The two brick runs were both at low 8 averages and the long run was at 9:26 as we were in a group trying to line up everyone's pacing, plus I like to slow it down on the long runs anyway. 
-83 miles of cycling this week.  Average speed of 16.9 mph.  That also includes a slower group ride consisting of mixed pace riders where we tried to stay together as well as my warmup and cooldown rides going into the long ride with Nancy on monday and my super slow TT performance on Tuesday.  So all in all that average is still pretty respectable!  Total of 5 hours in the saddle this week.

Grand totals....

Thirteen hours of training this week!  Ooops!  That may be a bit much.  Or it may be just right.  I don't know yet.  On the plus side through I'm glad I really took advantage of being at home and went hard at it.  I won't be able to match those hours next week when I'm away with work in Columbus as I'll be away from the bike all week, and I have a tough work schedule to boot.  This week I burned 6000 calories.  : )  I love that!

Other highlights...  lets not forget reaching single digit body fat percentage!  Wahoooo!  So proud of that one!  I have to say though that it just doesn't seem as rewarding in some way...   I think I'm really going to have to consider getting the surgery in offseason.  Since losing 72lbs the skin around my stomach area just won't tighten up any further.  So I can workout a million hours a day, but you'll never see my six pack until I get the extra skin removed and tightened up.  And thats all they would be doing...  no fat removal or cheating or anything....  just removing extra skin that the doctor says will never tighten up.  And I kind of hate it.  So yeah...   I think I'm going to strongly consider doing that in January or somewhere around there.  It will depend on what I do in terms of trying to fit another marathon in this year.  Is that a bit vain?  Maybe...   but I don't want to have to keep feeling self concious when wearing tight fitting tri gear.  I want to show off all the work I've put into my body, not feel like something is holding me back.

So...  on that note... a very successful week.  I'm really thrilled with my progress.  Up next week is a trip to Columbus on Tuesday that will get me home just in time to publicly thrash my PR in the next time trial.  I was frankly embarrased by my performance last week in front of everyone.  So next week I'm on a mission to prove myself.  : )  Plus its just fun trying to continually improve my time.