Good Week of Workouts Leading up to Next Weekend's Showdown

The last 10 days have been productive. I've been doing a little less strength work and a little more swim / bike / run:

• WEDNESDAY, FEB 18: 51 mins on the trainer, then 4x400 in the pool. Not a hard spin. Then 4x400 (with about a minute rest) later in the morning in the pool averaging 6:01.25 (last time I did that workout, I barely dropped below 6s, but this is the 2nd faster I've done it).

• THURSDAY, FEB 19: moderate 6.33 mile run in 45:51. It was below 0. I just ran a bit. No biggie.

• FRIDAY, FEB 20: 45x50 in the pool. I like this workout: it's broken up into sets of five 50s with different goals. (CLICK HERE for the workout details.) I did 9 sets of 5, and I had to take a longer break between #3 and #4 because one of the babysitters at the Y was standing in front of me with Charlie who had a big poopy diaper. I changed him next to the pool, handed him back off, and went on the way with my 50s.

• SATURDAY: 40 mins of Spinervals on the trainer. After having not touched my bike since my last race in September, I've now done 6 Spinerval workouts in the last 4 weeks. Not stellar, but it's something.

• SUNDAY: 6.4 moderate miles on the treadmill.

• MONDAY: 2600 yards in the pool. It was lots of 100s with a total of 800 of pulling as well. (First seen in a post here 5 years ago.)

• TUESDAY: 7 mile run with the middle 3.5 at a descending tempo pace. I didn't want to kill myself running too hard, but I wanted to try something a bit harder. My "fast" miles were 6:41, 6:35, 6:16, and then a final half mile of 2:49. (It was windy, and the first mile was into the wind, and the last half mile was helped by being pushed by the wind.)

• WEDNESDAY: 50 mins of Spinervals on the trainer, and a PR swim in the pool. My legs were heavy late morning in the pool from my early morning sprints on the trainer (and some 90 sec efforts), but I still set a personal best in my 3x500 workout. I looked back over a few of these 3x500 workouts over the last 2 years, and it really seems to be my barometer for my overall fitness. Here are some of my average 500s from that workout:

March 2013: 7:53.33 (noted it was "fastest 500s in a long time" in my training log)
June 2013: 8:01.33 (not swimming much)
July 2013: 7:48.67
Sept 2013: 7:54.33 (right after sacrum/hip injury)
Dec 2013: 7:58.00
May 2014: 8:16.66 (yikes - a month after sprained ankle)
June 2014: 7:52.33
Aug 2014: 7:59.00
Oct 2014: 8:09.00 (REALLY eased up on the swimming after tri season)
Feb 2015: 7:44.05 (after hitting the pool a lot for 4 months)

That last "Feb 2015" time was from 3 weeks ago. When I did it this time, I had a 7:32.05 average!! Yeah, really. I descended them too, with my final one being just under 7:27. Just 12 months ago at my last swim meet, I did a 500 free in 7:26.08, and this past week, my final 500 of 3 was just about that speed. Wow. Nice.

• THURSDAY: 2x2 mile intervals in sub-0 weather. I know - I just did a harder run 2 days before. But my hip/sacrum/ankle were all doing fine, so I thought I'd have one last hard push before the race next weekend. 2-mile intervals were a good idea: I still get to run hard, but it's not as fast as 1-mile intervals. (They're a good "distance" runner interval, good for 10K through 10-mile training. I'm hoping they help for my sprint tri training too.)

My first interval was 11:58 (6:00, 5:58), and my second interval was 11:53 (6:00, 5:53). Not bad for my first intervals in about 5 months. I was plenty warm on my slower cool-down from all the blood flowing, but I still had a bit of frozen ice on my stubble when I got into the house post-run:

• FRIDAY: 14x100 in the pool. I had planned on 16x100, but I was feeling tired (maybe from a good week of training) and my times weren't great. So during #10, I told myself I'd just do 4 more. I averaged 1:25.39/100, and closed out the month with 19,400 yards.

These last 4 big months of me "recommitting" myself to swimming have yielded a total of 80,500 yards! That's more than double of what I swam all of 2012! That's also more than my yearly total from 4 out of the last 7 years!

Stop back soon for my predictions on the indoor triathlon SHOWDOWN happening next weekend! Hint: it doesn't look good for me. Really.