Morning swim and TNT

In an effort to get my workouts in this week, I went to my gym pool instead of meeting my group for our workout and then went to TNT to get my lifting in.

Today's swim was:
wu - 300 swim and drills; Drills - 1 arm drill, fingertip drill, 6 kicks each side drill; 15-25 x 50yds on the 1:00 -1:10 min. depending on your pace (10-15 sec rest in btwn each). Stay within 3-5 sec of your best time.

I did:
wu - 300 swim and drills; Drills - 1 arm drill, fingertip drill, 6 kicks each side drill; 12 x 50yds on the 1:00 -1:10 min. depending on your pace (10-15 sec rest in btwn each). Stay within 3-5 sec of your best time. cd - 100

Total: 1000m

If I had more time, I would've gotten in a few more. Ah well. My fastest was :40. I did about 3 of them at this speed. Crazy fast for me. My slowest was :56. I'm pretty happy with those times.

Then it was to TNT. I HATE lifting in the morning. My body revolts. I managed to struggle through. I met some of J's normal workout partners. One of them was like "Oh! You're his wife, the triathlete!" I just laughed, and said, "Yes, I'm Heather. Nice to meet you." I was so glad when 6:45 came, I was so relieved. I'm usually not like that, as I love to lift, but man I hate doing it in the morning. Glad it's in for the week though!

To spin or not to spin?

So... I skipped my track workout this morning. Sometimes, 4:20am is just too early to get out of bed. Today was one of those days. I have to figure out where else to fit in the workout this week, but I have a couple of options. Thursday may end up being the day, but we'll see.

Also, since I lifted yesterday, there was none of that today. There will be more tomorrow instead of Thursday as well.

The question of the day was to spin or not to spin. I asked my husband, who was home for once, if he wanted to go with me and he actually said "sure!", so we went. I'm so glad we did. We had 4 minute hill intervals today - 1:45 in the saddle, :15 out, 2 min in, :15 out. Gotta love how D plays. Great workout. My legs are still recovering a bit from Sunday's ride, but it felt good.

Monday TNT

Today was a bit weird for me. I did TNT on one of my "old" TNT days - Monday! It was a good class - just 4 of us (all from the Tuesday 5pm class... wonder who he'll have today!). The gym was super hot. T really pushed me, which was good. Glad to have one of the two lifting workouts done for the week!

Oh! I asked if J told T about our 40 mile bike ride on Sunday. Apparently J didn't. One of the other ladies, was like "you rode 40 miles and you're still here?!" T told her I'm a freak. I laughed - but it is kind of true. :)

This week's workouts

Here's this week's workouts. I'm going to be all sorts of off plan this week. TNT on Mon/Wed this week and spin on Tues like normal.


Monday
Day off
TNT (pm)

Tuesday
Track  - Running drills - 6-10 x 200's
Spin

Wednesday
Swim - wu - 300 swim and drills; Drills - 1 arm drill, fingertip drill, 6 kicks each side drill; 15-25 x 50yds on the 1:00 -1:10 min. depending on your pace (10-15 sec rest in btwn each). Stay within 3-5 sec of your best time.
TNT

Thursday
Bike - wu 20 min.; 3-6 x 4 min. Time Trial with 4 min. easy spin

Friday
Swim - wu with drills and swim 500 yd; 3 x 7 min. intervals with 3 min. rest in btwn.; cool down

Saturday
Run -  Tempo run (just under race pace)
olympic distance - 10k
half ironman - 10 miles

Sunday
Brick - 120 min. ride/20-30 min. run

Sunday Bike

My spin instructor, D has been bugging me to join her group on these long rides that they do. This is the first week I've actually been free (no races, no other events), so I decided to go. I drug my husband, J with me. We rode 38.1 miles in about 2 and a half hours. It was a good ride. Some W&OD trail riding, some road riding. My legs are screaming at me now, but it was great to do it.

