IMMT Training Weeks 19, 20 and 21: Where did the time go??

You know what's harder than Ironman training? Blogging!!! Not only it takes me hours to complete a post, but it also stresses me to no end because I'm a person who tries to meet deadlines on a daily basis and when I miss my own deadlines by so many days, and even weeks in a row, I go cuckoo inside my head. Case in point, I could not delay this post a single more day and I decided to switch my rest day with tonight's workout and get it done!! Ok, ok, open water swim got cancelled (but I could have gone to the pool) and my legs aren't 100% and I could use more rest after last weekend's 70.3 race, but these are just excuses. If I really wanted to, I could have done both. End of story.

But, say... aren't you relieved to see that I am back? Yeah, baby, and I'm feeling fantastic! Bursting with energy even. No kidding... Can't wait to get this recap started! (now, where did I put my cheat sheet aka Training Peaks?)

Swim

Including the race, I swam 6 times in the last 3 weeks. Twice in the pool and 4 times in open water. One pool workout was a lazy continuous swim for 2300m and the second one was a glorious 10x200m with warmup and cooldown for a total of 3000m. Both times I left the pool as drunk as these lanes.

I won't even bother to share my times because as I expected, they did not transfer in open water. I returned to the exact same pace as last year. I chose not to dwell too much into the whys and hows of this particular WTF and instead, I listened to my hubby who wisely said that if this is my time at the beginning of the season, it can only improve from here. Do I believe it? When I see my last swimming analysis video, I truly do want to believe. If only I could keep that stroke consistent and powerful throughout, maybe I'll get somewhere.


But as with any open water swim, I get carried away. I love it so much in the lake, and maybe that's the problem. I have to stop swimming with my head in la-la land and FOCUS. I heard myself saying this a few times already... Next time I will listen, I promise.
I swam at the James Dick Quarry twice, and as usual, I struggled there. There always seem to be some sort of chop or current that makes me swallow a lot of sandy water and fight to stay on course. Or maybe I was still drunk, who knows. It may explain the thumb up despite the circumstances.

Then my FMCT tri club started the open water swims at Professor's Lake and OH. SO. MUCH. BLISS. Yes, I know I'm shouting. You should come swim there, it's wonderful! Just look at these photos. Seriously, dudes.

Back to swim dreaming... 
Bike

I managed to fit in 7 bike workouts in total. Four of them were on the trainer, mostly easy, recovery rides watching 24 or Jimmy Fallon. Three were outdoors and they all helped me reach different levels of "holy fuck I can do this".

Three weekends ago, I spent the entire day on Saturday volunteering at a race in Toronto with the office folks, and I had to shift my workouts around. Since coach was free on Sunday, he offered to ride 3h with me, and I was going to top up with 2h30 on my own to reach 5h30. But first, a visual.

I wasn't quite sure where he was going to take me, I only heard mention of Bond Head and that did not ring any bells with me. Another hint was that coach loves hills and he eats them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He must have been really hungry that day. And most days I don't mind them because I have no choice but ride the hills of Caledon. But hills with wind and more hills and more wind? Just look at that beauty of a profile, then look at my speed and my heart rate. If that doesn't scream constant mother-effing-hills-get-me-outta-here, I don't know what does. So we went to Bond Head (the end of the line to the north-east of the trace) and we took a short coffee break there, then we rode back down, on the map that is, because in reality it was very much up and down and up and down, and if I can say Hallelujah intervention, coach's chain broke and he lost 4 links and then he couldn't go into the big chain ring anymore, which meant a little break for my legs and time to look at the pretty landscape around us.

Eventually we parted ways and I decided to head west towards Belfountain because I really wanted to make the day even more memorable, and that meant ice cream. So I took all the courage that I had left and started chewing on it with all my teeth and eventually climbed that mammoth of hill and made it to Belfountain, which ended adding 10-15km extra to my trip. But I was a woman on a mission and nothing could stand between me and my ice cream. Once arrived at the restaurant, I also had a panini because I was starving, then, with a satisfied belleh at last, I started the last leg of my journey back home. It may have been all schuss from there, but it was no piece of cake. 150km in total, and oh so close to completing a first mile century! But hubbs was waiting for me with lunch and we were on a schedule to go to the quarry and so I decided to leave it for another day (spoiler alert: it's coming up this weekend, yikes!). The End.

