Training Thoughts End of January

So far this month has gone pretty well. I've done more biking that I did last year while holding on to the same speed on the run and improving my swim times. My shoulders feel good as well as my knees, hips and feet unlike last year where my shoulders were killing me. The treadmill running still stinks but the mp3 player has helped me a fair bit.

I'm 6 lbs heavier now than I was last January and I feel that's cuz I've haven't been running as much,  last year I was running 45 miles per week by now peaking over 50 but I didn't have as many cycling miles under my belt.  What's better? Well I can allways lose the weight and I should by April, I'd like to be near 144 lbs then as I feel I'm still overweight at 148 lbs now.  4 lbs in 2 months is very realistic weight loss, I've lost 3 to 4 lbs just this month alone but starting my cycle and not really watching what I've been eating.  I have cut out french fries but that is really it.

I made some good choices and some mistakes this week.

The good choices:
Running easy - I have been doing my longer runs easier this week (and last week) with the intention of reducing recovery time. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I recovered from every day running at that intensity. I do a lot of 2-a-days back to back since the weather is so poor and wanted to have energy for swimming and biking.

I ran tempo on Thursday after an easy run and a spin class and felt really strong. The easy run continued through sunday where I ran 1:20 on a treadmill at 6.8 to 7.2 mph (8:50 to 8:20) with an average HR of 134. Today I feel strong and ready to go again.

The bad choice:
This is not really that bad but I put too much effort into swimming this week and it took away from my bike time. Saturday I was really gassed from my swim (which was terrific by the way) and consequently my bike ride afterwards was really too easy to count as training. Monday's swim was hard too, which is also good but not what I wanted to focus on. I finished the week with 4:10 swimming, 4:15 on the bike and 4:35 on the run. The plan was to spend near 6 hours on the bike which is difficult for me on a trainer but not impossible.

Other than being being gassed on saturday I felt fairly strong this week.

This week's plans:
Mon Run 1:00, Bike Easy 1:00 (it's supposed to be warm today)
Tue Swim ~1800 Run 45 min
Wed Swim ~2100 Run 35 min
Thu Bike 1:15 Run 40 min with some strides
Fri Swim ~1800 Bike 1:00
Sat Swim ~4000 Bike 2:00 Run 20 min (bike/run brick)
Sun Bike 1:00 run 1:05