Swim/Bike/Run Thoughts for the Week

Swim:

I have not been a good little swimmer for most of June.  I didn’t realize it, but I’ve been averaging one trip to the pool a week this month.  Except for this week!  I got in all three of my swims this week – 2800 m on Wednesday, 3500 m on Friday and another 1800 m on Saturday.  The 3500 m swim was great.  I swam consistently the whole way through.  There were no drills, no pull, no paddles, no kick.  Just swim.  Surprisingly I wasn’t bored, but that may have been because I had to pee so badly I was concentrating more on making sure my bladder didn’t burst!

For Saturday’s swim I got there and the only lane with no one in it was the fast lane.  OK, well I’m not fast, but I decided to go for it anyway.  As the swim went on floaters would come in and jump into the medium speed lanes, then hang out and chat at the edge of the pool.  I guess you don’t have to be fast, but if you show up with a lot of pool toys you look serious!  Unless of course someone who is actually fast shows up…

Bike:

On Thursday I had a two hour ride to take care of.  The weather has been so crazy here in the evenings – warm and sunny during the day, showers and thunderstorms in the evening.  I was really hoping I’d be able to make it for two hours without the weather turning.  In addition some of the team was getting together for a time trial workout later in the evening.  Kelly also volunteered to keep me company for part of my ride.  I did a quick loop through Bearspaw, met up with Kelly and did another quick loop before meeting up with Angie and the team.  Their plan was to ride a time trial out 1A from the edge of Calgary to Cochrane, then coming back along some quieter country roads.  Most of the team was still warming up.  I wanted to do the route, but not the time trial, so we took off ahead of the team and vowed to try and stay ahead of them the entire time.  The winds were getting crazy!!!  We had one heck of a headwind out along 1A so I don’t know how the time trial went for everyone else out there.  If I had pedaled as hard as I could and if I had pedaled any slower I would have been going backwards!  Once we turned off of 1A we got to feel those winds as a crosswind.  Wow, I’ve never had my bike blown around so much before and it was a little scary!  We turned another corner and now we had a tail wind and just booked it!  That was fun.  Luckily I made my 2 hour ride in before the heavens opened up.

Run:

This has been a bit of a cutback week for running in anticipation of the Great White North half Iron distance triathlon next weekend.  Short with lots of intensity.  Half marathon pace intervals on Wednesday, and 1 minute hard intervals on Friday.  My calves were super tight after the Wednesday intervals and the fire drill, but luckily they felt good while running.  The 1 minute intervals went fairly well but my stomach was really acting up.  I made it through the intervals but by the time I made it to the cool down I had to walk as my stomach just couldn’t handle running.  Wow, what is up with my digestive system??  I’m hoping I can really figure this out…