Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

A Humbling Swim

>> Thursday, February 23, 2023

After about 18 months off from swimming because of the start of the pandemic, I swam a few months in the fall of 2021 and then a few months in the fall of 2022 (both times because I was teaching at a university and I could use their pool). This past fall, I swam a lot of 200s, pyramids, and broken 400s/200s. But 2 days ago, I finally felt comfortable to try 3x500 in the pool.

This 3x500 workout was sort of my first "real" swim workout that I started doing over 10 years ago once I graduated from just going for 2000 straight yards. Apparently, I did 3x500 a few times just over a year ago, but I didn't know that when I hit the pool 2 days ago. I didn't have any real goals, and I was OK with my first one being 8:00 flat.

But then I didn't get any faster. I actually slowed down. And felt pretty crappy the entire time. In the end, I was just happy I actually got through all 3 sets:

8:00.4 = 1:36, 1:36, 1:36, 1:40, 1:32
8:05.4 = 1:40, 1:34, 1:39, 1:40, 1:32
8:04.7 = 1:41, 1:39, 1:39, 1:36, 1:29

Average: 8:03.5/500 (1:36.7/100)

(I've noticed when wearing my Garmin that it tends to record the first 100 a bit slower, and then the last 100 is recorded a bit faster. It must just be based off the timing of when it starts a new 100.)

This was rough. I'm used to speeding up, but I had no juice in this workout. The 500s that I did over a year ago in Sept, Oct, and Nov averaged 7:58, then 7:55, and finally 7:48. I have some work to do!

Nothing surprising here, but I still don't know if I can fully trust my heart rate chart
for my swims - sometimes it seems to go oddly high when my heart is acting fine.

Semi-Wordless Wednesday: My Late Friend/Boss Who Got Me Into Triathlons

>> Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of the memorial for a former boss who took his own life.

I don't think about Bill enough with regards to just HOW much credit he should take for getting me into triathlons years ago. It really was his love of biking to work every day that got me into cycling more. I remember coming back to talk with him (after I had been done working for him for years) after I finished Ironman WI in 2007 - I was slightly embarrassed by my 15.7 mph average on the bike, but he thought that was amazing for 112 miles. I was so proud that Bill was impressed by my cycling prowess.

Talk to your friends who you suspect aren't doing well. You might not get a second chance.

Miss you and your goofy ponytail Bill.

Longest Trainer Ride in YEARS (Maybe EVER?)

>> Monday, February 20, 2023

Just over a week ago, I posted about a nice longer trainer ride. Well I out-did that the following weekend!

My "longer" trainer workouts are usually something like 4x10 min efforts. With a warm-up and cool-down, that will be stretched into 90 or 100 minutes. But about 2 weeks ago, I had the wacky thought of doing a 10 min effort, then a 9 min effort, then an 8 min effort, etc, etc, all the way down to a 1 min effort, with 50% of that as rest time (so 10 mins hard, 5 mins easy, 9 mins hard, 4:30 easy, etc). That would be 55 mins of hard riding with 27 mins of easier riding in between, with the "guts" of the workout lasting 1 hour and 22 mins.

I warmed up for a bit and got to work. My heart rate showed the story of the 10 efforts that got shorter and shorter:

Efforts of 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 minute.

Highlighted in case you can't see them. ;)

I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish after the first few intervals, so I didn't go nuts. Starting my 6 min effort, I was feeling OK and pushed the pace a bit. Once I was starting the 4 min effort, I picked up the effort even a bit more. If I remember correctly, the efforts went: hard, hard, standing, descending to a harder gear every 2 mins (with the last one being just 1 min), hard, standing, descending to a harder gear every minute, hard (standing when needed throughout), hard, and hard.

It was a longer ride, so I wasn't going CRAZY hard throughout. My heart rate zones didn't go nuts:

My weekly "intensity" minutes shows a BIG peak from this long ride last week.

I had to look back at my bigger trainer rides over the years to see how this ranked. Going back in time, I found 1 post from last year, and then I had to go back more than a decade for comparable numbers:

• Oct 2022: doing 1 hr 50 mins on the trainer and noting it was the longest in possibly 12+ years.

• April 2018: a 1 hr 44 min trainer ride that I thought was a SOLID WORKOUT. That's the biggest ride I can find in the years I started to hit the trainer more from 2017-2019 (and I found most of the workouts were 50-80 mins long).

• March 2009: I noted in this post how I had 9 hours of trainer time in Feb which was decent for me back then as I was training for a 70.3 (whereas last month I had more than that while being gone for 11 days and missing 3 trainer workouts).

• Feb 2009: a 2 hour trainer ride (as my wife went for FIVE HOURS!). I guess I beat that last week because I went for 2 hours and 1 minute.

• Feb 2009: a 3 hr and 20 min spinning class to get ready for a 70.3.

Being that 3+ hour workout was a SPINNING class, there's a chance that 2 hours and 1 minute is the longest TRAINER ride I've ever had. Boy, I need to get some multisport races on the calendar... and then make sure I keep some INTENSITY in my training! (And not just these longer efforts.)

UPDATE: I forgot all about riding 2 hrs and 13 mins last year on my birthday. So THAT was my longest trainer ride ever, and this one was 2nd.

Here's my post of my 2022 training totals that I posted last week if you missed it.

Good All-Around Training Week After a Few Odd Weeks

>> Saturday, February 18, 2023

I had an odd end to January as I had a week in Mexico followed by a long weekend in Florida. After a week of settling back in (the week of Jan 30th through Feb 5 which was a bit odd early on but ended pretty normally), I had a NICE all-around week last week:

RUNS: a real good long run and 2 easier runs for 22.2 total miles.

BIKE TRAINER: a 90 min ride and a PR 2 HOUR RIDE (that I'll post about soon) for my biggest bike week in a long time at 3 hours and 32 minutes. (August of 2022 was the last time I had a longer week in the saddle.)

SWIM: a normal single swim workout of broken 400s and 200s that I like to do. 2500 yards is on the longer side for swim workouts for me.

STRENGTH: just over 10 hours is BIG. Tuesday was a shorter upper body day and Thursday was more of a normal upper body day, but the rest of the days were all on the longer side.

Back with a bit about my wild longest-trainer-ride-ever shortly. And I have more Mexico photos to show soon as well. Happy weekend!!