End of Week Five

Well I already posted about the changes I'm making so there's not a lot more to say about this week. My workouts yesterday went great - I really like Saturdays. I went for a careful run in the morning, a long swim at noon, and a medium but easy trainer ride in the late afternoon.

Run - I woke up with sore calves from the teensy bit of running I did at the orthoped on Thursday. I massaged them a bit, put the heating pad on them a bit, stretched a bit, then went out for my run. I kinda of felt like once I started the kinks would work themselves out and I was right. I walked for a full 4 minutes before starting to run then I did 1:00 minute intervals for a bit, then 1:30, then one 2:00 just to see how it felt. All that time I had minimal or no calf pain. Often I felt like I could just keep running but again, I resisted the urge. That is a big challenge for me. I ended it with 4 minutes of walking and did a 30 minute total time out there with about 12-13 minutes of running. Sunday morning, I'm felling good.

Swim - I made sure I was at the pool right at 12 so I could get a full hour in. Managed about 55 minutes by the time the kids were out of the pool. I downloaded a slightly harder swim workout that was 1400m in total and I did the whole thing as closely as I could. I find the drills kind of hard to do as far as technique is concerned so I worry a bit that I'm practicing bad habits, but I really do feel my freestyle stroke is coming along well and I felt really good swimming yesterday. I was easily able to do the 100m sets with :30 breaks and the 16X25m with :10 breaks. I will check out the schedule and see when I can fit in 1-2 sessions with a private instructor again. I don't care what it costs.

Bike - It was late and I was a little tired and lazy. Couldn't bring myself to do a hard ride today so will have to do it Sunday. I just sat there and spun for 52 minutes, zone 1.5 most of the time avg HR 125.


Orthoped Appt Recap

I guess I should talk a bit about my visit with Kirstin, my orthoped on Friday. She had me run again and we watched the videotape together. She said I was still pronating (is that a verb??) a little on the right foot but not enough to cause the pain I'm having so she referred me to Roy Gillespie, the PT at Pinnacle. It'll take me 10 days to get my appt and then I'll go back to see Kirstin again in case anything needs adjustment. I told her about the irritation I'm now feeling on the top of my left foot but we decided not to deal with that until I've seen Roy. So she faxed off my info and I made an appt for Feb. 19th. Looking forward to it. I must admit I still have some discomfort when I wake up (because of my sleep position I guess) and I do still have to 'click' my lower back into place 3-4 times a day, so that is all connected.

Here's the plan for the coming week.

Sun - hard trainer (I hope) and gym
Mon - run and swim
Tue - gym (and volleyball)
Wed - run and swim
Thu - gym (bike in evening??)
Fri - REST DAY!
Sat - run, swim, bike


Can I bitch about the doing squats for a moment?

I am somewhat confused about my inability to do squats without pain. When I started at the gym, I was pretty out of shape in that regard with the exception of my legs which are pretty strong given all the biking I've been doing for the past 3 summers.

I have been trying to follow Joe Friel's Triathlon training plan as closely as I can, taking into consideration what he says about beginners, and women, and people my age. He suggests that I may choose to stick with the AA stage of the strength program the first year because I'm new to multi-sport. That makes lots of sense so I figured I would. However, I did think that I may be able to venture into the MS and MT stages for the legs portion because I am relatively strong in that area and definitely not a newbie when it comes to cycling. Well amazingly enough, it is that specific area where I seem to have the most trouble. I have had to cut back my reps/sets/weight for my squats several times. Some days I do the workout and feel fine and other days, my quads are hurting for a day or two after. According to the schedule, I am to do 3-5 sets of 20 reps with 40-60% of my 1 rep max. I calculated my 1RM to be about 75 lbs when I started. The bar a,one weighs 45lbs and I just didn't find I was able to handle it comfortably and it was always busy so I switched over to hand weights instead. I tried 2X15 and that was too hard to went down to 2X10. That's quite a bit less than the 45lb bar but maybe holding hand weights is different from holding a bar on your shoulders?? I dunno. After a couple weeks, when I bumped everything up to 4 sets, I found I was unable to keep that up with the squats. And then I when my legs were tired, I dropped down to 15 reps instead of 20. I seem to be going backwards. And what's really amazing is that in the MT and MS stage, I'm supposed to be able to do 3-6 squats with 1.3 times my body weight!!! That's about 150+lbs. Bwwwahahaaaha. I don't think so.

Anyway, I'm going to keep slogging along with whatever seems comfortable, but it sure seems like an anomaly and I'd love someone to explain it to me...

A Woman's Perogative....

Who says I'm not flexible??

OK, I changed my mind about the Masters Swim Cub after all that hemming and hawing. It's kind of funny really. I left the first Monday swim feeling good - confident, a good workout that pushed me, people were nice enough etc - so I was going to start going on a regular basis Monday and Wednesday nights and do a swim on my own on Saturdays.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, I got to thinking. 8:30-9:30 is a really hard time to make myself get up, drive 20 minutes, and workout. Although the workout was good, and the coach was nice and showed me how to do a lot of stuff, she emphasized that this was a general swim club and that the emphasis would NOT be on freestyle. I had figured - that's fine, I don't mind learning mew strokes and time in the water is always good right? But at the same time, when I was swimming nobody was correcting my stroke or giving me any feedback. They are busy, they set up the program, they watch people in general, and they teach you how to do things, but they don't give one-on-one feedback. I started thinking that if I don't get much (or any) one-on-one feedback, and I have to practice a lot of strokes that aren't specifically helpful for a triathlon, and I have to go at inconvenient times, is this the best plan for me?

