You can't beat the elements but you can try to make the most of it. That's a lesson I learned the hard way last week.
It started out quite good with a shorter swim where I performed a small test to be able to train better in the future. I swam 300 meters at a pace I can sustain for two more rounds while keeping track of my times. The key is that the fastest and slowest round aren't more than 15 seconds apart. After that I took the average time needed to cover 300 meters and divided it by 3 to get my 100 meters base time (BT).
After completing all three laps and feeling absolutely dead I ended up with a time of 1:50 per 100 meters which is OK but not something that will make so happy that I start dancing in the streets. Now that I know my BT I can calculate at which pace I do certain drills. Some kick and pull drills will go at around 1:10 per 50 meters while some other will go as low as 50 seconds per 50 meters. Every other week I will perform this test to see how much I am improving (if at all :D).
After a good 5 days of training weekend knocked at the door and brought his friends snow and wind with him. Running was quit fun since I was taking Balto (our dog) with me to make me some company and it was quite hard to run in ankle-deep snow for more then an hour but I was worth it.
Sunday was supposed to have a long bike session (like the week before where I covered almost 70 kilometers) but it turned out to be a no-no. My front tire was leaking air for quite a while so I first had to change the tire but had to do it outside at a gas station because our pump at home seems to be broken. It took me some 3-4 minutes to change it but that was enough that I couldn't feel my fingers and when I got back home and set of for the ride I soon realized that this won't make much sense. I couldn't warm up properly and my fingers were already numb. Add to this the headwind combined with some -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees for you who use the wrong system) and I soon realized that the best thing would be to return home and call it a day.
I don't really think it would have made much sense to keep riding and get potentially hurt which would push me of track probably more then I would have gained with this training. Sometimes it's about being smart and I think this is one of the cases.
All in all it was an OK week with one training skipped but I feel and look stronger with every passing week. My last week's numbers look like this:
| Distance | Time | Pace | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swim | 4.60 km | 1:55:00 h | 25.02 min / km |
| Bike | 23.71 km | 1:09:08 h | 2.54 min / km |
| Run | 18.72 km | 1:45:26 h | 5.37 min / km |
The total distances covered are now like this:
| Distance | Time | |
|---|---|---|
| Swim | 77.65 km | 29:32:00 h |
| Bike | 1001.27 km | 46:10:03 h |
| Run | 291.70 km | 24:26:56 h |
Looks like I crossed the 1000 kilometer mark on the bike! :)
Until next week, don't forget to be awesome.