Week 15 of 26

So the first week of training post my half Iron triathlon last weekend. Wasn't sure how the body would hold but I took each session as they come.

Monday was a rest day which was very much needed. Tuesday evening I swam with some interval sets - 10 x 100m @ 1:40, 5 x 200m @ 3:20, 3 x 300m @ 5:00. Felt a bit out of breath but otherwise okay.

Wednesday was the Splash N Dash at Lake Whittaker. I arrived a bit late and could only do one loop of the swim course as warm-up, I usually do two. There weren't many people this week as most just raced the weekend before. I kept close to the front two girls and came out of transition only about 15 seconds behind the first girl. Once I overtook her on the run, I slowed down the pace. Overall time was 47:48 - 25:34 for the 1.6km swim and 22:14 for the 5km run. Not too bad, I guess.

I had only one mid week ride on Thursday with 90km to Lakeside and back. The winds were pretty mild.

Friday morning I swam with some long sets - 2000m swim (33:46) and 1500m pull buoy (26:48). In the afternoon I ran at Springbank for 1 hour 20 minutes and felt pretty good, just over 18km clocked.

Saturday was the long ride. The plan was to do 5.5 hours. But as I started the ride, I didn't feel too great. I started the ride to Thorndale and then turned around to head west and south towards Talbotville. Once I got to about the 80km mark, I decided it wasn't my day. My legs were pretty empty and I made the call to cut the ride short. I took a short cut and went through Sunset Drive all the way back to town. Traffic was pretty heavy and there were lots of traffic lights I had to stop at. Finally got home with 133km and about 8 minutes under 5 hours, a pretty slow ride indeed. But I didn't beat myself up too much about it, just have to let sessions like these pass and move on.

Sunday it rained a bit in the morning and I delayed my 2 hour 15 minutes long run until after watching the World Cup finals. Started running at 6pm and it was still quite sunny and warm. Legs felt good and was managing a decent pace of about 4:35 to 4:40 per km. Just before the 25km mark, my Garmin died - yes, I should have charged it before but I thought it would have lasted. Anyway, I had about 21 minutes left and I estimated a conservative 4:45 per km average for the remaining. So, just over 29km clocked.

Next week will be even bigger, both in mileage and time. Hopefully, the long ride incident is a once-off  and I'm more or less recovered from the half iron triathlon.

Week 15 of 26 statistics:

Swim - 9.9km (2 hours 51 minutes)
Bike - 223.8km (7 hours 47 minutes)
Run - 52.4km (3 hours 57 minutes)

Total - 286.1km (14 hours 35 minutes)