I’m going to try and start doing some regular posts here at Chasing Boston. Every Monday there should be a post on one of two subjects, alternating. The first is a review of the last two weeks training and will coincide with the end of each two week cycle I get from Mark. The second will be a focus on one of the disciplines, from varying perspectives. It could be a focus on what I’ve been doing, progress I’ve made, goals, or just an interesting article or snippet of conversation with Mark regarding that particular discipline.
Since I just had a two week block wrap up on Sunday, I’m going to go over it now. Before I do that, I figured I should establish a baseline. First of all, while no two blocks are the same, there is a rhythm or routine that Mark has established around what generally works for my schedule. While I would describe these as typical or average, it’s all open to variation.
Monday: Swim 3-3500yards; Run 40-45 minutes. While the run has some intensity to it, it’s generally easier than my other short runs as a recovery from Sunday.
Tuesday: Bike 70-90 minutes with some intense intervals. This is usually a workout I enjoy a lot.
Wednesday: Swim 3500ish yards, with the main workout involving blocks of 500, what mark has come to call my ‘broccoli’; Run, this has been Nighthawks snowshoe races or a 45 minute run. I’ll miss the Nighthawks runs, though it looks like mark might throw track workouts at me on Wednesdays now, which I really enjoy.
Thursday: Swim 3000ish yards, usually seems to be a workout that’s a little more complicated than the others with more variety on distances and intensities; Bike a little more than an hour with some really short, REALLY intense bursts.
Friday: Swim 3500ish yards; Run 40-50 minutes
Saturday: Bike with the tri club (or long ride on the trainer if weather is nasty). I’ll often toss a VERY easy 5-10 minute jog on the end of the ride for my own sake of loosening up the legs and adjusting them to the bike/run transition
Sunday: Usually two runs, one AM, one PM, typically the same workout in the area of 40-50 minutes each. There’s also a 3500yd swim workout. Recently I’ve taken to doing the first run as a run up to the Boulder Rec, doing my swim, cooling down a bit, then running back as the second run. It makes me feel really efficient and Mark seems to think it’s cool.
So in a given week I’m swimming 5 days for a total of about 17000 yards. I bike 3 days for about 4-5 hours total and run 4 days for about 3.5 hours total.
Going back a second, 17000 yards a week? I’m swimming 9.5 miles per week!? Is that right… !? I double checked the math, and that’s right. Holy crap mark, you’ve got me swimming almost 10 miles a week????
So, the last two weeks (ending Sunday)…
This past block was not a very productive one for me. I caught a cold and missed several swims, which is always the first thing to go when I’m not feeling well. Swimming always seems to make any cold or bug I have feel far, far worse. I still got the runs and bike rides in, but my intensity was down a good bit. I did manage to get to the last Nighthawks race, which was a lot of fun.
So, no breakthroughs or anything this time around, mostly I was just trying to get healthy and keep active.
