Back to training....and photos from the TC 10km

Monday and Tuesday were easier days, let the legs recover from the hard pounding of the 10km on Sunday. Monday was an easy swim in the morning, and a 90' spin in the afternoon.

Tuesday we had a good swim in the morning. 400, 200 kick, 2 x 100 IM warm-up, followed by 16x50 on 45" (every 4th fast). 1500 Neg Split pull, 100 ez, 800 Pull on 11:00 then 8 x 100 on 1:20 (1:12's) to finish up.

I rode another 90' ez, and hit the treadmill for an easy easy run. The quads were still tight from Sunday, but the easy run on the tready and some rolling around on the foam roller at night seemed to help them loosen up, as they felt better Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning's swim was another good one.

800 mix, 800 Pull, 8 x 100 on 1:30 (1:12's)
400 mix, 400 Pull, 4 x 100 on 1:25 (1:09's)
300 mix, 300 Pull, 3 x 100 on 1:20 (1:08's)
100 ez

Wednesday afternoon was a good hill workout on the bike. We rode up and over the Durrance Lake climb (and back) which was a lot tougher climbing up the backside, followed by a jaunt up the climb to the dump, and finished off with 2 reps up the observatory (2km).

The start of the race...I'm somewhere hidden on the right hand side

Running solo, somewhere around 5km

Times Colonist 10km

Today was the Times Colonist 10km here in Victoria.

The weather co-operated (the rain held off until late morning) and it turned out to be a good day to race... overcast, 9 C and not a lot of wind. Not too sure of the total numbers for the events (10km run, 1.5km Kids race, and a 10km walk) but there were just short of 9000 in the 10km run.

The course itself can be found here. The first K is fairly flat, the 2nd K starts out flat then drops a bit, and the 3rd and 4th K are net downhill (more so on KM 4). KM 5 is uphill, with KM 6 a slight uphill as well. KM 7 is slight downhill, with the remaining three km being fairly flat.

I was in the second row at the start line, off to the left hand side. I wanted to keep the first KM under control and not go out super crazy. A lead group of 10 or so formed at the front, and I settled into the second group, about 12 of us or so. I felt comfortable running in the back of this group, and we were moving along at a good pace (9:30 through 3km). At the bottom of Dallas Rd, we hit the turn around at 4km (12:41) and this is where the race got a bit ugly for me. I lost contact with my group of 10 or so, and was stuck running in no-man's land. I ended up running the remaining 6km basically solo, with a couple guys running through me in the last KM.

Looking back, I most likely went out through 5km a bit quicker than I would have liked to (16:10) but I wanted to hang in with the group and get pulled along. The official results have me listed at 34:00.....but I'm gonna go with the 33:59 that I had on my watch! It's a PB, so can't complain.

Splits:

3:14
6:22 (3:08)
9:30 (3:08)
12:41 (3:11)
16:10 (3:29)
19:49 (3:39)
23:28 (3:39)
26:58 (3:30)
30:33 (3:35)
33:59 (3:26)


Hopefully I'll be able to find a picture or two from the race.

Mid Week Training....

Wednesday morning's swim was a tough one.

10 x 200 w. 15" rest as the warm-up with #'s 4 and 8 being fast ones.
28 x 100 as 7 x (1:30, 1:25, 1:20, 1:15). The 1:15 interval was a tough one for the first five times through, until I finally came around a bit and swam a bit faster on the last two rounds.

A run was the other workout for the day, 50' on the treadmill, with the main effort being 10 x 1' "on" 1' "off". The legs were a tad stiff today, most likely from the long ride yesterday.

Thursday morning was an ez 3km swim, 1000 SKIDS, 100 Pull, 1000 SKIDS.
I rode the waterfront loop plus a bit more for my 2hr ride, and had a 40' ez run to finish off the day.

The tail end of this week is a bit easier workout wise, as I'm going to be racing the Times Colonist 10km on Sunday. I'm looking forward to running, hopefully it's not as windy as it was today!!

Winning The Vote (Is that a good thing?)

Joel posted a photo that was taken at the start of our run workout on Saturday morning, and posted it on his blog here. Seems I am winning the "dorkiest outfit award". In my defense though, it was cold that morning and I was prepared to run in the snowy conditions up at Lochside. That works, right?

I'll make sure I'm more fashion conscious next time.

Tuesday Training...and my new ride

5000m this morning in the pool, an aerobic endurance morning.

600 warm-up
1500 Pull Neg Split
5 x 100 alt swim on 1:30, IM on 1:45
5 x 400 Pull (1-5) on 5:30 (5:10, 5:03, 4:58, 4:52, 4:38)
warm-down

This afternoon, Colin and I headed out for a 3.5 hr ride. Colin took me up the Malahat towards Shawnigan Lake. A fairly steady climb up the Malahat, then descend down to Shawnigan Lake. A rolling loop around the lake (22km) then climb back out of the valley, and then down the Malahat. I got a flat just as we got going on the descent back towards Vic, so I ended up riding the last hour solo. A good ride today (105 km).

I've got a new ride out here in Victoria. I got it Monday night. It's a great bike...accelerates well, and cruises nicely at 55-60km/hr. Anyways, here a pic of my new ride.

