On my way home

It’s been a couple of busy days here out in Victoria, trying t get settled, and figure out where everything is in this area. Here’s an update of the past few days.

Sunday:
I awoke this morning about as stiff as I’ve ever felt. My quads and hips were extremely tight from the Gut Buster. All of the downhill running trashed my legs. It hurts to just touch the quads.

AP and I headed out for a 2hr ride. We went north on N Saanich Rd and saw the northern part of Victoria. Everything out here is so beautiful! We headed over to Commonwealth pool at 2pm to swim.

6000m with a main set as follows:
4 X 50 band, 400 pull steady, 400 swim steady (4:54)
6 X 50 band, 600 pull steady, 600 swim steady (maintain same effort as 400)
8 X 50 band, 800 pull steady, 800 swim steady (9:31) (maintain effort)

AP and I followed up with a 30’ easy easy trot. This helped loosen my legs a little bit.
I then hightailed it back over to Commonwealth pool to watch the last night of finals for Canadian Swim Nationals. The mile went tonight, and I was able to catch up with the Stingrays that were swimming (Brandon Kingston, Matthew Swanston, as well as Alan). In addition, Jess Kirkwood was there, as well as Adam Cockburn. Kristen Bradley was also swimming. Good to catch up with everyone.

Monday:
4000m swim this morning at Crystal Pool. I swam like crap. Seems I always follow up a good swim workout with a crappy one. Simon believes it could be due to my nutrition, something I’ll look into rectifying.
I then headed out to the airport to pick Colin up as he returned from the Mooloolaba World Cup. He basically left 2hrs after his race, and spent a night in the Sydney airport. He had a killer race in Mooloolaba!

AP and I had an easy 60’ spin in the afternoon, which went well. AP had a second 3km swim scheduled, so Colin and I headed over to Commonwealth with him. I had a nice soak in the hot tub, as well as a steam. Trying to loosen the legs up a bit. I think it worked.

Tuesday:
5000m swim at Crystal this morning. Kyle is back in town now as well, having arrived last night from Australia. Main Set today was 6 X 400 pull on 5:30 (holding 5:10’s) followed by 2 X 400 swim on 5:30 (5:10, 4:50).

The second workout of the day was a tempo run down at Beacon Hill Park. We ran the loop down there that the guys had created, the “Harder Than Hamish” loop. I’ll give the short story version of it, and then find Simon’s story about it on his blog and post that as well.
Basically there is a 1 mile loop around Beacon Hill park that Hamish Carter used to run when he trained out of Vic. Simon et all added going up and down Beacon Hill to the loop, to make it harder than Hamish. Our loop is 2km, predominately run on grass. The goal was 4-5 loops, building effort the whole way. I ran the first loop a bit quick today, trying to stay in contact with Simon and AP. I soon settled into a better rhythm/pace though

7:04, 7:24, 7:32, 7:28

I only ran 4 loops, as my quads were still sore from Saturday’s race. AP ran 4 as well. Simon was a machine and rolled through 5 solid loops.

AP, Colin, and I finished off the day with a 60’ ride with some stomps throughout the ride. I then packed up a bunch of stuff I’m not going to need in Vic this summer to bring home.

As I write this, I’m sitting on an Air Canada flight headed home for a few days. I’ll be heading back to Vic on Monday to get back to training. Looking forward to getting home for a few days!!