Recent Training and a Race This Weekend

I just registered for the Lake Marion Sprint Triathlon this weekend. I did it in 2013 and in 2011. Matt and Angela will be there too doing the Oly - it will be their 2nd Olys after doing Lake Marion last year.

Here's a quick training update:

SWIM:

After averaging nearly 14,000 yards each month in the last 3 months since my ankle injury, I'm starting to let my swimming slide - only 4,800 yards so far in August. Being at home with 2 boys makes it hard to get to the pool. I'm hoping I can rely on some of the last 3 months of swimming to get my through my last triathlon of the year. Shouldn't be a problem - just might not be quite as fast as I'd like.

I've been doing a lot of my "go to" swim workouts: 1500 tempos and 3x500s. I finally started getting some of my 500s under 8:00 in my interval swim yesterday - I could keep them all under 8 before I hurt my ankle, but I'm slowly working my way back. (At the worst, they were all around 8:15; at best, they were all around 7:50.)

BIKE:

July was on track to be my biggest bike mileage month since I started logging my miles online in 2009, but my wife's 3-day stay in the hospital 2 weeks ago ended that. So with 186.53 miles, July just barely missed my 2nd highest mileage month: it's just behind 188 miles in June of 2013, and 208 miles in May of 2010 (I would get my Olympic distance PR of 2:15 in June of 2010 with my fastest bike split ever because of those miles). Yeah, I don't bike much. When I started biking in 2005, I had 2 back-to-back months of around 400 miles. Now I just get in a ride when I can. Fifty miles is a great week. (UPDATE: I forgot that I had that bike, run, bike, run, bike, run, bike, run trainer workout in July too, so I had 40 minutes on the trainer as well.)

On the 1st, I biked with Henry to and from the Y, and we added a few miles to both the rides. We covered 12.5 miles with the heavy Chariot:

Photo previously seen in this post.

On the 6th I did a 26 mile long ride, and on the 8th I did 25 miles with 20 at tempo pace (including about 3x5 minutes at threshold). Funny story: I was tweeting local elite Heather Lendway asking what I should ride on Friday night. She gave me that last workout. Then I realized it was the night before the USA Triathlon National Championship, and she was tweeting me workouts the night before she defended her title. Oops. Well, she defended it well, and took home the amateur championship! Congrats Heather! And THANKS for the workout!

RUN:

As I posted about on Saturday, I just went for my longest run in 4 months! Charlie and I did 6.2 miles last week. It still hurts my ankle to turn right (or to even slightly veer right on a winding trail), but I can turn left like nobody's business. My speed (obviously) isn't where I want it to be, but I'm OK with that - I'm just happy to be running. I'm curious how fast I'll be able to crank out a 5K this weekend at the end of the Lake Marion Triathlon - that's a fine mix of endurance and raw speed.

Charlie before and during our 6.2 miler.

So my running is moving forward. My big race on the horizon is the Twin Cities 10 Mile weekend of events on October 4th and 5th. Matt and I are doing the the "Looney Challenge" which is the 10K and 5K on Saturday, and then the 10 Mile on Sunday. That's just under 8 weeks away, and my long run right now is 6.2 miles. If I build for 3 weeks (adding 1 mile to my long run each week), back off for a week, build for 3 more, and then taper, I can be at 12.2 miles as a long run. I'd love to be a few miles farther than that to be ready for the nearly 20 miles of racing that weekend, but that should be enough to get me through. Being I was injured for the last 12 months, I'm just happy to be thinking about racing those races!

STRENGTH:

I haven't been doing as much of my PT leg exercises or my weight room leg exercises for 2 reasons: I've been training HARDER and training MORE. Because I'm training HARDER, it's hard to find a right time to really hash my legs in the gym. Because I'm training MORE, I don't have as much time in the gym to do everything (I can only bring 3-month-old Charlie for an hour at a time). So I'm trying to be better about this and doing more at home during naps.

Well, we'll see how the race goes this weekend! Check back for updates!