Stayin' Alive

Wow, you put your head down and get busy training and suddenly nearly 2 weeks go by without a blog post!  I'm still alive, still training, all going well (so much for the saying that blogs only go quiet when you get injured).

After SVLC, I had a recovery week that was combined with a killer week at work, so I was just busy with meetings and trying to get my body rested and ready for this week - the start of the *big* Ironman training block.  Despite the mid-week holiday, work has continued to dominate my life this week but I've managed to get the training done too.  Among the highlights:

• Getting to the pool Monday morning to see it set up long course meant my 4000 yard swim became a 4000 meter swim.  Bonus yards!  And...a long time in the pool!
• A double-bike on Tuesday sandwiched around a long day of work meetings and dog chauffeuring.  Knowing I had a run off the 2nd bike, I had to eat very carefully during the day.  Fiber, I miss you!
• On the 4th of July, I knocked out my easy run early, then did a 2.5 hr roundtrip to pass Stanley off to his handler for a dog show weekend.  I got back in time for lunch with Jeff, who had just wrapped up his long ride, and still needed to do my easy ride - so I rode to a brewpub and he met me there with the dogs.  I ate this.  And I still had a swim to do that night.
• Thursday we slept in until the luxurious hour of 6:30 (Stanley serves as the 5am alarm clock around here and with him out of town...).  After a full day at work (doesn't anyone take vacations on holiday weeks???), I met Kristi up at Stevens Creek reservoir for the local Splash & Dash.  Run and swim warmups, race a 1.5k swim/5k trail run (the fastest I've done this run course!), run warmdown...and then it was 8pm and  I was starving!  To make up for another day of careful eating (hey, gummy worms are low fiber!), I had tons and tons of kale for dinner to appease for my sins.
• And despite the late evening, I was in the pool this morning by 5:30am for masters.

The best part is, I'm only halfway through my training hours for the week.  TrainingPeaks has a big weekend still waiting for me.  And it's only week one of a 3-week build!  So if you're wondering where I went at any point in the next few weeks, hopefully I'm just chugging along with training and not stranded on the side of Bear Creek Road in the Santa Cruz mountains, waiting for salvation from the toothless hillbillies.

Speaking of TrainingPeaks, they had some really nifty updates just a couple weeks ago.  The Saved Workout Searches is my personal favorite...it's fun to look up all my long runs of a certain distance range and see how my pace has progressed over the years.  They have all been even faster this year so it's obviously an encouraging trend! :)  We'll see if it holds up in the really long ones over the next month.

 

Have a great weekend!