Spring has sprung, school is out for the summer, and I have been training like crazy. Since my schedule has stabilized I have been moving towards approximately 12-14 hours a week of training with a schedule of:
Mon: Long Run
Tuesday: Morning Swim, Night 4x5km bike tt’s
Wednesday: Open, but normally a recovery ride
Thursday: Hill Night on the Bike
Friday: Morning Run Intervals, Night open
Saturday: Medium Distance Ride(~100km)
Sunday: Long Ride (120+km)
Coronation is fast approaching and I am starting to feel like I’m getting into race form. My legs are constantly sore, a bit fatigued, and it will be nice to take a couple of days to rest them up. Today in the pool I did both a 400m TT and a 200m TT. These are both great for pushing race pace and are made up a great workout to peak off of. The catch was I decided to use the Wetronome to determine the approximate pacing I would use.
In the last TT’s I completed, I swam a 8:28 400m, and a 4:02 200m. This worked out to a Critical Swim Speed of 2:13/100m. Since then I have continued to work on technique and have spent a lot of time doing 50m and 100m repeats well above the 2:13/100m pace. While it was hard to see improvement as I was doing these sets, in both time trials I felt much more comfortable pushing the pace and was able to hold an elevated perceived effort for much longer than I normally could. After examining the splits from my last 400m TT, it was quite obvious that I was really inconsistent and came out and swam my first 50m in 52 seconds, whereas my second last 50m was 1:09, not ideal for distance swimming. This time Stefan, who’s been acting as a swim coach for me, decided to put me on a 1:02/100m pace. In combination with this consistency and intervals, I was able to swim an 8:11 – 400m and a 3:58 – 200m which are both PB’s. On top of this I have dropped my CSS time by 5 seconds to 2:06/100m meaning I should be able to hold this pace on race day for great distances without faltering. It turns out that my last test results were on April 17th, so I managed to make this much of an improvement in a month which is awesome.
My goal is to swim 1000m in under 21:00 at Coronation. It will be fast, but I think achievable if I am careful about pacing.
In other news, I have been attempting to get my Summer race plans all sorted out. This is the tentative updated version:
May 27th – Coronation (Sort of Olympic Distance)
June 16th – Fast Trax 30k Ultra (Trail Run)
June 23-24 – Devon Grand Prix (Bike Race)
July 7th, Edmonton ITU (Olympic Tri)
August 3-6th, Tour de Bowness (Bike Race)
August 18th – Kelowna Apple Triathlon (Olympic Tri)
September 23rd – St Albert Fall Challenge (Half-Marathon) (Optional)
After this point, I hope to throw in a couple of Cyclocross races as well. It’s going to be a busy but fun summer of all kinds of racing I think! Hopefully I survive.
Tri. Hack. Eat. 