Weekend recap

This weekend was without doubt more successful than the last one. 2 rides, 1 run, 2 swims!

I was able to swim quite a lot (10,8k in 3 swims) in Korbach, where I was for work, and I also ran once while there (65min easy). Plus one hike. And then 65min with 10 “minuters” on Friday evening when I got back.

So the weekend. The weather was quite nice, around 22C degrees with sun and clouds. It was warm enough to bike in shorts and shirt but too cold for people to go hang out by the pool. So I decided to do my swims in the evening because I knew kids and families won’t be there and senior citizens go to pool in the morning so theoretically pool should be almost empty in the evening. 

Saturday: I started with a bike ride. 3h15min of decent effort. It was really windy, and I have learnt trying to hold certain watts in crosswind is much harder because you spend a lot of energy just trying to keep upright. Also, I suck at keeping watts high going downhill. Basically I rode at 190ish in crosswind and 200+ into headwind, and when I was on downhill or with the wind I was at 150. I tried but going down my cadence goes up and I cannot hold watts because I suck at holding higher cadence. My sweet spot is around 85, and recovery ride at 75-80.   

I am sure I mentioned this before, I am using Cycle Ops something to record my watts, cadence etc. But that gadget is completely useless if you want to see your data afterwards once you download it. There is no start/stop/pause/split button, and it always always somehow records more time then I actually rode so basically all your data afterwards is scewed because it records whatever. I would not want it even for free. Wait! I got it for free. Therefore I am using it. Maybe one day I will get some fancy Garmin that will record everything.

Then swim. I was right. Pool was almost empty, so that was nice. I wanted to do something easy therefore I did some drills, change of paces and also 4x25m butterfly. For  total of 2700m. The only problem with these easy swims is that I get quite cold since the water is not very warm (around 21C degrees on good days). Well, it just means that I need to swim fast all the time:)

Then I slept for 10hours!

Sunday: 65min with 4x1k w/ 3min easy!!! Woo-hoo. I was interested to see how fast I can run because I have no idea. Since I cannot run on track (tearssssss) I charged Garmin for that. I was however 99% sure that that stupid gadget will not work so I took a stop watch as well. And I was right. Garmin died in less than 2 min into my warm-up. Grrr. So I threw it into the nearest bush and decided to do 4x 4min fast. This of course sucks because I have no idea how far/how fast I am going and that kind of beat the purpose of these workouts. But I did it nevertheless and with each 4min I was able to run little faster. I did the same spot 5sec faster on the 2^nd one, 10sec on the 3rd one and 15sec on the 4^th one. Of course the first one was slow because I do not know how to run “by time” and by perceived effort (esp since I have zero idea what my 5k pace is and what it should feel like) and there was no benchmark I wanted to hit whereas for the next ones I knew where I wanted to get in those 4min. But I must say that it was quite hard and I did also some walking in those 3min in between.

Then when I pick up the Garmin it was miraculously working. So I retraced my steps and learnt that the first 4min was only 920-930m. Ups. That sucks.

I guess that as every human being, I was somehow hoping that several months of no running would not leave any trace on my running fitness and that I would be able to maybe burst off 3:58s or so. That obviously did not happen, maybe except for the last one. However, I am sure that if I were on track I would be able to hit something sub-4min although ti would probably leave me bent over my knees gasping for air after each one.

So the moral of the story is: several months off running and then 3 months of very easy running do not leave you with much running fitness and miracle do not happen in your 2 real interval workout.

Then took an hour to “recover” and did 3h recovery ride. 2hours in I realized that maybe 3h10min ride cannot really be called a recovery ride, but I was riding so slowly that I am still going to call it a recovery ride because I cannot call it anything else. I was soooo hungry. I was dreaming about Cosco trail mix and nut/fruit mix the last hour of the ride. Not that I had any of those, but a girl can dream, right?

Then another hour to “recover” (and eat something small, plus I prepared another sandwich that I took to pool with me to eat afterwards) and I hit the pool. I was not too tired, but I sat down to took my shoes off by the pool:) I never sit down to put on/take of the shoes. 400m w/up, 100-200-300-200-100-200-300-200-100, 100c/d for a total of 15,7k (or so) for this week. The swim went better than expected, I was able to keep decent pace and I think that I am getting used to 50m pool. I have some thoughts about “not being able to puch myself in pool” that I will share some other time. I need to go to sleep now.