Close to the 4H Fairgrounds, there was a biker down. Apparently, he (or she) got hit by a car. I felt horrible. Thankfully, there was a group of bikers and 2 cars who had stopped to help. They were already on the phone with 911 and an ambulance was on the way. I hope the biker will be ok and that no serious damage was done. It was a good reminder to not assume that cars are going to play nice.

We had lunch at a local BBQ place on the side of the W&OD. Great location for them - they clean up in the summer with all of the riders! The ride felt good, but man was I glad to be done at about 40 miles. I don't know how much more I would've been up for!

Saturday Swim

I was supposed to do this swim yesterday, but instead of that, I got a haircut and we closed on our refi of our house. So, I did the swim today. Here's what the workout was:

wu with drills 300; tempo swim - 35 min straight swim. Just below race pace. trying to cover as much distance as possible. Record distance; cool down

I can't lie, I was a bit scared about this workout. I know exactly why this week's workouts were what they were. It was all things that I've talked about with Coach L. Today, I got out there and did my 300m warmup, the 35 min swim, and a 200m cooldown. When I got in, I was sharing the lane with a guy who knew what he's doing. Very easy to share with. About 20 minutes into my 35 minute straight swim, this woman shows up and is basically flailing all over the place, swimming straight up in the middle of the lane, and generally trying to take over the lane we're now sharing. I have to say, that when I swam past, I didn't hold back from hitting her on a couple of strokes just to make the point. I was hugging the lane line and doing my thing. It seemed to get her to move out of the way for the most part. I really don't mind sharing the lane, as long as the other person can share the lane easily.

Anyhow... so here's my total distance:
WU = 300m
Swim = 1600m
CD = 200m
Total = 2100m

I'm thrilled with it!

TNT

Tonight was a TNT night. We had weigh in and body fat checks. My weigh in was 130.0 and body fat was 16%. I'm pretty happy with the breakdown. 109.1 lbs of lean body weight, 20.9 lbs of fat weight.

I was a little annoyed that our class was 9 people and only 2 of us actually belonged to the class. I get that T wants you just to show up whenever you can, but man that's annoying.

The workout itself was pretty good; was glad to get it in.No cardio today, just needed to give myself a little break. My back's been hurting recently. I think my massage therapist got this one knot out and now it's coming back. UGH!

Wednesday Swim

Today's workout was this:

wu - 300 swim and drills; 4 x 5 min. intervals with 2 min. recovery btwn rounds. Cover as much distance as possible; Cool down - 200 kick/pull/ non free

I actually finished all of it! I soooooooo wasn't in the mood to do the swim this morning, but I had no choice since J's sister is coming to stay with us tonight. Ah well, it was good to get it done.

In each of the 5 minute intervals, I swam 250yds. I feel like I probably could've pushed it a bit, but given that I didn't even feel like being there, I'll take it! I'm really trying to focus on getting my left arm straighter and out of the water higher on the recovery. I'm also trying to focus on keeping my head down more.  I'm also thinking of taking swim lessons this winter. J may join me in that. Yea!

Total: 1500 yds

Tri-Forces Sprint Triathlon turned Aquathon

Tri-Forces Sprint Triathlon Race Report

• Race Name: Tri-Forces Sprint Triathlon turned Aquathon
• Race Date: June 18, 2011
• Race Location: North Beach, MD
• Race Distance: Sprint  (planned to be 750m swim,12.35 mi bike, 5k run – turned into 5k run, 750m swim, 5k run)
• Division: F 30-39
• Total Time: 1:22:50
• Time Breakdown: weren’t given for this race
• Age Group Placing: 4/9
• Overall Placing: 35/59 (overall) 15/29 (female)

Pre-race

Registration was online and went just fine and the fees were reasonable. The race was definitely not organized well. Before the race, the race organizers really needed to pass along information in a timely manner. Also, the website should’ve been updated with the most current information so that the few links they posted just a few days before the race and the rest of the website matched up. There was a lot of conflicting information. Thankfully, the course maps were provided online and updated as needed.

