Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Back To Work

After a bit of a rest last week – and a generally mild ease-back-into-it period for most of November – things seem to be picking up on the training front this week.  I’m back to masters more seriously and I’ll be damned if I didn’t do 3 back-to-back 25s of butterfly yesterday.  The 3rd one was not pretty.  I’ve had my longest run since Austin – only an hour but it felt great.  And today…right there on the schedule with no way to avoid it, it was back to Coach’s tough bike trainer torture.

I set up everything I’d need to get it done.

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And that wasn’t it, for this was a bike/strength workout, which meant it was time to drag the TRX out into the garage as well.

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Now I know some of you actually ride your trainers IN your house, which is all well and good if it’s a quiet one or you live alone or your pets don’t get a little freaked out by it or your spouse doesn’t work at home.  But for us, I ride in the garage.  Unfortunately it’s “winter” as we know it in Northern California and my garage was, at best, 40 degrees.

Yes, I started the workout in my parka.

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Thankfully that was shed after the warmup set.  From there I spent my time alternating between hard power intervals on the trainer and strength moves with the TRX.  Those pushes on the trainer get harder the more squats and lunges you do…

November, as mentioned, was very light with training being fairly casual and drill-focused up to this point.

November Stats:
Swim: 12,800 yards
Bike: ~70 miles
Run: ~46 miles
Strength: 4.5 hours

13 comments:

Maggs said...

I did fly last week. The last 2/3 of the first 25 was not pretty.

My Life said...

I've been thinking about TRX. What one do you have? You like it?

Larissa said...

What the dogs don't bring you toys to throw while on the bike? Athena does this. Or she drop the toy under my petal and try to time her self to get it out LOL. I normally get an upper and lower body workout thanks to Athena.

Jennifer Harrison said...

I love the parka - 40F degrees? I would have been outside on the roads...haha. Ok, that is not fair, but we got SNOW today - blah!!!!

Sarah K said...

I'm interested in hearing more about this bike/TRX combo!

D said...

Forget the parka... are you wearing running shoes?!? That's a 2 minute minor.

Meera said...

You rock. I don't see myself doing a trainer in my garage unless I had a space heater.

Wes said...

where is the balaclava? :-) nice work. My hiatus is almost over! YEA!!

Sherry said...

You are too cute with that parka on! We bring the trainer out into the garage to ride as well. Of course it is VERY rare for us to even have to use the trainer- limited mostly to the occasional severe AM thunderstorm during the summer. I'm also interested in hearing more about your TRX experiences. I've been thinking about getting one for a while now.

Liz Waterstraat said...

Sarah: I have many of my athletes do what I call "combo" workouts of bike/strength or bike/run/strength. The purpose is to fatigue their core/muscles with the strength work and then have them focus on holding form & producing power when fatigued (which is the challenge in triathlon, to hold form or maintain your effort as you fatigue). In this workout, Molly alternated a TRX move for the core, legs, arms (usually 1 - 2x through this) and then went back to her bike to hit prescribed watts for specific intervals. She rotated through that 3 - 4 times. One could do a similar workout as treadmill/TRX or rotate through intervals on the bike, treadmill and TRX.

The TRX is a great tool because it engages your core and requires you to stabilize your body to perform the moves effectively & correctly.

chris mcpeake said...

great parka!

Andrew Opala said...

Great location ... not only do you get a nice warm place to train but you if you are in the spin dry cycle you can be back home with cleaner clothes than you left with!

The Original MAJ said...

I want a TRX!