Countdown to B2B: 6 weeks

Nothing spectacular or any real low points this week. It was a solid week of training for running and biking and yet another light week on swimming (tough with no pool access!). It hasn’t really bothered me too much until now and I really want to focus on upping the swimming yards over the next 4 weeks before taper.

Monday – 6.5 Miles Easy Run (9:13 min/mile): After the brick on Sunday, my legs were pretty dead. I was glad that I only had an easy run on the schedule, because it was exactly what I needed. It took about 3 miles to loosen up, but once my legs woke up, I felt pretty good and had to resist temptation to pick up the pace.

Tuesday – 16.8 mile ride, ~1:00 (16.8 mph) + ~6 Miles Speed work: I originally planned to ride  the stationary bike because I didn’t think I would be able to get out on the road before work. As I laid in bed falling asleep, I couldn’t imagine myself in a gym the next day, so I made the decision to get out on the road. I knew it would be slightly dark when I started, but tons of bike commuters in Hamburg ride in the dark, so I knew that I would be okay to get out of the city when it was only barely light. I ended up having a great ride, with 2×14 min tempo segments in the middle.

Hit up the local tri club speed workout after work. You can read all about it here!

Wednesday – 2:00 ride OFF: Planning fail. It’s impossible to get this long of a ride done in the morning without riding in pitch dark so I planned to do it after work. Then I stayed late at the office because I didn’t have enough Euros to get a taxi by myself and had to wait for my colleagues. We didn’t end up leaving the office until after 7:00 and went straight to dinner. Blah.

Thursday – Brick: 15.2 mile bike, ~56 min (16.2 mph) + 4 mile run (7:54 min/mile): After the big training failure the day before I was definitely not missing this workout. Dinner ended up being late the night before and I woke up tired, but I was on the bike by 6:30 and had a pretty good ride. I was cold without gloves and toe warmers, so I was glad it was short. I felt really good on the run. The last few bricks have been some of the best I have ever had, but I am  hoping that is not just the magic of running in Hamburg.

The other thing magical about Hamburg?

With Co-Worker, Phil, on my last night in Germany

The beer. Particularly, yummy wheat beers. Also? The wine. And? The food. I did a lot of eating & drinking on this trip. It’s a training miracle that I didn’t gain 10 lbs. while I was there. 

Friday – 1:30 Stationary bike, ~20 miles: This was originally planned to be a day off since I was traveling back from Hamburg the whole day, but after having an unplanned day off on Wednesday, I had to make up some of that time on the bike. My motivation was that I would ride until the Bachelor Pad season finale that I missed was over. I am really, really glad that I did this workout. After sitting on the plane the whole day, it felt good to sweat and get my heart rate up for a nice little trainer session.

Saturday – 10 mile run @ 8:10 min/mile + Master’s Swim: 2500: I took Walter for the first 3 miles, then headed out alone to finish 7 more. I felt really good for the first 8 or so miles. My legs felt fresh and the pace came easily. Around mile 8, I really started to feel that I hadn’t brought any fuel and the last two miles, especially on the hills, were really tough. I usually take a Gu or Stingers about every 5-6 miles and my body is definitely used to the sugar/calories at that point. 

After a quick stretch and some foam rolling, I headed to the pool for Master’s swim. Since Saturday morning is an informal swim, there was no coach there. I teamed up with some of the other Master’s swimmers and we created a pretty decent workout amongst ourselves. This is the first time I have swam after a decent distance run and I was definitely feeling fatigued. It was hard to keep pace and I felt very sluggish.

Sunday – 2000 m TT + ~52 mile ride, ~2:55 (18.9 mph): After Saturday’s crappy swim, I decided to do a 2000m TT to get a better idea of where my swim fitness is right now. I headed to the pool at 9 a.m. only to find out that the YMCA doesn’t open until NOON on Sundays! I already had plans to start my long ride at 11:30, and knew after riding for 3+ hours that there was no way I would be up for heading back to the pool.

I met riding buddy, Abby, with plans to ride for 1:15 before joining a local community ride for 35 more miles. Abby and I couldn’t find the route we were looking for, but still managed to squeeze in 19 miles in about 1:05 before joining the organized ride. I made the (probably poor) decision to join the “A” group because last time the “B” group was a little slower than advertised. It was a technical, very rolling ride and there was a lot of “yo-yo”ing. I was fine for the most part until around the 40-mile point. I was out of water and really struggled on the hills for about 10 miles. I was in danger of being dropped a couple of times, but was thankfully saved by stop signs/lights. Char shared her water with me and I was able to get myself in the middle of the pack to finish strong for the final 5 miles.  The overall time was about 20 minutes shy of what my plan called for, but I figured the distance and pace was solid and I didn’t need to add on to make it up.

• Swim = 2500 yds
• Bike = 104 miles
• Run = 26.5 miles
• Time = 11 hrs. 20 min.