Monday 28 April 2014

Week 4 of 26

I have conveniently made this week a recovery week after the past 3 weeks build. Ending it with the half marathon race at Forest City Road Races.

Monday, as usual, was a rest day. Originally I planned to cycle on Tuesday but the weather looked gloomy with some strong winds, so I ran 12km at Springbank instead. Still ran it pretty hard, clocking the same time as last week.

Wednesday, I rode to Southwold. The plan was to do 75kms. Temperatures were about just under 10 degrees Celcius but with the strong winds, the chill felt closer to freezing point. I was shivering pretty badly and was cycling way below par. About 50kms into the ride, I decided to call it quits and gave Li-Ann an SOS call to pick me up. I rolled for about another 7km, so that I was a bit nearer for her to get me.

Thursday, the temperature rose a bit. I rode to Thorndale this time. It was still windy, but not half as bad as the day before. Clocked 75km as planned. Friday, I did the only swim session for the week, main set of 1000m, 10 x 100m on 1:45, 1000m. My swimming has stagnated and maybe even deteriorated a little lately. Could be the additional training hours, so I feel a bit more tired. What used to around 15+ minutes for a 1km swim, I'll now be happy to clock anything under 17 minutes. Still, I'm not too worried as I think my open water skills would improve with the weekly Splash N' Dash sessions in Lake Whittaker when summer comes.

Saturday was another rest day, or rather, pigging out day! We had pasta for lunch at Angelo's and ordered a huge serving of breakfast waffles with gelato ice cream. I had a coupon for another scoop of gelato that came with my pasta, so yes we did indulge a bit! For dinner, Li-Ann cooked pasta too, so you can say, I was all carbed up for the race the next day.

Sunday, ran the half marathon at Forest City Road Races. It was pretty chilly at the start with 3 degrees Celcius but other than that, a perfect day. Sunny skies and as I was dressed in long compression top and bottoms, I did feel a bit warm midway through the run. I ran my 3rd best time - 1:29:17 and was 14th overall. Scored a surprise 2nd place in my Male 30-34 age group and won a small gift of $10 gift card at Runners' Choice shop. Race report to come soon.

Week 4 of 26 stats:

Swim 3.5km (1 hour 2 minutes)
Bike 132.5km (4 hours 34 minutes)
Run 33.1km (2 hours 21 minutes)

Total 169.1km (7 hours 56 minutes)

2 comments:

CheapRunnerMike said...

Great race Kevin, sorry I missed you...I had my head on a swivel trying to see if I could spot you at the start but it was pretty jammed there. I posted my recap on the blog this morning, look forward to reading yours.
I'm going to try and do some of the Lake Whitaker open water swims when they start up, I'm sure we'll meet up there at some point!

Kevin Siah said...

Thanks Mike! Great performance for you too! Yes, the Lake Whittaker Splash N Dash are great fun and great training for the triathlon season. See you then!