Although I don't have a thoroughly planned triathlon program in place I felt it was time to start writing about what I am doing for training. From October through December I wasn't training. yes I was running, some swimming, very little cycling and plenty of weight training but no specific purpose. It was nice to have some unstructured workouts for awhile but now I'm ready to take action so I have a great tri season this year. My plan is to focus on Olympic distance races, 4-6 throughout the season, and throw in some road races, 10k to half marathon distance.
Yesterday, Sunday, was my long run for the week and really today should be an easy day but was feeling up for this, and I had the time bloked off in the AM so I went for it. I woke up, had 4oz of Cleanse for Life and filled my water bottle up with Want More Energy and went to the gm in my building. My upperbody workout is focusing on upperbody stabilization work and I did a circuit of 7 exercises and repeated 3 times. Hamstrings feel a little tight today, but otherwise everything is good.
Immediately following I set up my indoor trainer in my office. I've been riding on my terrace but today it feels like below 0 here on the waterfront. Heat is off in the office and temp is at 54 so that is manageable. My bike workouts have consisted of alternating weeks of speed and force for 1 day of the week and another day as either recovery endurance or muscular endurance. Today it is Speed, and i'm using workout SS4 from my book. Easy warm up spinning 95 plus rpm followed by 6x3 min at 95rpm in aero position and 3 min rest in climbing position in z1-2 at least 95rpm. I have a pretty good play list going here and my cadence really does coincide with the music. Hardest part of the workout was keeping the cadence up and I was supposed to work in HR Z3 but for most part was at top of Z2. I was holding myself back a little but also know i'm running out of glycogen stores which is why i have not eaten. Goal here is also to burn some fat! Total workout time was 51 minutes and I did not do a proper cool down because i'm going into a run after this.
I really don't like treadmill workouts but at least intervals keep me more engaged than steady state or tempo workouts. About 20 min after the bike ride i was on the treadmill in my gym. I had hoped to get to the track, but it really is bitter out. I have more water with want more energy and I had a honey stinger gell (about 120 calories) 10 min before the run. Warmed up 10 minutes really easy jog and then prepared for this new interval workout. Goal is 4x5 min at 20-30 sec slower than 5k pace. I'm not going to worry so much about what pace i choose, but to choose a pace and stick to it. I'm finding these treadmills are not calliberated properly anyway so will basically go by RPE and HR. I was at 7:52 pcace for all 4 intervals and the 4th one was really hard. For the rest interval I slowed to walk until HR got down to about 123 then jog for total of about 3 minutes before repeating again. Feel the recovery period was sufficient. Because it is so warm in here (at least to me it is) I feel my RPE was higher than it would have been with same workout outdoors. My HR for the intervals ranged from Av of 174 to max of 195. I feel if i was doing this on a track I could have worked faster. Either way, next time I want to jog for the rest interval and try this outside.
The fact is I did really well on very little fuel over 3.5 hours. This was my first brick (even though there was 20 minutes between) and my legs felt really fresh on the treadmill. Will do this again, and will also try to do the run in the AM and bike in the PM and see how that goes.