Tri Again: Week Five Training Recap

This week was an improvement over last week’s unintentional slacking. Good thing, since it’s also the halfway point to July’s triathlon. I expect this coming week to be horrible because I’m switching to an early morning class schedule, but I’m hoping to maintain the quantity of training time and as well as improve the quality.

Sunday 10 June: a neighborhood ralk of 4.5 miles.

Monday 11 June: morning Pilates, and after class, a 30 minute session on the elliptical varying the resistance between high, very high and are you kidding me?, followed by a 25 minute fast walk on the track and 45 minutes of weight training.

Tuesday 12 June: my second Aquachef encounter, the "highlight" (or not) of a 35 minute swim workout.

Wednesday 13 June: morning Pilates and, after class, a 40 minute ralk on the track. When I went to pick up the "svimmink" books as instructed, Aquachef noted "Ya, I vent svimmink again zis morning but zere vas no one zere. I vas all alone." He then proceeded to critique my form, noting I lacked extension in the arms and "had too much drag." I know he means well, but I wish he’d stick to criticizing the uneven seams of my baguettes and the fact that my challah always looks slightly, well, larval.

Thursday 14 June: 30 minutes on the elliptical at high/crazyhigh resistance, followed by half an hour of weight training.

Friday 15 June: a 40 minute pool workout (Zere vas no one zere. I vas all alone. Yay!). Instead of just doing laps, I tried one of the drills in one of the books Aquachef gave me on Wednesday. Eh. I didn’t feel I got a super good workout, but I will say that the next morning my legs felt a little more used than they usually do after a swim, so I guess that’s something. This coming week I vill vork on improving my extension and reducing my drag, ya.

Saturday 16 June: a "physical rest day," since I’ve worked out nine days in a row. But an important "mental day." After morning Pilates and errands, Wiley and I made the six hour round-trip to the triathlon site in Massachusetts, south of Worcester. I had to see Mt. Doom and the rest of the bike course with my own eyes, because my overactive imagination had created a black, lava-spewing mountain of pain and torment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Everything has its time and place. I just don’t want to be biking up it.

So, anyway, we hit the road on a beautiful day, clear and warm but breezy, not a cloud in the sky. It’s a beautiful drive, too, up along the Taconic State Parkway and then through the Berkshires. As we neared Worcester, the sky turned black. Pouring rain. Lightning. I worried it was some kind of omen (ya think?).

Then, oddly enough, just as I turned off the Interstate, the rain stopped. The sky cleared. The sun came out. I found the bike course and drove it, tensed for the appearance of Mt. Doom. Uhmmm... Couldn’t find it. Circled back around, checked the directions I’d downloaded and confirmed yes, this is the bike course. No giant black mountain. No lava spewing hellfire. Not even a single flying monkey.

The course profile posted online has to be wrong. Yes, there are hills, and there is one very long, fairly steep hill right about where Mt. Doom should have been, but the landscape is almost identical to the hills around my house where I’ve been riding. In fact, for the last six or seven miles of the course, it’s much flatter than where I live. Ha!

Ha!!

It’s actually a gorgeous course, mostly through residential areas and dense, undeveloped forest. Much more Lothlorien than Mordor. There is a portion on the downhill of what I guess is Mt. Doom where the paving is very old and broken up. I could see hitting a pothole there at speed and being very, very unhappy. There are also two very sharp turns, one at the base of the Mt. Doom downhill and another on a very short but very steep uphill. But overall it looks challenging but manageable.

Whew.

On the way home, we stopped at a Trader Joe’s outside Worcester to stock up on salmon, almond meal and roasted red pepper soup. I always wonder how TJ’s manages to have such cool stuff for so little money. The answer probably involves torturing cows and using child slave labor, so I probably don’t want to know too much. Better just to enjoy my $4.99/lb wild salmon and not ask questions.