Week 2 of 26

I learnt from last week and scheduled a rest day on Monday to recover from the big weekend workouts.

On Tuesday I did my usual 12km at Springbank. It was a nice sunny day and with the long sleeves, I was overdressed. Had a nice tailwind on the return lap and ran a low 52 minutes for the distance. Wednesday was a 60km ride to Thorndale and back. Had a slight headwind on the way back but still manageable.

I did not wake up for a morning swim this week and did my session on Thursday evening. Partially because Li-Ann and share a car, and I planned to swim on my way to work, it didn't feel right dropping her off at work at 6am in the morning! For the swim, I decided to do something different with a main set of 20 x 100m - odds were freestyle, evens were individual medley. Then a 400m steady swim, finishing up with 12 x 50m - odds were either butterfly or backstroke, evens were freestyle. Friday I did the same 60km ride as Wednesday, and had very similar conditions. I even clocked just 1 second quicker! I like being consistent :)

The weekend came and although I cycled the evening before, on Saturday morning, I did a 100km ride to Southwold and back. It was sunny and the winds were pretty calm. I had 3 layers on and I was baking inside. Finished with an average of 30.4kph, so I was happy with that as I usually ride slower on this route - some rolling climbs and plenty of turns, so it does slow me down. In the evening, I spent an hour in the gym.

That night, I was tracking my sister and a few athletes whom I coach back home, racing Putrajaya 70.3. The live feed, however, wasn't updating very well. So I stopped tracking just before midnight and went to sleep. The next morning, after catching up with my sister (who by the way did very well for her first 70.3 with limited training!), I went out for a 22km run. It was warm enough for me to wear a singlet. I tried on my new Asics GT2000 and a new pair of socks as I ran out of running socks (pun, not intended!). Probably wasn't the wisest thing to do for a long run. But it felt alright other than feeling a bit snug which tends to happen with new shoes.

Started well at about 4:30 per km average but after about 10km, my back felt stiff and legs didn't have much in them, so I slowed down to 4:45-5:00 pace. Could be a combination of the late night's sleep and my first 100km ride the day before. Anyway, I willed myself to finish. I had Taylor Swift's 22 song playing in my head and deliberately made the distance to 22.22km, finishing just a few steps off my front lawn!

In the afternoon, I did a quick and dirty swim session with main set of 6 x 500m to help recover from the long run. The pool was pretty busy with a few lanes being reserved for a coached swim session. All the splashing made me feel as if I was swimming the ocean!

Week 2 stats:

Swim 7.0km (2 hours 5 minutes)
Bike 220.3km (7 hours 6 minutes)
Run 34.2km (2 hours 36 minutes)
Gym (1 hour)

Total 261.57km (12 hours 47 minutes)