A big Thursday of Workouts.

Thursday turned into a heavy day of training.
I biked for 80 minutes on the trainer starting at 5AM. I guess my legs were tired because I was only able to handle mid zone 2 for my HR. I had been pushing a bit harder than that recently but it wasn’t going to happen today.

I was still feeling good though. When I called Genine on the train ride into the city. I mentioned that I might want to do a short run before we went swimming that night.

Well Maija called me on my way home saying she still had her track workout to do and was wondering if Genine and I wanted to join in. So much for the easy short run. This is good though, I’m 16 days from the 15K. It’s probably a good idea to finally start doing some speed work.
So we get to the track and we find that we aren’t going to be able to run the full loop on the track because of ice and snow. We’d have to cut into the infield for the one whole side. It didn’t matter, it was dark so it was tough to see our watch to keep track of lap times anyhow. Mine were going to be slow, it was probably better I didn’t know how slow.
The workout was 200, 400, 600 ,800, 1000, 800, 600, 400, 200. Of course Maija was ahead on all of this but I felt like I held pace until the 2nd 800. Then I started to feel like she was pulling away even quicker. Maybe she started to run faster at this point? Anyhow, the final 200 I felt like I was starting to get tight so instead of finishing strong I was already on the cool down.
It was an interesting run, I never felt like I was able to run top speed and my HR certainly was never anywhere close to max. I think 180 was probably the top and I know I can hit 200. I’m curious to see how many weeks it’s going to take until it actually feels like I’m running fast again.

I then met up with Genine at the Y (across the street). I figured I was going to have an awful swim and I’d just use it as recovery from the track workout. Oddly enough it was one of my best swims in weeks. I had really good balance and rotation (for me), so I was able to do some distance work and it was feeling fantastic. Genine had already finished a 1000M before I got into the pool. So even though I was feeling great, we hopped out after I had about an hour in.
I was psyched up. Swimming is so great when you aren't struggling the whole time. I wish I could say that I've finally got it all figured out but I won't know until the next swim.

Friday morning’s bike turned into a recovery bike followed by stretching, because once again I’m feeling my adductors from doing speed work. (So much for thinking that an entire winter of running hills would fix that weakness.) I expect Shawn will tell me I should have used a kettlebell all winter and skipped all that running. :-)

In other news, Genine’s clip-on aerobars are here. I’ll be trying to get them setup for her tonight because it’s supposed to be 50-60 degrees this weekend! I have to admit that I’m curious to see if all these hours on the trainer are going to pay off.

Have a great weekend everyone!