Week 21 of 26

Gosh... it's getting close! This week was the start of the 3 week peak build.

Monday was a 4km swim set in the evening. 400m warm up, 10 x 100m swim, 200m fast swim, 10 x 100m pull buoy, 200m pull buoy, 10 x 100m swim, 200m fast swim. Tuesday was the usual 90km ride to Lakeside and back. Daylight is getting shorter already. Sunset when I had another 30 minutes to go, had to race back before it got too dark. Will bring my lights out for the next weekday evening ride.

Wednesday I was planning to run but it was forecasted to have thunderstorms so I took a rest day instead. It did shower intermittently but no prolonged rain. I went with Li-Ann to her workplace social event and had a pretty late night. Thursday I ran at Springbank for 80 minutes with 10 sets of 7 minutes fast intervals followed by 3 minutes easy after each. Felt really good, weather was cool with lots of cloud cover. One of my faster training runs at 4:22 per km average.

Friday morning I swam a long swim set - 1.2km swim (20:28), 2km pull buoy (35:42), 800m pull buoy with paddles (13:01). In the evening I ran for 75 minutes but chose a different route. I started from UWO campus and went through Gibbons Park to Springbank and back. What a nice undulating route - I'm surprised I didn't know about this earlier! It was pretty hot and I struggled the last 15 minutes or so.

Saturday was my first 180km for the year. It started out a bit foggy and it stayed cloudy throughout. Bit humid though. I rode to Lakeside and then down south to Talbotville and back. Bit of headwind on the way back. But glad I maintained just over 30kph average. No brick run this time but will have in the next two 180km rides. In the evening, Li-Ann and I watched the Ninja Turtles movie at Westmount Mall. It was fun but very Michael Bay-ish. Does anyone else also think that Shredder had an uncanny resemblance to Megatron?

Sunday morning I did an hour's session in the gym - alternating arms, legs and core, 30 repetitions each. In the afternoon I ran for 2.5 hours. It was cool and cloudy. I maintained a decent pace of 4:30-4:35 per km for the first 2 hours or so, and then slowed it down to about 4:45 per km pace. Total distance covered 32.6km. Next two weekends I'll be graduating the long runs to 3 hours.

With the big mileage these couple of weeks, recovery cannot be any more important. Have to make sure that I get adequate sleep and eat well in between sessions.

Week 21 of 26 statistics:

Swim 8.2km (2 hours 24 minutes)
Bike 271.5km (8 hours 51 minutes)
Run 67.6km (5 hours 5 minutes)
Gym (55 minutes)

Total 347.3km (17 hours 15 minutes)