The night before the race, there were two sets of storms that came through that ended up putting trees and debris all over the roads of Calvert County. Because of this, the bike leg was in danger of being canceled. Instead of just making the call Friday night, many people worked through the night trying to clean up as much of the course as they could. At 2:30am, we got an email stating that they were still working on everything. By 5:30, they should’ve have had a definite answer, but they were still up in the air. I know no one wants to make a call like that, but then that left them scrambling to figure out the set up for a run-swim-run when they finally did make the call.

In the latest pre-race updates, packet pick-up was supposed to start at 5:30am. It still wasn’t ready by 6:15. That was super annoying. I understand that many of the race officials had been up prior to the race dealing with the presents that were left by the weather, but things like “do you have the race bibs?!” shouldn’t have been an issue. There was also no direction about the bike racks (which were being used for our wetsuits instead of our bikes) and where people should be setting up. When I finally did check in, no one checked my ID or my USAT card. The swag bag was “eh”, nothing special. They have lots of small things to fix. I’m not sure if I’ll race it again or not.

There were a good number of volunteers. They probably could’ve used a few more, but it was good. There were two port-a-potties, but that seemed to be enough. It was a REALLY small race, only 59 people finished. There were so many people who didn’t start or chose not to finish, so I’m not sure what the actual number of people who were registered and probably would’ve done the race had it stayed a triathlon.

Setting up transition was odd since there was no bike to set up. The weather was great, nice and sunny. The humidity was a little high, but nothing horrible. They did the pre-race warm-up (I find these pretty useless, so I didn’t participate). We had our last briefing before the race and then lined up. This was the second race this year that there was no National Anthem. Weird, very weird.

Run 1

Run 1 (aka: the start of the race) was great! I wasn’t sure how to approach the run since I haven’t run 10k since October 2009, right as I was injured. I decided just to take it easy and let the run happen as it was going to. I think my average pace was about 9:42, which wasn’t too bad. It was a pretty flat course, so that helped a lot!

There was one water station about half-way through, which was good. They even had COLD water! No hat today, though it might have been nice to have a visor.

Swim

When they measured the water temperature in the Chesapeake Bay in the morning, it said 78 degrees. I think that was the surface temperature. It was probably more like 74. The swim was definitely wetsuit legal, but we were STRONGLY encouraged to not use it since we’d be swimming after the run and it might lead us to dehydration. I wouldn’t have been able to put on a wetsuit after a run if I had tried. Thankfully, getting in the water was a bit refreshing!

The water was super calm, which was nice since it gave everyone time to calm their breathing down from the run. My goggles fogged up, which made it difficult to see… especially the green turn-around bouy. It was sunny, but I’m glad I didn’t wear my tinted goggles, as I’m not sure I would’ve been able to see the green bouy at all.

I was actually really happy with this swim. I’m sure there’s tons of room for improvement, but it was 750m, open water, with no wetsuit. I finished it, and it was great!

Right before we reached shore, there was a bulkhead under water. Guess who ran into it?! I did… along with several others (according to my family). That made my knee a bit sore and distracted me a little from how I was feeling otherwise. I was just glad to be done and on land again!

Run 2

Run 2 was pretty good too. Again, I wasn’t too sure how to approach it since it was basically the second half of a 10k. That being said, after the swim and hitting my knee, I knew my first mile was going to be a bit slower than I wanted it to be since my knee was sore. Other than that, my legs actually felt pretty good! I averaged about 9:45 for the second 5k, which is only a minute slower than my stand-alone 5k time, so that’s good in my book!

Transitions

The transitions for this race were a little odd given that it wasn’t at all the race I thought I was doing. Both went well – it was just weird! I could’ve probably sped it up a bit, but it wasn’t really a race I was doing for time, so it didn’t matter all that much.

