Tri Again: Week Four Training Recap

Ok, this week was not my finest training-wise. I took two unintentional days off because of my schedule: work in the morning as a tour guide, go to class in the afternoon (with no time in between to work out) and then suffer through group project meetings. One thing that drives me nuts about the classroom classes at Cookin’ School is that many of the teachers are really big on inane group projects. One of the ones I had to do last week was summarize a classmate’s externship experience in a PowerPoint presentation, for example. And no, we couldn’t do a presentation on each group member’s externship. It had to be just one student’s, and it was stuff like one slide on hours of operation, another on how many people worked there, etc.

What did I learn? I learned that I get really annoyed when we’re assigned stupid and pointless group projects.

In any case, after being on campus for 12 hours straight on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday, not only was I tired, but I didn’t want to leave Wiley alone any longer than I had to, so I skipped the gym and took him for an extra walkies instead.

Sunday 03 June: rest day, as planned.

Monday 04 June: morning Pilates, and an afterschool 35 minute swim.

Tuesday 05 June: cranky and unintentional rest day.

Wednesday 06 June: even crankier and unintentional rest day.

Thursday 07 June: morning Pilates, and after class, 30 minutes on the elliptical at high resistance and varying crossramp (incline), followed by a 12-minute mile on the indoor track.

Friday 08 June: 35 minute swim, fitting in two more laps than usual. I’m proud of this workout because I did almost all of it using the alternate breath method, which is supposed to make me a faster and more efficient swimmer. Usually, when I warm up, I inhale every fourth stroke and then, once I’m swimming "at speed," if it can be called that, I inhale every other stroke. To swim straighter and also develop my muscles more evenly, I switch which side I take a breath on every lap: lap one, right side, lap two, left side, etc. With the alternate breath, you’re supposed to breathe every third stroke so that you’re constantly alternating sides.

This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but swimming for me is a very rhythmic thing, and up till now it’s been very 4/4 time (I look at it like music), with my kicks and strokes and breath all in sync. The alternate breath method throws a waltz in there... instead of breathe stroke stroke stroke, breathe stroke stroke stroke, it becomes breathe stroke stroke, breathe stroke stroke.

The result is that, for the first ten laps or so, I occasionally fell off count and spas’ed out, momentarily flailing about in my lane and causing the life guard to look up from her book and ask if I was ok. Fortunately the only other person in the pool was a chef I don’t know who swims like an absolute tiger shark. I don’t know how long he swims for, but he’s always in the pool by the time I arrive and stays until after I leave. I’ve never seen him alternate speed or take a break or change strokes. He just swims freestyle at a moderate but relentless pace. Damn.

Saturday 09 June: morning Pilates, followed by the urge to slack off because it was so dang hot. Instead, I got my butt on Cerdic for the first time in a week (it was raining on the days I had some free time for a ride. Oh, darn.).

On the very first hill, I felt immediately that the grueling high resistance elliptical workouts I’ve been doing are paying off. Of course, lest I get cocky about it, I did have to walk up two hills later in the workout when I tried a new road I’ve never been down before. It was beautiful, past a small lake and gorgeous horse farms and forest, but it was also extremely hilly.

The only other time I had to stop and get off my bike came when I passed a little turtle in the middle of the road. He was alive, but who knows for how long given the way people speed on those back roads... so I picked him up and put him in the grass on the side of the road he appeared to be heading for.

Because we slow moving creatures need to stick together.

I wound up doing a 6.7 mile ride, the furthest I’ve gone on Cerdic so far. Then I got off the bike and walked a quick mile, just to get my muscles used to transitioning - it’s pretty funny how, when you get off the bike, to me the most unnatural thing in the world, your legs wobble for the first hundred yards or so. This is typical though, it’s not just me, and all the reading I’ve done on training notes that you have to do "bricks"... that’s the fancy triathlete term for combining two sports when training. Either you swim and then bike or bike and then run, just to get your muscles used to making that transition.

I’m still the world’s worst shifter on the bike, but now that I’m getting stronger, I find it’s actually easier not to shift, to keep it in second gear and use pure, ugly brute force to power up most of the hills.

Cerdic seems to approve. I knew it was a good idea to name my bike after a big, brutish, relentless barbarian.