Happy Tuesday!  I am waaaay behind on my training updates (I realize no one writes or reads blogs much anymore, but I like posting them for me, as a semi-journal) and have re-written this post several times since what I kept posting was outdated as the week(s) rolled by!  The past three weeks have been kind of weird training weeks, week 30 was an easy week because I was racing a 70.3 that Saturday, week 31 was a recovery week, and 32 was supposed to be business as usual but my hip/glute had other plans and I had to move around/skip a few workouts.  It’s doing better this week…after getting a bike re-fit, seeing a sports med dr, going to my chiro and tomorrow starting PT…so fingers crossed it will be ok for IMLOU…it better be, because I have exhausted my list of all possible resources! 😉  Ok, on to the past three weeks of training!

Week 30: 7/23-7/29

Monday – Easy 1200y swim at lunch

Tuesday – Hip/glute has been feeling tight and cranky so I skipped the planned speedwork and did yoga at lunch

Wednesday – 1600y swim in the am, followed by an hour trainer ride after work

Thursday – Easy 4 mile run, hip/glute did ok, but felt a little iffy by the last mile or so.  Fingers crossed it holds up on Saturday!

Friday – Rest day/Travel to Springfield, IL for race.  Or so I thought.  I brought my bike upstairs to get it ready to load in the car around 3p and decided to check my tires.  I’m glad I did, there were small gashes in the both the front and back tires!  I’m not sure if I had been riding around with the gashes for months, or if I got them from my last ride in Hannibal, MO (yes, my last ride outside had been in June).  Regardless, I hauled ass to my bike shop and got new tires.  Phew.  Lesson learned, don’t check tires right before leaving for a race, check them EARLIER!

After meeting my family for dinner, I headed to Springfield, IL.  I arrived a little before 9p, got settled in and then realized I possibly had some food poisoning from the burger I had for dinner, and proceeded to get sick and lose my entire dinner – and I’ll leave it at that.  I was glad I packed some extra food since I pretty much lost all of my dinner with that incident, and after ‘refueling’ I felt better and my stomach seemed ok.  After that drama, I finally fell asleep around 11p.

Saturday – Route 66 Half Iron Triathlon!

Sunday –  An hour of not great yoga that afternoon.  I won’t be going back to that class, I was not a fan of the teacher, he wasn’t easy to understand as far as poses and his music was just straight up horrible.  I swear he was just playing some random rap top 40 list.  Such an odd odd choice for yoga.  I wasn’t feelin’ it.

Total Training Hours: 10:06

 

Week 31: 7/30-8/5

Monday – Easy 1375y swim in the am, followed by an hour of yoga after work

Tuesday – Easy 3 mile run at lunch

Wednesday – Easy 1 hour ride after work

Thursday – Tempo run after work, 1 mi warmup, 3 at marathon pace, 1 mile cooldown.  Hip/glute was getting cranky by the last 2 miles.  Lots of stretching and rolling that night

Friday – 2650y swim in the am

Saturday – Easy 2 hour ride on the trainer in the morning

Sunday – 1 hour easy run, followed by the missed strength session I was supposed to do on Thursday.

Total Training Hours: 8:00

 

Week 32: 8/6-8/12

Monday – Yoga at lunch and a 3000y swim after work

Tuesday – Speedwork at lunch, 8×200 and 8×400, followed by an hour easy on the trainer after work.  Hip/glute was definitely cranky again by the end.  Lots of stretching and rolling after.

Wednesday – BIG (for me) swim, 4100y in the morning, followed by a massage due to the cranky hip/glute. My coach told me to skip the planned trainer ride after work and take an epsom salt bath instead. The bath pillow JMR got me for my birthday has been getting a lot of use lately!

Thursday – Did my missed trainer ride from Wednesday in the am, and attempted an easy run after work, but made it a whopping 2 miles before I had to pull the plug and limp home.  Cue panicking with the race so close.

Friday – 3725y swim in the am.  I hope my arms are getting ripped from all of this pool time.

Saturday – 4 hour ride.  At the suggestion of my coach, because of my hip/glute issues, I had a bike fit that morning. Boy am I glad I did because he made several adjustments that made a pretty big difference.  I won’t get into all of the details but I was probably very overdue for a fit, and maybe/possibly getting fitted earlier could have prevented some of the pain/issues I was currently having.  But I also have some muscle weaknesses, primarily glutes, that are causing issues that I need to address.  After the fit I was planning on doing my ride, however by the time I was done it was already 90+ degrees, so I said screw it and went to yoga instead.  I also knew I could ride on Sunday since the long run wasn’t happening.

Sunday – 12 mile run Got up early and got my ride done! 4ish hours/74 miles and it felt good!  Later that afternoon I aqua-jogged for 20 minutes in my parents pool.  Take that 12 mile run!  I’ll show you and do something not even close to the same intensity and for a fraction of the time!  I still felt like I accomplished a little something though in the run department, lol.

Total Training Hours: 13:49

The plan this week is to do some aqua jogging and then possibly run on Sunday and see how my hip/glute tolerates it.  The sports med dr also prescribed steroids (prednisone) which should help with the inflammation and swelling, so maybe by Sunday it will be doing better – fingers crossed!  Thank goodness I can still ride!  I will be headed to Louisville Friday night to ride the course Saturday morning, which I am looking forward to since there have been some changes since I last rode it at IMLOU in 2014. On that note, I have quite the fun week planned so far: aquajogging, course recon and PT!!

Ok, that’s about it for now!