IMMT Training Weeks 10 & 11 (and half of 12) : A breath of fresh air

It's been how many weeks already?? Ok, ok, but I had a good excuse. For realz! The days are going by way too fast. No, this isn't my excuse, even if it's true. But it's also a matter of perspective. Too many things happening, too little time, so I had to prioritize.

Swim

The highlight of these past weeks have been my long pull workouts, all with flipturns so I don't fall asleep. The longest so far has been 55 minutes and I have been working hard at keeping a good form throughout. I tried swimming with an MP3 player and that made the set a little more entertaining, but overall I love the peace these swims bring to me among the chaos of all the other technical workouts, so I don't feel that having extra noise in my ears is absolutely necessary.
From Garmin's perspective, this is what my longest swim looked like:

I have to ask the question: WHY is it that the first 50m are always the easiest and fastest? Why I cannot keep doing what I'm doing in the first 50m for the entire workout? It's so unfair. If I rest for a few minutes between shorter sets, I am able to repeat this performance, but if I don't stop, it only goes downhill from there. I'm like a broken toy or something.

Bike

The bike workouts have been going really great, despite their increased difficulty. I am now working a lot at sweet spot or threshold and my longer rides are 3-4h long, with a "recovery" week's long ride still being a 2h effort. Thanks to a few records broken recently, I decided to bump my FTP by 10 points to 180. A new level of suffering is about to start.
You can see my career page on Trainer Road for all the rides I've done since the last update. I am going to highlight just the ones that made me rethink my FTP.
First, three 12min intervals, at threshold or just under. Since my heart rate stayed put, I felt that I could have pushed harder... And I know that I should not have ground so much, but some days my legs respond better to high rpms than others.

Then 1h10 at sweet spot non stop.

This one scared the sh*t out of me, but it didn't feel too bad in the end. We'll see what happens now with a higher limit to chase.

Run

Running felt like a rollercoaster ride though. I had ups so high and lows so low, that I cursed everything from the wind to the hills, from my belly fat to the treadmill. I finally made peace with my legs, thanks to a weekend spent in New York City where I went running in Central Park. Aaaaaaah, bliss.

Oh look, a dirt trail!

Chasing ponytails

2 seconds before my phone shut off

There was also a race ongoing in Central Park and I ended up mingling with the back of the pack runners/walkers who had these "Senior Care" ambulances trudging along them. It was quite the procession. Thankfully they didn't seem too busy with emergencies.

And rest assured, I didn't take any water from the stations. However, it took me 10k to find a water fountain on my own. The weather was absolutely beautiful, on the chilly side though (37F/3C). Look at that blue sky!! Now that's light therapy.

So I came back home with new brain cells and spring in my legs, a heart full of happiness and contentment to last me for a little while. And I didn't even mention the cookies that I bought at Levain Bakery yet!! Yeah, about those... YUM. That is all.

In a nutshell

Treadmills lie. Those speeds that I saw, the kilometers that I banked, they were worthless outside. There was one run in particular that brought me to tears. I can say with certainty that I am no PR material for now. The 10k race waiting for me on Sunday? I'm not even allowed to race it. And I don't even think that I'd have legs left after tomorrow's 3h30 trainer ride. Speaking of which, bike trainers don't seem to lie, but the pavement will still have to wait until I put my wheels on it. Asthma is still bad in cold weather, which of course becomes even worse with wind blowing in my face. One day at a time... Will be back with some Insta-Postcards from NYC.