A Whole New World

LONG SWIM/LONG-FAST RUN

Went out with LA Tri Club for the first time. A whole new world. Many of those guys are FISH. We did an ocean swim drill of 1/4 mile repeats: out to a buoy and back to shore at an angle, then running between cones. I wore my H2O Velocity suit—great for buoyancy. I needed it, as the water was colder than in Redondo from the last couple of weeks. Glad I have it. Anyway, repeated the exercise 4x for a total of a mile swim, then did about a 4.25 mile run with some 2 minute speed efforts thrown in on the return trip. Did this in Venice.

Overall, fun. Now that I know what the swim is and that I can handle it, maybe next week I can push a little more. I think I finished towards the middle or maybe the end of the pack…hard to tell as of course we got all spread out. But ocean swimming is definitely essential for me.

One great advantage of the H20 suit: it’s easy to do a power stroke to sight! So I won’t have to slow down too much and breaststroke in order to see where I’m going. But my stroke is also improving…getting straighter. So this will probably be a weekly thing: meeting the Triclub folks (who seem nice—got a couple of names: Nitra and Bouback. Good god, where are the normal names? Nice to meet others doing this event. Bouback, who ran with me and Nitra, did the San Dimas race a couple of weeks ago and finished a hair behind me. Anyway, fun, and I felt safe. Ins and outs…running between is a pretty good drill…you redistribute the blood in your legs.

This week will be weird; going out of town Sunday and therefore can only run. But I’ve already done two runs this week! (Yesterday was a speed bike: 10 miles in about 31 minutes), plus a recovery 5K.

Redondo is my next race and therefore I think I need to shore up my swimming…1/2 mile in the ocean is pretty far. Maybe add a swim workout per week, drop the recovery run? I have about about 3 weeks—so 2 weeks of hard training, one week of taper.

Tuesday: FB/RR
Wednesday: LS/FR
Thursday: LB (w/TriClub?) or RB/LS
Friday: LS OR OFF
Saturday: RB/RS—bike to gym, swim, bike home.
Sunday: LR in SD

That makes the 9 workouts. Keep up the intensity!