Week of Pre-Race Workouts

Actually, here's the last 2 weeks of training, starting with my Memorial Day Brian Kraft 5K race on Monday, May 29th:

It was basically a "recovery week" followed by an easy "pre-race week." Saturday's long run and Sunday's long ride felt KINDA like workouts, and Monday's swim was a nice workout, but the rest was just to get the blood flowing.

Here's last week's training:

• Mon, 5/29: Brian Kraft 5K and core.

• Tues, 5/30: upper body.

• Wed, 5/31: easy ride and legs.

• Thurs, 6/1: easy stroller run with Charlie.

• Fri, 6/2: 3x500 swim and a little upper body. Averaged 7:32, which was OK.

• Sat, 6/3: HOT moderate long run. It was 87 degrees during this mid-afternoon run. Sweaty.

• Sun, 6/4: long kinda hilly ride and core. Hot again: 90 degrees, which seemed to zap some speed. That was OK because I was just trying to get in some miles all around St. Paul. Kept it just above 20 mph after hills along the river, Big Rivers up to Pilot Knob and 494, up Ohio, and up Ramsey.

And here's this current week's training:

• Mon, 6/5: 2100 yd swim and legs. Broken up 400s and 200s: 3x400 (400, 2x200, 4x100) and 3x200 (200, 2x100, 4x50). Brutal.

• Tues, 6/6: easy stroller run with Charlie and upper body.

• Wed, 6/7: 24 mile ride, with 2x3 mile efforts, and core. I wanted SOME speed, but I also didn't want to do too much just 4 days pre-race. (In 2015, I did a TT 4 days before a race, and I FELT it.) So I only did 2 (not 3 or 4) intervals, and my average speed was 21.7 mph and 22.2 mph for the intervals. That's where I'd like to be for tomorrow's Trinona bike split, which is scary.

• Thurs, 6/8: short, easy, final stroller run with Charlie pre-race, and some light legs.

• Fri, 6/9: 6x200 swim and quick upper body. That's probably my most common swim workout, so I figured it was the best to do 2 days pre-race. I took it a little easy and averaged JUST below 3:00/200 (which is about 3-4 secs slower/200 than the last 2 times I've done that workout).

• Sat, 6/10: nothing. Just some easy stretching/foam rolling today. RACING TOMORROW!!

In Monday's post, I had some predictions/goals for Trinona Triathlon tomorrow. I'm really quite unsure about all of my predictions (first triathlon in 22 months, first open water swim in 22 months, I don't recall just how hilly the bike is, they're saying there could be thunderstorms, and the run will get HOT as we may have near record heat), but I'm not worried about it. It's a short race, so I can just bang out each part even if I'm slower than I hoped.

My bike is where I expect/hope to make the biggest improvement. And if you're wondering why I'm being so ballsy with my bike predictions, just look at my bike mileage before the 2012 Trinona OLYMPIC distance triathlon compared with my mileage before this year's Trinona SPRINT triathlon:

Mileage in 2012 before Trinova's Olympic Distance Triathlon.


Mileage before this year's sprint distance.


It's more drastic when they're put on the same scale: 260 bike miles
leading up to 2012, and 730 bike miles leading up to 2017!

So that's 3x the milage over the last 4 months, which is A LOT. (This year's total through early June is more than my YEARLY total 5 out of the last 10 years!) And again, back in 2012, that bike milage was for an OLYMPIC distance race (25 mile bike portion), and this year's milage is just for the sprint (11 mile bike portion). I'm hoping to kill it out there.