Monday, June 30, 2008

No Title

Ahhh.. just ate homemade pancakes, a couple eggs and 3 pieces of ham for lunch. I'm sated and feeling fine.

In the news..
-scored a treadmill. It's cool. Nothing beats running outside, but I can feel the benefit that a treadmill will provide. I seem to run 'lighter', cadence seems higher and there is noticeably lesser impact on the ol joints. The 'boy cave', (the one room of the house that's actually mine) is getting a little full though.
-Canucks rocked IMCDA. For a relatively small population, we have some bad ass triathletes. First place men AND first place women were both Canadian.
-watched the US Olympic trials for the Men's 400 IM last night. One of the best races I've seen. Phelps leads after the butterfly and backstroke, Lochte catches him on the breaststroke and they duke it in the freestyle head to head. Both under the world record with Phelps winning. Incredible.

"Other" stuff..
-this year I had the 'revelation' that there will be no 'training races'. Every race I'll be rested the only question is how much rest I get. For lower priority races I'll take 3 or 4 easy days, for a high priority (half IM) I'll do a full 14 day taper. Generally, triathletes have a tendency to get addicted training (guilty!) and always want to squeak just one hard day of training before I race. Resist! We train so much and race so little, make every race count! This small change philosophy has yielded a PB in 4/4 races so far this year.

-is going 'hard' tougher than going 'long'? The last couple of years I went 'long' - well long for me. Keep in mind, this is relative. I think this period was very valuable as it laid down some good groundwork for the future.
This year I've added considerably more 'hard' sessions - especially on the bike and I have to say there are times I believe that a short 1 hour interval session on the bike is harder than a 100k mid week Z1/2 ride. When I went long, I'd zone out and just ride. When I go hard - I suffer. Mental toughness is required - that little imp on my shoulder is always telling me to stop.

-Peterborough Half Ironman is this Sunday and I still have not got my wetsuit back from being repaired. If I don't get it back in time, I'm seriously thinking of going old school and doing the swim in a bathing suit.

By the numbers..
For the week of June 23- 29
Swim: 8.1k
Spin: 4.25 hrs
Bike: 100k
Run: 50k
The key sessions for the week was: Tues: brick- bike 100k moderate effort followed by 7.5k run. Thurs: swim 3.1k, spin 1 hour (27min @ threshold 310watts -upped it by 5W :), run 6.5k. Sat: Ergvideo loop of Lake Placid.

This week is taper week. Rest. Rest. REST.
Tomorrow is..
Canada Day!

Have a great one.

2 comments:

Cliff said...

Hey Darren,

You got a treadmill...I guess u are putting in the room where I did my bike test on.

It seems the sufferfest that you put yourself in have reaped results (+5 watts on the threshold).

See you this Sun :)

Reddog said...

Good luck in Peterborough guys!

Giver!

ArrrOOOooo!