The second ride in the series took me to Schomberg. Zin and I actually took the little group from the tri club there since we were the leaders of the day, and we had so much fun! Gorgeous route, awesome company, great coffee, yummy cherry pie.... Mmmmmm, yes, pie!!!

If you ever go to Schomberg, make sure to stop by The Grackle Coffee Company, you won't be disappointed. They also have Kawartha's ice cream, but that in itself is rather dangerous for my waistline. I don't have to drive all the way to Muskoka to have some! Anyway, 4h on the bike that day, over 100km ridden, I had no issues swapping gooey gels for pie.

Alright - last but not least, the bike leg in the Welland 70.3 race (now called Rose City Half) - it deserves a post in itself, so stand by... it shall come to this blog real soon.

Run

Between the quick 2.5km runs off the bike and the long slow runs in the weekends, plus the speed work on the track and the hill repeats on the treadmill, 11 run workouts in total. It may not seem like a lot, but they were all quality workouts.

All long runs were over 20km, the hill repeats left me in a puddle of sweat and the track workouts got me pushing Yasso's 800s at mile pace and I didn't even puke. And dare I mention no pain at all in my hips, knees, ankles or ITBs? WIN!

Even though I felt like quitting at times, especially when I ran 5x3km mind-numbing loops around Professor's Lake, it was more out of boredom than anything. So when a girl from the tri club was looking for a partner to run 10-1s (10min run at 7min/km - 1min walk) for 15km, I said why not? As long as I was going to be moving my legs for 2h, it didn't matter the speed. I ended enjoying it so much, that I have no issues saying yes again in the future. These runs are good for the soul - put your pace away and enjoy the day!

In a nutshell

I felt pretty good in the last month, despite everything that I threw at my body and things got really promising. I managed to turn the page of negativity and truly enjoyed every single workout. I knew that I was going to go into my first 70.3 distance of the year with the confidence of a well executed training plan and that helped me stay relaxed and relatively stress free (when I wasn't in panic mode about missed blog posts, that is).

Truth to be told, the last 3 weeks were not that heavy volume wise (14h, 12h, 10h), but now it's time to drop the hammer again. A new cycle starts and this one looks rather scary. Will see you on the other side! Sleep is calling.

Training in the rain

Oh, look! Marathon training is back! With hills and speed sessions and long easy runs... and more rain than we could have ever asked for. We complained about not being able to make a fire while we were camping because of a total fire ban in the region, but with all the water that got dumped on us since we came back, we could have called all our training sessions "aqua-runs" or "aqua-rides", and I'm not even mentioning the leisure "aqua-walks", not even necessary. Bottom line, training in the rain has been the norm lately and we have the pictures to prove it. ;-)

But first, a bit of running updates. As I mentioned earlier, I started training for the upcoming Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, my first attempt at the distance on this course, a do-over from last year's injury/surgery/death in the family all-in-a-month combo. This may as well be my last marathon for a while since I'll be focussing on triathlons in the next two years, so better make it a good one. Hell, I'm even going to call it my "A" race for this year. With two marathons under my belt, I think I know what to do/change/improve although if I want to go for a PB, it's going to be a whole new territory. One thing I am pretty sure I won't change is putting one foot ahead of the other. But this time, they may be landing a bit differently too.

So far, running has been pretty uneventful, but fun, well... sort of. I ran to the movies (yum, I saw Magic Mike), I ran while being sick and coughing my lungs out (yuck), I ran in heat and humidity worse than a steam room (yikes), I ran in the rain (whee!) and after the bike (ouch), I ran suicidal hills (crazy drivers coming at me!) and recently on the balls of my feet (tough, but I finally found my calf muscles). Last but not least, I ran all these with my hubbs, because he's on his journey to becoming Superman and he runs faster than me and he's pushing the pace when I'm not too cranky. I can't wait to see how my body responds to this marathon training after the swim/bike/run regimen I put it through in the past few months.

By the way, bigger and meaner triathlons will be coming right after the marathon, so my coach is still having me doing swims and bike rides twice a week, plus a brick and strength training. This shall be interesting.

Now, for the bike workouts, as I said before, they've been wet for most of the times. Let's start the picture show. Nobody should complain about wet t-shirts, right?

