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Miserable Monday Morning In Tucson |
March 19th - March 25th: On Monday I woke up to hail storm that had the twittersphere blowing up with negativity. I saw it as the perfect opportunity for a hard, long swim. Unfortunately the 86 degree pool water didn't mesh well with that idea. I tried to swim hard but eventually had to back it down as the body was badly overheating. It was too miserable to get on the bike, and despite being at the track on Sunday for mile repeats I decide to return to do a single 3-mile TT run in the winter wonderland.
On Tuesday I got out on the bike to do a single 20 min interval followed by some shorter intervals. I started out too hot on the 20 and had nothing left in the tank at the end but did manage to bump the wattage up from 341 to 343 watts for this week.
On Wednesday I took an easier day to prepare for what I knew would be a brutal Thrusday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. When I say easier, I went to the pool and knocked out some descending 100s in two sets with half above threshold and half below along with some easy biking.
On Thursday evening I went to track practice with the Tricats but I knew I had substantial fatigue built up from the previous 10 days of training. When given the choice of doing Ben Kanute's workout or the rest of the team's sadly I chose the easier option. It was a good choice because after running the first interval I quickly realized that I had a lot of residual fatigue and it ended up being my worst track workout of the season. Although I felt better by the end of the workout I knew I was riding the rivet of fatigue.
On Friday Team Trisports camp started with the annual Trifest ride up Mt Lemmon. I ended up doing this ride from the back of the pack so I could actually execute my 90 minutes hard without getting involved in the rest of the testosterone battle. In the afternoon, we went out to run some technical trails at Starr Pass in the Tucson Mountains.
On Saturday we had the second annual Team Trisports Triathlon. Last year I won this thing and this year my plan was only to do a few harder intervals on the bike, but when our sponsorship coordinator put some store credit on the line for the winner I decided I had to win the darn thing. Now win I did, but to be fair I was the only pro-card carrying athlete in attendance. TJ Tollakson was pool-side for a bit and I'm sure he would have handsomely handed it to me had he done it. That doesn't mean it wasn't tough and the Trisports team has a ton of talented athletes including Xterra stud Bryce Phinney who really made me work for the win.
On Sunday some of the Team Trisports members - myself included - did the Tucson Triathlon. Last year I did this race all "tega-dermed up" from a bike crash but I still managed to win the thing. This year I was crash-free but I was fatigue stricken. Fortunately the fatigue was enough on this day and I successfully managed to defend my title.
All-in-all it was a pretty good week with lots of hard, but short workouts. I decided to scrap weekly weigh-ins and the food journal because it was just too crazy of a week with temperature extremes, race-loading, race-bloating, and just the lack of consistency for it to really mean anything. I'll make it up in a few weeks with a detailed list of exactly what I eat in a typical week.
I race at Leadman in five days. I'm not sure how I will be feeling and I may have over-cooked it in the last two weeks, but I won't know until the race. Worst case scenario, I'm not recovered but I got in some solid lactate threshold work as I build towards Ironman St George.
Here are my weekly
swim,
bike, and
run totals:
Total: 252 Miles / 26 hours 14 minutes
Swim: 17,500 yards / ~10 miles / 4 hours 54 minutes
Bike: 216 miles / 13 hours 21 minutes
Run: 26 miles / 3 hours 29 minutes
Core: 3 sessions / 4 hours 30 minutes
Weight: N/A lbs (average over the 7 days)
Body Fat: N/A%
Calories Consumed: N/A / ~ N/A (as of Sunday at 5pm)
Calories Burned: N/A / ~N/A per day