It’s finally here.
I don’t what I’m more excited about, the Olympics themselves or the two week break from school. Either way it’s going to be two weeks full of training, interspersed with watching events on TV and even a couple live (thanks Dad).
The original plan for these two weeks was to be in Maui, training in the sun but that fell through so instead I’ll be slogging out my own training camp in the less comfortable climes of Vancouver. But before I get there, how about an update on where I’m at right now.
The past four months of training have been solid. Nothing spectacular, just consistently putting in the hours each week and seeing incremental improvements.
In the pool, I have yet to see a big improvement in speed but I know I’m much stronger than I was last year. I’m regularly putting in 15-16 km in the pool (which is more than I ever did in one week before this year) and can still swim strong at the end of our 4 km swims at Dolphins. So with my endurance at a new level, spring time will be the time to bring up the speed.
The bike has been coming along with what I feel like are some big improvements in technique from the spin sessions with Larry. With spin sessions now on Wednesdays with LETC it has become Sunday rides with Barb Zimich’s group the past three weeks that are the notorious bonk fests for me (in a good way). The hour or so of moderate intensity followed by filling out the ride with some aerobic threshold riding to hit 3-3.5 hours has done me in. The kind of rides where you just want to get off the bike and walk home by the end. So good.
As for running, I’m going to declare myself back after a solid benchmark run last week. Ran a couple of 1 mile repeats on short rest in 6 minutes. It wasn’t so much the time that I ran as much as the comfort with which I ran them. Being my first track workout since the foot injury I decided not to push myself and so to hit 3:45 / km pace so easily was a big confidence boost.
So now the next two weeks will be BIG volume to really solidify the base before I start picking up . After all, Spring Series bike races, a couple of 5ks I’ve got my eye on and the Delta Sprint are just around the corner. Bring on the racing.
