Training update, racing, plus some random observations

If I felt that my ITB was 100% I would do a lot of races this summer. Because races are not very expensive here and I need racing experience eventhough I would be having my butt handed to me. For example there is a triathlon race in August in a nearby city and it is only 25Eur. Or running races for 6Eur all over the place. Damn you ITB! It is not that it hurts, but I am worried that it will flare up if I do a lot of races. Although maybe doing a 5k or a 10k is not that much different from doing an interval workout. I do not know. I cannot decide whether I am careful or plainly whimpy.   

Anyway. This is a stupid “swim” week. At first I tore my swim cap on Monday (although that’s not a big deal) and yesterday my goggles broke, which mean that I swam 1 stroke (yeap, one stroke and then the part where “nose” piece attaches broke off. I loved those goggles. This was my second pair of this model and I have had this pair for almost a year. They were Speedo Women’s Vanquisher and they do not have this kind here:( I need to find something similar and something that will not cost me 20+Eur because sporting goods are so freaking expensive here) instead of 3000m. And since I did not have any money with me I could not buy a new one on my way home from work and therefore today I had to use goggles I had at home but those are no good (by the way, is goggles “it” or “they”? I do not know therefore I used both “it” and “they”. To give me 50% change that I get it correct.) so today I swam 100m instead of 3000m. (I cannot swim without goggles.) Combine it with a very short group swim on Tuesday (coach decided to videotape us so we swam less than usual) and I am 7000m behind on my plan for the week. And it is Friday. Saturday is something going on in the pool, so I have Sunday to make up for it.  I will do my best but I will not be able to swim 7000m without doing it in 2 sessions (not that I do not believe that I can do it. I sure can:) but I do not think that I can came up with a decent 7k workout) and weather is supposed to be nice so I doubt I will be able to get any swimming at all over weekend. 

But I guess that swimming 10k instead of 17k this one week will not be the end of the world. And if it is, then I sincerely apology to the all the living creatures on Earth for bringing the end upon us.

At least running and biking has been ok.  Although I have only run once (PT on Wednesday and I have to give my ITB around 48 hours to recover from the treatment. By the way, the PT digged in to my right quad and it was even worse than when he uses that sucky/splunger thing and that thing is a sucker! I was very close to telling him to stop, it was so painful. I need to pay more attention to rolling out my quads more, not only ITB and hamstrings) and biked only once this week so far. 

Bike was quite brutal. I did the “short intervals” session yesterday (remember my plan? One short intervals, one longer intervals, one easy long session a week) and it was the first one in like 6 months. 20x1min hard (at 300+ W) with 1min easy. It was ok at the beginning because holding 310-320 for a minute is no problem but then the wheels (not bike wheela, my leg wheels) fell off with 5 to go and I had to work really hard. I was channeling Sagan (oh well, he is THE talk in Slovakia these days, what do you expect?) to get me through it when my poor hamstrings were ready to cramp after 40sec. Which does not make much sense since TT bike should make me use hamstrings less but I think that it is because I was working too hard pulling pedals up and I need to increase my seat height a little bit. So, it was hard, but great at the same time! And I LOVE having powermeter to keep me honest in workouts like this one. 

It takes me around 25min to get to the empty road where I did these intervals (a nice wide smooth road leading to some kind of above-ground mine. I would not do anything like this on a road with cars on it because I do not concentrate too much on what’s going on around me when I work hard so that would be dangerous. Too bad this road is not long enough to do anything longer than 1min intervals) so it is a good warm up and calm down.

I was considering to go to Frankfurt to watch IM this weekend but honestly, the only reason why I would go is to get a glimpse of Andreas Raelert and I will really only be able to get a glimpse so it is probably not worth it.

Then I was thinking about going to see a motoball game on Sunday. Which is basically a soccer on motocycles. These crazy Germans and soccer! But going there alone will not be too much fun and I need to get that 7k swim, 3h ride and intervals run in, so that’s not going to happen either.

What an exciting life. But since I do not have any friends or family here, my life revolves around work and training.