Good Training Week: Lots of 'Intensity Minutes'

I had the USATF MN 8K Cross Country Championshiop race on Sunday the 5th, and then the following week looked like this:

That's a pretty "normal" looking week biking to and from work on Mon and Wed, flip-flopping my Tues swim and Thurs ride, going for a little mountain biking with the boys on Sat, and (the biggest difference) doing a Mon swim instead of a long run because of the race the day before.

All that adds up to my Garmin telling me it was a big week of "intensity" minutes! Here's the last 4 full weeks, with last week being the farthest right line:

1470 intensity minutes last week is a lot!

Here's a look going back in time every 4 weeks:

Mid Sept through mid Oct: my biggest week was 1460 mins in this stretch.


Smaller weeks mid Aug through mid Sept


Still smaller weeks mid July through mid Aug.


A bigger weeks in early July before a race, but still not huge.
(Had a race between the 3rd and 4th weeks that kept them both smaller.)


June was dinky, partly because my tri bike was in the shop.
(Notice this graph tops out at 1350 instead of 1500 like the rest.)


Gotta go back to the end of May to beat last week's numbers!
(And that's because I was biking the boys to and from school.)

What's shocking is that last week's big "intensity minutes" was also only on 2 runs, fully skipping my long run! I swapped a 80 min long run with a 48 min swim instead. Notice that my steps for last week are quite low compared to recent weeks (as my long run is normally another 13-15,000 steps):

Back with some quick news tomorrow, and then more on some recent training in the next few posts.