Week started off with a race and then I didn't really hold back at all this week as it is the last real week of training before I start to taper. Only thing that I did back off from a little bit was running towards the middle/end of the week as a precaution.
Sunday: Sprint Duathlon (originally planned for July 14th, but got switched due to the park being closed on the 14th because of high water levels in the park). Distance was a 2 mile trail run / 17 mile bike / 3.1 mile trail run. I knew that I had one strong competitor against me and didn't really know much about the other 24 people (26 total in the race including me). Started off for the 2 miler and did what I considered a comfortably hard pace and finished that in 12:49, though I was 40 seconds behind first place. He had passed me about 1/4 the way through the run.
Transition 1 he added another 30 seconds to his lead on me as he does not change shoes and I do. So about 1:30 for my transition (kinda long transition area). Bike leg begins and my plan was to hammer it and gain as much time as I could. I am hammering along and about 1/3 the way through the course I see a person that looks like a spec in the distance. I had already seen the course before and planned on hammering the easy uphills to hold pace and the longer ones just taking it a little easier as to not burn myself out. Eventually that little spec gets bigger and bigger and my highly technical timing method of counting seconds I was narrowing from 40 seconds, to 30, to 15 and then eventually I passed him and took the lead. 17 miles in 42 minutes at a 23.7mph pace. Coming into T2 I was ahead by about 10 seconds (made up 1:20 on bike).
T2 comes and I am behind by about 20 seconds coming out of T2 and he throws the hammer down running the first mile in 5:40 of the 5k and mine is a 6:45, so I am behind by 1:30 now and don't gain anything the rest of the way. I ran a 23:04 on the 5k and felt that was good for a trail run. I wound up in second place by 2 and a half minutes, though I beat 3rd by about 4 minutes. Good race and can't wait for USAT rankings to update from my last two races.
Monday: Easy bike ride, no plan on how far I would go, but just wanted to keep legs fresh. I wound up going out for a 38 mile ride in 2 hours. Can't believe how fun riding my bike was the day after a race.
Tuesday: Last "long run" before my race on August 31st, and it was a 9.5 mile run in 1 hour, 26 minutes. Nice and easy, not to push too much but to get some more mileage in.
Wednesday: 16 mile bike in 40 minutes on gym bike, legs felt great! Did a VO2MAX test on bike machine and it showed my score as 57, this was 53 back in March when I last took one. Finished up the day with 40 minutes of strength training.
Thursday: Rest day that I totally nailed!
Friday: Fueled up real good the night before with a large spaghetti dinner and in the morning I had a bagel with peanut butter and some gatorade/pre-workout drink. I did 87 miles at an average pace of 20.9 on mainly rural roads and only a few traffic lights/stops. Took 4 hours and 10 minutes, heart rate was 131 (wanted to stay in the 130-140 range) with a max of 150. So I did good at keeping it steady and it is encouraging that 20.9mph is on the low end of where I want to be. I finished my 1300-1400 calories that I wanted to take in during the ride and remembered to drink plenty of water.
Saturday: Easy 5.5 mile run, though I wanted to do around 8:20/mi pace and wound up at 8:13/mi. That is good, but on race day 8:13/mi off the bike will lead to me slowing a lot more than 8:20/mi. Most of my runs from here on out will be focusing on getting my body used to 8:20-8:30/mi pace so that I try not to blow up on the run.
Mileage for the week wound up at 157 miles biking and 21 miles running. Total training time was 12 hours. I have been averaging around 10 hours/week for the past 21 weeks training for this which is not a lot compared to some hardcore people, but with a full time job, household care/maintenance and trying to be a good husband with a pregnant wife I think I have balanced them all well and gotten in some quality training. I really started a training schedule 6 weeks before that even and since then have really improved my biking and running paces. Taper is starting and now all the questions and phantom injuries will start to fill my head so I will have to ensure not to go mad. I will still be training 5-6 days the next two weeks, just with a much lower amount of volume/intensity to hopefully wind up race fresh on August 31st.
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