Post-Race

I felt great at the finish line! I probably could’ve run the second run harder, but that’s ok. This event was all about showing my family what it is that I do. There were plenty of food and drinks (especially since Vita-Coco was sponsoring the event). The awards sucked (quite frankly). The race director flat out admitted that they ran out of funding for the awards and that was why they lumped the age groups the way they did. The race results didn’t get to us until Tuesday, June 21, 3 days after the race. The distances were off a little bit, but not by anything worth really noting (.1 on the run, not sure about the swim).

Summary and Lessons Learned

I was glad that I was flexible enough to stay and do the race. While the race coordinator was pretty disorganized, the run course was nice and the swim wasn’t bad either! I need to remember to dip my goggles before the swim. They almost always fog up. Who knows if I’ll do this race again, but I’m glad that I did it this time.

Tuesday Bike, Run, TNT, Spin

Today's morning workout was a bike/run hill repeat workout. I got in 4 hill repeats on the bike and 1 hill run. Not quite what I wanted, but oh well. It was a good workout. My quads were killing me after the 3rd hill on the bike. It was kind of humid this morning, so that wasn't helping!

TNT was good. We got to do reverse push ups, which I LOVE. Yes, I'm sick in the head. There's really not much to say about the class, but it was good.

Spin was good. D had some issues with the music - first her iPod died and then the cd that was in her bag was super scratched up. She lead a great class even without the music. We did speed intervals - 6 minutes of 30 min on, 30 sec off. Tough, that's for sure!

Monday - seriously I should rest

Since I took off Sunday, I decided I needed to get in a light bike ride. J and I went for a 9.1 mile ride and finally got off the W&OD trail! It was a pretty good ride. Average pace was 14.1 mph, so pretty slow. Just what I needed (and I was able to enjoy a beautiful "spring" day!).

This week's workouts

Coach L sent our workouts early. This week looks ROUGH!


Monday
Day off

Tuesday
Bike/Run hill repeats (Note - bring bike, bike shoes, helmet, running shoes)

Wednesday
wu - 300 swim and drills; 4 x 5 min. intervals with 2 min. recovery btwn rounds. Cover as much distance as possible; Cool down - 200 kick/pull/ non free

Thursday
Bike - wu 20 min.; 4 min. on 3 min. off/2 min. on 30 sec. off/ 1 min. on 3 min. off/2 min. on 30 sec. off/ 4 min. on; cool down

Friday
Swim - wu with drills 300; tempo swim - 35 min straight swim. Just below race pace. trying to cover as much distance as possible. Record distance; cool down

Saturday
Women's Distance Festival - 5k
if not - 5k time trial (with 1 mile warm up and cool down)

Sunday
Brick - 120 min. ride/20-30 min. run

Tri-Forces Triathlon: North Beach, MD

I'll post a race report in a different post, but the skinny is this race was super disorganized. Because of storms last night, we ended up doing a the race officials didn't make the call until probably 6:15 this morning, and it just should've been made earlier. Having driven part of the course yesterday, I knew there was no way we'd be safe to bike it even if they worked all night to clean up. But really, the bike being taken out was the least of their problems. I don't know if I'll do the race again next year, but I do hope that this group gets things better organized and that their tri continues to grow.

Friday rest day

Usually Fridays are swim days, but today is the day before a race, so it's a rest day. We're heading to Calvert County tonight to be able to easily get to packet pick-up in the morning.

Thursday TNT and Swim

Since I slacked off yesterday, I had to double up today. I decided to get in the swim first and then do TNT.

This was Wednesday's swim workout:
wu - 400 swim and drills; 20 x 50yd. with 20 sec. rest in btwn; Cool down - 300 kick/pull/ non free

This is what I did:
wu - 200 swim and drills; 14 x 50yd. with 20 sec. rest in btwn; Cool down - 100 free/non-free

The swim went ok. I didn't push it too hard because I've got a race on Saturday with a long swim (750m is a long swim for me).

Then, I had a quick change and got my butt to TNT. It's T's birthday, so he was sure to share the love and gave us a hard workout. Enjoyed it though!