On and on, I feel like the days are just flying by lately. Between work, training, hanging with friends, the dog, etc. it's been like Groundhog Day around here for the past month or so. Luckily, that has led to one great thing for an athlete; Consistency.
Over the past month I have been able to remain very consistent with training, logging somewhere in the range of 10-12k of swimming, 80-100mi on the bike and 40-45mi of running each week. While the old days when I would train at significantly higher volumes (20-25k S, 150-250mi B and 40-45mi R) are gone, I am making due with the reduced availability of training time and so far it seems to be working.
In the past month, I have mainly focused on increasing the distance of my intensity intervals in the pool (getting closer to race distance (1.9k)), getting in some bigger rides on the bike (60+ mi rides) and racing myself into good run shape.
A few weeks back, I raced the Cherry Creek Sneak 10-miler here in Denver. It was brutal. Heading into the race I had only run the distance one time since before I was injured way back in November. Most of my training runs had topped out at around 7-8mi. The first four miles of the course were pretty flat before getting to the hilly section of the race. I think I came through there around 23:00, but it got extremely tough once we hit the uphill sections. I tell you what, although I have lived at altitude for almost 5 years now, I STILL do not feel acclimated when I run hills here and this race was no exception! I managed to hang in and just barely meet my somewhat lax goal of getting under 1 hour. I went 59:51 good enough for 11th place overall on the day. Meanwhile my former teammate from Riptide, Tate Behning, managed to run away with the win in about 55:30.
Aside from that effort, my work in the pool has been going well. I am still swimming at right about 1:18-1:20 pace per 100y in the pool for sets as long as about 1000y. Over the next 3 weeks leading into the race I hope to get in a 2000y TT as well as one workout of 25x100y on 1:20 or 1:25 (depending on how I'm feeling) and that will be as good as it's going to get for this race.
On the bike, I got in almost 150mi of riding last weekend including to rides of 50 and 60 miles respectively. The 60 mile ride crushed me. 2 days later when I jumped into the 50 mile ride I expected to feel like crap. I rode the 1:10 or so out to Lookout Mountain and gave the climb a go. Lookout is kind of my marking post in the area for cycling. It's a 4.6mi climb with and average grade of 5% and a total elevation gain of 1,217 ft (starting at an altitude of roughly 6,300ft). I have ridden Lookout probably more than 100 times and surprisingly when I rode it on Monday, I was able to outpace my old PR by about 10 seconds with what felt like, significantly less effort. I was pumped.
As for the run, I have not been able to fit in any speedwork at all in the past month, so I'm relying on these race efforts to gain the speed that I will need for 70.3 next month. This weekend I will be jumping in to the Colfax half marathon just down the street from my house with a goal of just finishing at or below 6-min mile pace. Seeing as how this course is significantly less hilly than the previous race, I think it should be totally doable, although those extra 3 miles could leave me with a surprise.
So, that's my training update. Things in other areas of life are going extremely well and I'm finding that that is leaving much less stressed heading in to workouts, which in turn seems to allow me to focus more on the work at hand. I will have another short update for you all after this weekends run. Until then, thanks for checking in and Happy Training!