It's a 2006 Yamaha BWS

Weekend Activities

Well...we got some of the white stuff on Saturday....we met for the run workout at Lochside, and it was really crappy footing, and still snowing a bit, so we headed down to Beacon Hill instead, where it wasn't snowing to run. We did a 4km tempo piece (2 loops of the harder than Hamish loop) and then 4 x 1 mile on the road loop. Decent run today considering the weather. An easy spin later on in the day finished things off.

Sunday was motor-pacing day at up the waddling Dog. 2 x single loop, and then I had a TT piece heading back to home (22 min effort). A total of 75km of riding. We finished off the day with our favourite workout of the week....Sunday afternoon swimming. A solid workout, with the main set 12 x 200 (2 on 2:30, 1 ez on 3:00) SCM. First three rounds were pull, and then final round swim. Got down to 2:13, 2:13 on the two fast ones during the swim round.

Monday was a recovery effort day...3000m swim this morning, and a 50 min run in the afternoon.

Is it Winter?

It certainly felt like it today. It was cool, and windy, and with a high of only 8 C today, it felt cold! We had off and on rain today, as well as a fair amount of hail. Check out the photo.


The forecast for Friday Night through Saturday isn't that promising either. Our daily highs should be around 14-15 C right now...not 8!

"Greater Victoria. Tonight..Flurries or rain showers. Risk of small hail and a thundershower this evening. Local snowfall amount 2 cm. Windy. Low plus 2. Saturday..Flurries or rain showers. Risk of a thundershower in the afternoon. Local snowfall amount 2 cm. Becoming windy late in the morning. High 6. Saturday night..Cloudy with 60 percent chance of flurries or rain showers. Risk of a thundershower early in the evening. Windy. Low plus 2."

KM repeats tomorrow on Lochside trail...should be a good one!

Back together

The group is back together now...Colin and Simon have returned from the Ishigaki World Cup. Good results for both of them there (Simon won, Colin was 23rd) as they were at the front in the swim and managed to get into a break-away on the bike. Simon ran like he usually does (fast) and got the win over Rasmus Henning.

Training the last couple of days has gone pretty well. Monday was a recovery day, with no morning swim for me! I had a 90' ride, with 6 x 15" sprints throughout the ride. I started out riding outdoors, but the skies soon opened up, and I scurried back to ride the trainer indoors.

Tuesday we had a standard 5000m swim in the pool in the morning.

600 warm-up
20 x 50 on 45" (every 4th fast) 100 ez
5 x 300 Pull (1-3, then hold 4,5) on 4:30 100 ez
15 x 100 on 1:35/1:25/1:15 (5 times through)
200 ez cool down

Early afternoon, Kyle, Kirsten, Andrew and I headed out for a 3hr base ride. We rode up through lands end up towards the ferry terminal in Sidney. Then back down to the waterfront downtown, and back home. 3hr 10min (93km). A 40' run finished off the day.

Which brings us to today's workouts. 5000m again in the water, as follows

400 mix, 200 kick
16 x 50 on 45" (every 4th fast)
12 x 50 on 50" (every 3rd fast)
8 x 50 on 55" (every other fast)
4 x 50 on 60" (all fast)
400 ez

8 x 200 alt fast(3:10), ez (3:30)
Didn't quite feel as "on" as yesterday in the water....but still managed to hang on to it.

We met later at the U Vic track for a bike and run workout. We ended up doing 4 x 5' hard on the bike, and then Kyle, Kirsten and I got changed and hit the track for some 400's. Felt good riding today, though the legs were a bit heavy from the 3hrs yesterday.

The track workout turned out to be fairly windy on the home stretch of the 400's. After a 10' warm-up, we ran 20 x 400 on 2:00. The first one was a bit off (getting the running legs back) but then I settled into 75's the whole rest of the way. I was happy with the run today, being able to hang on through to the end of 20. Kyle was rocking today...holding 68's basically the whole way through.

Randy Starkman (Toronto Star) has been in town here for the last few days, doing some interviews (including Simon and Kirsten) and such for The Star. He and his photographer were at the pool this morning, and also followed along in the car on the bike. I'm guessing there might be a story on Simon/Kirsten sometime in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled.

Yes...I am alive

I am still here, just a bit of a break from blogging.

I've been up in Victoria now for almost 3 weeks now. The first week back was just some easy regenerative training, and we've had two solid weeks of training since.

I won't go into specifics for each day of the last 2 weeks, just some highlights of training.

We've gotten right into motor-pacing again now, with 1 workout a week up at the Waddling Dog on our 12km loop up there. It's a great workout, zipping along the road at 45-50km/hr. We had a good motor-pace workout this morning actually. Running wise, we've been running Sunday mornings down at Beacon Hill, running our Figure 8 loop. It's just shy of 3km, along wood chip trails. We've also visited Elk Lake for a good 20km neg split run there around the lake (10km loop) and this past thursday we hit the Tim Don special on the track again.

The weather is getting a bit nicer here now..today we got up to 17 C which was a nice change from our usual highs so far of 10-12 C. It'll be a bit of a late night tonite, as the Ishigaki World Cup goes at 11:45pm PST for the men. Looks like I'll be going to bed around 2am. Simon and Colin are racing there. Tomorrow, Rappstar (Jordan Rapp) is racing Ironman Arizona...watch that guy ride a bike!!

Alrighty, that's all for now, I'll get back to blogging every other day (or better)

:)