Week 5: Another Good Week

I did get a new pair of running shoes last week. I'm back to Asics: Kayano. As life would have it, this was my first running shoe when I got back in to running six years ago. After several other shoes: some Asics, some Mizuno, and a try at Newtons, I'm back where I started. I do have to say that my Achilles tendinitis is feeling a bit better. Maybe it's the shoes.

I got all my workouts in for last week. It was nice to not have to compress the week down into 4-5 days.

Monday 1/26: Off Day

Tuesday 1/27: About 6.5 miles on the treadmill doing some drills and some speed variation work.

Wednesday 1/28: Lower body and core strength training plus a short swim workout. The folks at Triathlon Geek must not be swimmers because their swim workouts so far have been pretty easy, even at the "pro" level. This is fine by me, since swimming is my best discipline of the three. If only I could get the IM people to double the swim distance and cut the bike distance in half...

Thursday 1/29: My first (of four) "Turbo Sprint" bike workouts on the trainer. This involved a series of high RPM sprints of increasing time.

Friday 1/30: Upper body and core strength training.

Saturday 1/31: I switched my planned workouts for Saturday and Sunday so I could take my son and his buddy snowboarding for the day. So on Saturday I did a 6 mile steady pace endurance run on the treadmill. I hope the weather improves soon. The treadmill gets a little boring.

Sunday 2/1: My first true back-to-back workout of the season. Not an official "brick" as it was a swim workout followed by a bike workout. I swam about a mile then road the bike, on the trainer, for about two hours.

As a bonus for Sunday, I got more swimming in. For swim team we had our "silly meet" on Sunday evening; a fun practice for those who chose to come practice instead of watching the Super Bowl. We had some Coaches Races (I won, even then the other coaches made me swim with only one arm. When I had to kick while they swam, it was a close call -- I think I won.). We had some relays where we swam with the kids. For the older age group, I participated in a little water polo and a some sharks-n-minnows.

I also discovered, courtesy of some of the other blogs I follow, the Wisconsin Brick Adventure. A weekend program, June 26-28, in Madison. The idea is to swim the swim, bike the bike, and run the run of the IM course. Heidi even signed on to me going for the weekend. As I'm learning, more so than my other races, the support crew for an IM is a critical component to the training. Thanks Team IronVince!

Overall a good week. I'm definitely feeling like I'm on the right track.