Week 1 Summary

Week 1 is in the books, and all ready we’ve ran into some diversity.  Nothing real serious mind you, just some technical difficulties with my bike.  After fixing my flat tire from the St. Anthony’s race, I promptly flatted again immediately on my next ride.  I took the tire to my local bike shop to have them look at it, figuring that maybe something more serious is wrong with it.  They changed the tire and said they didn’t see any problems.  I put the tire back on, but then I started a session on my rollers, and the tire popped again in like 10 minutes.  Now this was especially concerning, as I’ve never flatted on my rollers before, and I’m not really sure how that could even happen.  So I took it back to the bike shop and they looked it over again.  Again they found nothing (though they didn’t charge me this time), and they fixed the flat.  I picked it up on Friday, just in time for our trip to Daytona Beach.  Sunday I intended to ride from Daytona back to Jacksonville.  I started my trip, but then 15 miles in my rear wheel flatted.  At least this was a different wheel, so it appears that the front tire is working.  Anyway, I didn’t have a change kit with me, so my wife picked me up, and I rode back home with the family.

As a result of all my tire problems, I was not able to get anywhere near as much bike time as I had planned.  The rest of the week, however, actually went very well.  Below is my summary for the week:

Monday

Swim: 2000 yd TT (37 minutes);  That’s slower then I want to be.  We’ll do this test every 4 weeks, and my goal will be to get it to 30 minutes before the race

Run: 3 mi short run (9:12 pace);  I felt really good on this run. I kept an even pace and no real fatigue set in

Tuesday

Swim: 1000 yd swim (17:45) just a nice consistent swim, still need to bring the time down, but I wasn’t really trying to push hard here

Run: 3.25 mi short run (9:12 pace); This was done on the treadmill after my swim.  Again, I felt good, pretty similar to yesterday’s run

Wednesday

Swim: 2400 yds; mostly 50 and 100 yard intervals, with the primary focus on stroke rate.  There was also some 200 and 300 yard swims in between sets

Run: 6 mi medium run (9:26 pace); Started off strong and felt good.  The last two miles, or so, I started to fatigue a bit.  Pace/Hr was 7.7%, and that needs to be under 5%.  It’s better than it’s been, but I still have some work to do.

Thursday

Run: 3 mi short run (8:59 pace);  Felt stronger on this run then any of the others so far

Friday

Swim:  3000 yds mostly 500 yd intervals

Run: 6 mi medium run (8:58 pace);  Easily my best run of the week.  I felt great the whole time.  I negative split the run (second half faster than the first half) and my Pace/HR was 3.2%.  This was a real encouraging workout!

Saturday

Run: 9 mi long run (9:47 pace); Started out pretty good, but I could tell my legs were a little tired from last night’s run. (there was less than a 12 hour turnaround between runs)  I did the whole run on the beach, which was pretty cool, but it was also very windy.  Apparently I had the tailwind on the way out, which gave me a pretty stiff headwind on the way back home.  I’ve never had the wind bother me on runs, but when I made the turn around I went from holding a 9:25 pace to barely a 10:00 pace.  The last couple miles were rough.

Sunday

Bike: 14.5 miles/ 45 minutes; This was my aborted long ride.  Not much to say, as I didn’t ride long enough to really get much info.

Weekly Totals:

Swim: 8.1 kms/2:59

Run:  30.25 miles/4:42

Bike: 14.4 miles/0:45

Total workout time: 8:28

Other than the bike, it was a good week for me.  The bike is easily my strongest discipline of the three, so I’m not too worried about missing out on it this week.  I got some really good work done on my run and swim, and as long as the bike doesn’t turn into a long term issue, I should be ok.

Goals for Week 2:

Swim: 8 kms

Run: 30 miles

Bike: 5.5 hours

We also have a race this Saturday, the BFAST Sprint Triathlon.  I’ll post a race preview later this week.