Last week makes the first recovery week that my coach has given me since we started up 5 weeks ago. 4 weeks on a 1 week “active rest”. It’s a good thing I now have a coach because apparently, I didn’t understand what “active rest” meant. Turns out, active rest is still a little rigorous (as in nearly 15 hrs of training). Actually, it wasn’t that bad given the buildup we’d had over the 4 weeks leading up. I could get used to the easier paces… hope I’m not getting soft!
There wasn’t a lot of intensity… rather a lot of zone 2 aerobic work. I enjoyed it. Some of the workouts were even zone 1. This meant “think about your bike, look at your bike, but don’t get on it because you’re heart rate is already creeping into zone 2 just thinking about it”. Not really, but funny nonetheless.
I’ve finally got up into some 4,000 yard swim workouts. My coach is giving me about 3800 but I just can’t keep from going the extra 200. They’re fun mainly because I’m get excited with distance. I like to see how far I can go more so than how fast I get there (although getting there fast is becoming more and more of a goal in the pool now). I have to admit, it takes me about an hour and 30 minutes to do a 4000 yard swim workout. I do have little breaks of rest between sets, etc., and it’s not constant swimming. Still, 1:30 of swimming 3-4 times a week is big stuff for me. It’s funny because I actually feel like I “look good” in the water now. Towards the end of the long workouts, I still feel good and feel as if I have good technique. I’m keeping my 100 pace under 2 mins late in the workouts (hey, don’t laugh, that’s good for me). It is starting to feel good at times. Now, gotta figure out how to transpose that into a race. I can’t race a swim…yet.
Recovery week almost zapped all of the fun out of the bike. I like to push hard on the bike, even though I’m not that fast, it just feels good to push. So, riding easy took a little bit of fun away. However, it was nice doing some easy rides and remembering why I originally started riding a bike…. To hang out with friends and just have fun. So, recovery week made me remember that pushing hard isn’t the only way to have fun.
Running was a lot of easy miles. Nothing too long and nothing fast (other than the 8x800s I accidently did).
In the end, it was a good week. It gave me a little break mentally, backed down a little off the intensity, and allowed my body to recovery some (although I still feel a little too fatigued… gotta keep practicing and fine tuning recovery methods). Towards the end, I started enjoying the paces. I know I got a little soft that week because the fast stuff so far this week hurts a little.
I’m looking forward to the coming weekend. A large group of us will be spending some time with IronFather and his comrade Razor as we celebrate their arrival and ride across KY with them. These are the two guys I talk about from time to time that are riding nearly 4,000 miles across the country. I’m not sure where KY puts them, but I think it’s close to 2,800 miles in (in a little over 5 weeks). Can you say badass?
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