Now that I've found the swimplan website, and I've had a taste of a swim club format, I think I can probably work out on my own and get a lot out of it. Erik pointed out that I AM very disciplined when it comes to my training and it's likely that I will work just as hard going on my own. I decided I would also pay for a private swim coach periodically to get specific feedback on how I'm doing, and then work on those things on my own.

So yesterday, I went to the length swim from 5-6pm and did the swim plan from the website. I added 300m more of additional work because I had time and felt good. By going on my own, I have many more options to swim so if I'm tired one day or can't make it for some reason, I can always go the next day. And it costs about the same amount. I will have to pay extra for a swim coach once in awhile, but that's worth gold if you ask me.


Change Number Two

I'm looking at my schedule.

Going to the gym 3X a week sometimes just isn't feasible. If I'm too tired, a gym workout is the one I'm willing to drop. However, it usually means the Wednesday gym workout because that's the hardest one to attend. That leaves me with two times at the gym that are awfully close together (Fri and Sun). I was thinking more and more about making FRIDAY my rest day and moving my gym workouts to Tuesday and Thursday (eight of which I can drop if I don't feel like it). Then I would run and swim on Mondays ad Wednesdays which make for some consistency. My weekends would stay more or less the same. Since I play volleyball already on Tuesdays, it isn't really working out to be a rest day anyway so I may as well go to the gym that day.

I need to run this past Erik because he does the gym with me, but he's pretty flexible and would probably be willing to make the change.

So the new adjusted schedule might look something like this:

Sun - gym, bike
Mon - run (2:45), swim (5-6pm)
Tue - gym (3-4), volleyball
Wed - run (2:45), swim (5-6pm)
Thu - gym (3-4) maybe easy bike in evening
Fri - rest day!
Sat - run, swim, bike

See, I AM flexible! I think I need to realize that I'll always be adjusting and tweaking the training plan to see what works best for me.

Week Five Plan (Feb. 3-9)

This will be a tough week because there are many interruptions.

Thursday and Friday are parent teacher interviews and I need to get ready for them on Mon-Wed. I won't be able to go for a run on Thursday because I have an eye appt at 4:10. The only way to fit it in would be to go in the morning. I will consider that.

s - gym and trainer (recovery ride)
M - run (20 min only) and swim (5-6pm on my own, or masters at 8:30-9:30)
T - rest (volleyball)
W - gym and swim (5-6pm on my own, or masters at 8:30-9:30)
T - run in am or rest day
F - gym
S - run, swim, trainer (45-60 min)

End of Week Four

Well, it was an interesting week. I started off tired and was a little worried that I wasn't going to be able to complete my workouts I had planned. It turned out that it was mostly my wasp allergy shot and the antihistamine I had to take on Tuesday, coupled with playing volleyball with tight, sore shins, that made Wednesday a bad day. By Thursday, I was feeling better mentally and physically.

I drove to the gym on Wednesday, walked in, then turned around and walked out. I was just so tired and I realized that the gym workout is one I can skip since I really don't HAVE to go three times a week. I wanted to save my energy for swimming that night instead. SO I went home and had a 30 minute nap, ate some dinner, but by 7:30, I was still so tired that I couldn't bring myself to drive down to the pool for my first night with the masters. It would have to wait.

Thursday, my legs were still still tight so I did stretching and massage and had a hot epsom salts bath and then decided to hit the pool from length swimming since I'd missed Wednesday. If I couldn't run, I could at least swim.

Friday, I went to the gym as usual, doing 4 sets instead of 3 now. Felt fine.

Saturday, I did my usual triple header and felt great all day. I was busy in the morning and ran out of time so I could only do a 15 minute run. My shins were still sore so I walked for 5 minutes, then did 1:00 minute intervals. The first minute hurt a bit but then I worked it out and my legs felt fine. It was probably good that I could only run 5-6 minutes total though. I stretched when I got home too. Sunday night, my legs are still feeling ok so hopefully I can run tomorrow.

I had a great swim on Saturday afternoon. I did 250m warm up kicking with the board, then stroke work for 250m with the fins, then about 750m of freestyle. Most of the time I needed to rest every 50m, but after 1000m, I felt better and decided to try for 100m straight. Did that in 2:30. Not bad since I can't do flip turns yet. Then I thought I'd do another 100m but felt so good, I just kept going and did 200m in total. I could have gone further but I was getting sloppy. 40 minutes swim in total.

Later in the day, I did a 45 minute ride on the trainer. 15 minutes easy, 15 min hard, 15 minutes easy.

Today I went to the gym. Cut back on the squats to 15 instead of 20 because my glutes hurt. Other than that, did the regular 4 sets in 50 minutes, then 20 minutes of stretching. Great!

In the late afternoon I did a 30 min recovery ride on the trainer. Almost all zone 1. Watch the Food Channel again. :)

I am really happy about the swimming. I really hope I can make myself try out for masters this week. I will try hard to make myself go on Monday.

I am really happy about the calves. Maybe I just have to cut back again and work up even more gradually. Ugh. I am impatient.

Magazine

Here's a fun picture - facebook has an app that lets you put your own picture on a magazine cover. Naturally, I chose Sports Illustrated (I would have preferred Bicycling but it wasn't available....) So this is as close as I'll ever get to being a famous cyclist.