Sicky sick ...

This was me last week :

SICK

This happened after I managed to kick my lethargy and got onto a bit of a roll, completing all my training for seven days straight. Then it hit me - some nasty combination of runny nose, cough, headache, stomach ache-ness - whatever it was, it wasn't pretty. I missed five days of training. Grrr ...

In all honesty though, I should have seen it coming. The same week my training got on a roll, my diet kinda went to shit and I rarely got my 8 hours sleep. Now that that's happened once, I should hope I don't let it happen again. I'm going to keep a food journal to make sure I'm eating right/enough and keep track of my energy levels to see if anything stands out.

Anywho, finally felt better last Friday so Saturday I was back in the pool. It was pretty much an all pull practice for 1.5 hours. Greeeeeat. What a way to get back into the swing of things. Lats, pecs and tris are hurting right now. Later in the day I completed my 2.5 hr training ride no problem.

Sunday called for a short bike and then a long run. I was feeling kind of warm the whole day and started to feel a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat. I didn't want to chance it that my the sick would come back so ... I just cut it down to the long run. I've been running indoors mostly so I decided to take it outdoors to see how I'd do on the pavement. Wasn't sure how my body would take to the harder surface but, it held up nicely.

Hello, my name is Lethargic ...

Felt pretty lethargic this past week.

Skipped my Monday/Wednesday swim on account of feeling like a tonne of bricks when the alarm went off in the morning. Managed to complete my run on Monday and make it to a CrossFit class but was plagued with some serious soreness for the next three days so skipped my bike and run on Wednesday/Thursday as well. Blah.

This is not the way I envisioned starting off my six month countdown to IMLP.

Started to come out of my funk on Saturday and made it to my swim. Coach had me swim up a lane and gave me the objective of keeping up with a specific swimmer. The motivation did wonders, as did swimming right behind someone. I managed to keep up with her and finished 2500m in 75 min. Yay.

Saturday continued well and I got my 140 min. ride done. (I should mention I did have two, two-hour naps prior to my ride - I guess the swim took more out of me than I thought).

Today called for a 50 min bike and 90 min. run. After a late start (read: procrastinating), I only completed 35/75.

Silly Veronica, you should know by now that you need to get your training done in the morning, otherwise it's a race against the clock in the evenings.

Two steps forward, one step back ...

One step forward : 

A few days ago I found out that my training zones on the bike had improved meaning my base speed has improved.

Second step forward :

My swim pace actually isn't horrible.

Embarrassingly, I freaked out a bit infront of my swim coach last week. Based on the fact that I was only completing 1600 - 1800m in my 1hr sessions, I concluded my pace is nowhere near where it needs to be to finish the 3.8km IM swim in the 2h20min time limit. He gave me a reality check though:

Just what I needed:
A swift kick in the pants

(a) i've only been swimming 3 x week for 3 weeks so ... CHILL. IT'S STILL EARLY DAYS.

(b) my 100m time is about 2min10sec. If I maintain that pace, I will finish 3.8km in roughly 1h20 (leaving an extra hour to account for the open water and swimming in a pack). Thanks Will. I needed that.

One step back: 

My running is not where I thought it was and needs work.

Today I found out that my run zones haven't budged.
Grrr ... So the plan is to add in some more Zone 1 running after some of my rides, and bring the speed down a bit to force quicker adaptation. Grrr ... Zone 1 already felt uber slow and now I have to go slower? Boo.

New plan:

February Bike/Run Program

In addition to my immovable run zones, I got a video analysis done of my running the other day to see if I'm forefoot running correctly. Conclusion : Not really.

PROS: I've increased my cadence, I've shortened my stride, I'm landing on my forefoot.
CONS: I'm wasting a lot of energy in up/down movement, I'm still landing with a mostly straight leg, my heel is not dropping.

I left the session with some specific exercises and drills and am to come back in a month to see if I've improved.