July in Review: a Second "Bike Month PR" in 3 Months!

Here's what my July training looked like:

SWIM: 6,450 yards
BIKE: 323.82 miles (a monthly PR since IM training 16 years ago!)
RUN: 95.44 miles (lower because of the 1 mile race)
STRENGTH: 43 hours and 15 minutes
TRAINER TIME: 0 hours

(And I didn't keep good training records back then [during Ironman training in 2007], and I generally tried to get in a long ride/week, so there's a chance this is my biggest bike month since who knows when!)

I was gone a lot in June, but still had decent numbers (including 150 miles biking, which isn't bad considering I didn't have my bike). And before that in May, I had a bike PR of 274 miles (PR since IM training in 2007 at least) and a strength time PR. But that bike PR was due to a lot of biking with the boys to or from school - it wasn't really "training" miles.

I changed that in July and did a lot more actual training once I got my bike back. I had a great week biking on a family vacation 2 weeks ago that where I logged 104 of those miles. And even though I only got in 3 swim workouts, I biked to and from each of those swims. I also mountain biked around Theo Wirth with my boys at two different occasions in July. So it sure ALL hasn't been "training" miles in the saddle, but ALL BUT 66 of those miles were on my tri bike (and of those 66 miles, 18 were a harder training-like ride on my commuter bike when my bike was being worked on at the beginning of the month).

So my swim numbers sucked as I skipped a week on a family vacation, my run numbers were OK but would have been a lot better had I not swapped out a long run for a 1 mile race (a 9+ mile swing which would have put my running numbers well over 100 miles for the month), and my bike numbers were great!

Now to consider USING that bike fitness by racing a triathlon one of these days... But I know my biking will take a hit over these next few weeks, so lets hope this odd "periodization" of a big month on the bike will help me hold some bike fitness for a bit here...