The picture above was taken during our first ride after coming back from vacation. We'd been completely blindsided by Mother Nature as this pretty cloud moved in towards the end of the ride on our way back and we hadn't seen it coming. 30 seconds after I put away my camera, we were soaked. Hail was coming down furiously and when you are riding as fast as you can away from being turned into a crispy meat stick, it HURTS. For about a minute I thought about ringing a door bell on one of the solitary houses along the road, but decided to HTFU and keep on going, our own house was only 10 minutes away. No incident as you guessed, I lived to tell the tale.

This ride may have been a relaxed one, but with hills occupying a good chunk of my new schedule, the following ride was completely opposite, minus the rain that came to spoil drench the party, as usual.

Armed with a new cog (12-27), I promised I'd return to Horseshoe Hill to test my legs. What better way of doing this other than riding the hill not once, but 5 times in a row? No horse flies in sight this time, I bet they don't like to get wet. We drove closer to the hill and parked our bikes near the Caledon Trailway, then went for a 25min warmup before starting our ascent. For the actual hill repeats, we needed a half a mile long hill, so we chose the top. The rest is history tracked in a chart with lumps of all shapes and sizes, enjoy!

As for the rain, it started shyly during our last repeat, then unleashed in full force to the point that it got us wet enough to skip the shower for the day. Here are some pictures taken at the end of the workout, sorry that they are not more revealing.

Not wet enough

Is this thing on?

Superman!

We really enjoyed the hillfest so we'll be going back for more! Pray for more rain so that the flies stay away.

Return to Horseshoe Hill

I figured that such a trip needed its own blog post, so here we go. Been doing a lot of riding lately and trying to figure out my bike, still. As much as I love Neo, I am in some sort of love/hate relationship with it, especially when I go on hills or try to do high rpms (>90rpm). I only have about 2 speeds that are appropriate for each of the situations above, the rest giving me either too slow rpms or a too high heart rate or just too much burn in my legs, which I'm supposed to avoid at all costs. So, I ordered myself a different cassette (12-27) that should help keeping those rpms high when going uphill. Right now I have a 11-23 cassette with 2 chain rings (39 and 53) and for those who can do the math in their head, it's not the most appropriate for going vertical. Anyway, after bitching to my coach this last week about the lack of power in my legs and laziness in switching gears, I thought I would go back to Horseshoe Hill for a "baseline" climbing and high rpm workout. I gave my legs a full day of rest and Saturday evening I took my water bottles, my gummies and my victim, aka hubbs, up Horseshoe Hill and back with the goal of accumulating data until I make my GPS vomit.

Mushroom head

The first 15km are always boring and usually uneventful, unless you get an encounter with drive-by screamers that make your heart go through the roof in the middle of your Z2 ZZzzzzzZZZZ. But I will tell you more about this in a separate post. Next, Horseshoe Hill starts with a few rollers then ends with the dreaded SOB climb. It is 5.25km long in total and it takes us usually 18min to go up, 10min to go down. Below is the data view from Runkeeper

and from Garmin

For some of you it's probably just a pimple on the landscape, but for us noobs, the elevation is quite significant, as hinted by my heart rate in the graph below:

The highest peak in my heart rate is 183bpms, which according to my lactate threshold test, it's almost a near-death experience. But thankfully it only lasted about 2 minutes, time to go over the last hump. And speaking of the last hump, I also had the privilege of being vampirised by a deer fly this whole time. It clang onto my calf, just below the knee and while I was hanging on the handlebars for my dear life, it constantly reminded me through pain that I was still alive. So I managed to HTFU and finish the climb while letting the bloodsucker feed on me, then smacked it on its head and proceeded to calm my shaking self down with a few pictures of the landscape.

Glad I'm not allergic to deer/horse flies

View from the top

Notice the 60km limit sign. Ahem. I think I went faster than that downhill, my Garmin reported 66.4km/h max. I'm glad that we had a quite a head wind, otherwise I would have gotten a ticket. They don't give tickets for 6km over, right?

Aside from the flies, this is a beautiful area though, and I know there are bigger and nastier hills around this one, like Mountpleasant Rd, which we did during the group riding clinic. But those will have to wait until after my taper and olympic triathlon, next Sunday!!! (ohmygosh, it's almost here!). I think I am ready. If I can climb Horseshoe Hill while giving sweat and blood at once, I can certainly climb the DVP, which compared to this, is just a bumpity-bump.

I will most likely go back on Horseshoe Hill for more data porn once I have my new cog installed, as a comparison to this. But next time, there will be DEET. Mwahahahah.