Big Week, Especially in the Saddle!

Last week was a solid week:

That's 23.0 mile of running, 12 hrs and 19 mins of strength training, and 6 hrs and 30 mins in the saddle! With 35+ miles of that saddle time outside on 2 rides on my mountain bike. I posted about my 2 rides on Tuesday (outdoor mountain bike ride followed immediately by more on the trainer in the basement), and I did that AGAIN on Thursday!

• MON: treadmill long run, PT legs, and core. The treadmill long run (10.9 miles total) was solid: I did the normal 6 "harder pace miles" in the middle, and I started those at 9.3 mph and sped up 0.1 mph every half-mile. But I also sped up 3 extra times too (around mile 1.5, mile 4, and within the final mile) to finish those 6 harder miles in 36:08 (6:01.33/mile pace).

• TUES: 8x upper body, and 2 bike rides. Again, I posted about those bike workouts recently. It was just over an hour outside, and then 90 minutes on the trainer.

• WED: easy descending run, PT legs, and core. The run was funny. I realized early on that I was dropping time on every split. So just for funzies, I thought I'd try to keep dropping them. I perfectly dropped half-mile splits for the first 4.5 miles of the run because easing up a bit:

• THURS: 8x upper body, and 2 bike rides. Yes, like Tuesday... when I thought Tuesday was a GREAT day! This workout made this a great WEEK. It wasn't icy like it was on Tuesday, and it was a few degrees warmer. It was GREAT. So I tried to flip-flop the time I spent on each bike: I tend to ride harder outside, so I wanted to do more outside before just taking it easy on the trainer. (For example: my HR averaged 135 bpm on Tuesday on my outdoor ride, and then even after adding some longer efforts on the trainer, my trainer ride was only 127 bpm on average.) So I looped around the city for over 20 miles:

The numbers are 5 mile splits.


Trail was dry and clear! And met a train!

• FRI: tempo run, PT legs, and core. I did NOT know if it was smart to run hard after those 2 big bike days. My legs were HEAVY. Even as I was coming up to the point in my run where I was planning to start running hard, I wasn't sure if I was going to speed up. I decided to "give it a go," but I knew my time could suck. And it kinda did. I went 3 hard miles along the river:

My half-mile splits of the 3 tempo miles were:

3:04, 3:08, 3:09, 3:13, 3:03, 2:55

= 18:33.8 (6:11.27 pace)

I thought 3:04 was a decent opening split, but then they just kept climbing. I could NOT find another gear... when I did try to sped up, that would last for a few strides before I felt weak and had to back off a bit. Ideally, I would have been a minute faster over those 3 miles. D'oh. I realized when I started cooling down and didn't feel the need to start walking that my legs were shot from a harder week - I didn't have it in me to run harder, but now I felt fine once I got through a slower-than-it-should-have-been tempo run.

• SAT: 7x upper body circuts, easy trainer ride. Didn't go nuts today! Just an 72 minutes on the trainer watching TV. Coming down after a big week, and making sure I didn't injure myself.

• SUN: rest and core. Henry had state fencing all weekend, so I was on my feet and moving a lot, and it was a good "active recovery" sort of day.

So big days on Tuesday and Thursday (440 and 417 intensity minutes) propelled me to a big week of "intensity minutes:"

1867 on the week...


... only the 3rd time over 1800 mins since July!

Huh... that graph might hold a bit of a key for me... After a fun June with less training, my speed fell off a cliff for the rest of the year, and my intensity minutes did as well. I need to keep MOVING and DOING MORE if I want to get some speed back. I had 9 weeks over 1800 minutes for the first 5 months of that graph, and only 3 weeks over 1800 in the last 7 months. There's a lesson in there! (Also, I was teaching less last spring, so that's why I was able to make that so big!)