Week 20 of 26

So the big race is coming really close... only 6 weeks away! I was meant to race the Olympic distance at Goderich on the weekend but I decided to clock in another long ride and long run instead. I kinda regretted not racing, as looking at the results, I could have given myself a chance to be on the podium. Anyway, it's always easy to say these things on hindsight.

The week started with a 3.7km swim set on Monday evening - warm up 400m, 5 x 200m, 4 x 300m (1st and 3rd pull buoy, 2nd and 4th pull buoy with paddles), 2 x 400m, 200m fast and 100m cool down. Tuesday was supposed to be a 90km ride to Lakeside and back. But partway through it rained heavily with thunderstorms - it was fine and sunny when I started! Luckily I was able to find shelter and Li-Ann came to pick me up.

Wednesday was Splash N Dash at Lake Whittaker, the final one for the year. I swam two loops for a warm up. The water was very choppy as it was very windy. I quite enjoyed it actually, reminds me of swimming at the beaches back in Australia. The first swimmer was a super fish and I came out of the water about 2.5 minutes. I worked hard on the run but was only able to take a minute off the gap, still my best run so far. Overall time was 45:50, which was 25:26 for the 1.6km swim and 20:24 for the 5km run.

Thursday was 90 minute run at Springbank. Bit windy and cloudy, nice cool weather. Friday was a 4km swim set, 4 x 1000m - 1st swim (16:09), 2nd pull buoy (16:55), 3rd swim (16:23), 4th pull buoy with paddles (15:44). Happy with the quick times but it was in a 25m pool so I shouldn't get too excited.

Saturday I had my long ride but I kept it to 140km. Did my usual course of Thorndale and Talbotville. Slight tailwind on the way back so I had a good average pace of 30.5kph. I caught up with the results of my coached athletes who raced the Desaru 113km half iron triathlon back home in Malaysia, many who achieved massive personal bests and podium finishes. I'm so happy for them - one of the joys of coaching!

Sunday I had a broken up brick with a 2.5 hour ride in the morning to Lakeside and back. In the evening, I ran for 2 hours. There were lots of cloud cover and the weather was cool. That made a huge difference and my legs felt great - managed to keep under 4:30 per km overall pace.

Expecting to hit some big mileage in the next couple of weeks, especially during the weekends. The temperature is starting to drop and daylight is starting to get shorter, which can be a challenge for midweek rides, and for heat training to prepare for the extreme heat at Ironman Malaysia. But I'll do my best.

Week 20 of 26 statistics:

Swim - 11.0km (3 hours 6 minutes)
Bike - 270.9km (8 hours 47 minutes)
Run - 52.1km (3 hours 50 minutes)

Total - 334.0km (15 hours 43 minutes)