Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

It’s been a busy week aerobically speaking.  Instead of wasting time grousing about my 5K performance I stepped up the exercise.  Saturday I went on a 31.5 mile bike ride, for the most part maintaining a pretty moderate pace — 17 to 18 mph — but sometimes getting up to over 20 mph.  The bad news is that it started raining about 5 miles in, and at about the 25 mile mark I couldn’t handle a turn on the wet asphalt of the bike trail and took a tumble.  No permanent damage to the bike or its rider, but I’ve got some nasty looking bruises and scrapes on my left calf, arm, and thigh.  Some new tires may be in order.

The next day I ran 11 miles in a little over 1:32, around an 8:26 pace overall.  The conditions were perfect, about 20 degrees cooler than the weekend before, so in the middle of it I decided to do a 3 mile tempo run.  I managed to hold a good pace and finished in 20:50, a 6:57 pace.  That was 20 seconds per mile faster than the pace I managed during my 5K race one week before, but it felt nowhere near as tiring.  Weird.  I’m not sure why I bombed so badly during the 5K, but I think it was a combination of heat and poor pre-race nutrition.  I just ran out of gas that day, whereas this last Sunday I felt really strong and could have run faster than I did.
Monday I didn’t do much but did swim about 500 yards, focusing on stroke technique, breathing every third stroke, and maintaining a steady pace.  It still feels like I’m swimming a lot more slowly than I should be, but I should manage to get through the swim leg of the race two weeks from now.

Today I cut out of the office at 2 and went for a run — 7 miles in 56:17, about 8:02 pace overall, although the pace varied from about 7:20 to about 9 min/mile at various times.

Aerobically I think I’m in good enough shape to handle the triathlon, but my swim technique leaves something to be desired and I’m not sure how my legs will feel at the end of the 25 mile bike ride.  I need to put a little more time in the pool and on the bike before June 8.

I’ve spent almost no time lifting weights recently.  I’m going to hold off on the serious weight lifting until after the triathlon and then maybe get back into more strength training.  The focus, though, will definitely be on running, and trying to figure out if it’s realistic to shoot for a sub-40 minute 10K before the end of the year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.