Training Thoughts

Swim:

I'm going to work on faster shorter stuff for a while. My volume should be close to the same but I will be doing shorter intervals that I don't enjoy too much like 50's, 75's and 100's. Most of the people I swim with are much faster than myself but I think the reason I can workout with them is that I don't slow down as much near the end of the workouts. I may also decide to work on some off strokes more too. Not too sure about that. I've had an issue with paddles recently, I fell of my MTB 3 weeks ago and hurt my lower right arm (my ulna about 1.5 inches above my wrist) and it's been taking some time to heal up, guess I'm not 18 anymore. Anywho, the extra pressure from using the paddles hurts it somewhat. I did 2X300 pull today and it felt better but I won't go with the longer pull sets with paddles for a few more weeks.

Bike:

Looking at getting in 5 hours of cycling a week for the next few weeks and then bumping it up to 6 hours untill it gets warm enough outside. Not so much concerned with intensity right now or milage, just time in the saddle. When I get to ride outside I will ride with more intensity than on the trainer or in the spin classes.

When I get back on the road I may do some early season power testing so I can benchmark myself later in the season. I will probably start with training zones based on where I was near the end of last season. Early plans are to ride 4 days a week with a longer ride, group ride, interval ride and a Run-Bike-Run brick. When I get into full swing I'm going to dedicate a ride to hills since I struggle on them compared to my training partners.

Run:

I'm going to pick up my easy pace a little. With so many runs under 140bpm I don't feel I am running fast enough except for my long runs. Now for runs less than 90 minutes (10-11 miles) I'm going to target near 8:20 instead of 8:35. With 8 weeks at 45 miles a week I feel I have improved enough to warrent an increase in pace. These easy runs are just getting too easy and I don't feel I am providing enough training stress to continue improvement.

I've done 2 hilly runs last week and they are tough for me. I've allways struggled on hills and I've allways seem to gain the most when I train on hills. Now I'm not going to go as far as run the Potowatami train once a week but I will continue with the hilly run through Northville which is fairly short compared to what I have been doing.

So now with a long run on Wednesday, a second long run on Sunday (almost as long) I've got 2 hilly runs, a tempo and a short easy to fill out the week. I'm going back to 6 runs since I'm not going to do the track workouts for a while, they didn't help as much as I though they would.