Weekly training report – June 16-22 (pre-non-goal race week)

Although I am training through a race this week (an expression I learned recently) as my real goal race is 3 weeks away, I had a relatively easy week of training planned anyway. Basically my plan was to do a nice long slow effort in each event this week.

Monday I went to a local outdoor pool with a really wacky length (137.5 m I think) and swam 12 lengths (1650 m). I didn’t really time myself, but it took around 51-52 minutes. I went really slow on purpose, and did not touch the side of the pool once, so as to better simulate the open water experience. I was happy that my really slow non-effortful pace was fast enough to be within the cut-off time for the 1500 m I’m going to have to swim in 3 weeks.

Tuesday I cycled, as I usually do for reasons having to do with the family schedule. I went for an easy ride for 1.5 hours, and covered about 32 km. Not as far as my race will be, but since a chunk of that time was spent going up a hill that hits 16-17%, I felt OK about it. Apparently my husband did that same hill 4 times last week. I was pretty happy to make it up once. Maybe by August I’ll get up it 2x in a workout.

Weds was a rest day, and Thursday I went for a really slow 6 km run in the woods. It took me about 2 mins longer than it does when I’m trying to get in a good workout, so apparently my attempt to go slow worked really well. I do know that when I was heading up the last hill in the route, the one where I usually am muttering under my breath to myself about being crazy or something like that, I was thinking, “What’s the big deal? Why is this usually so hard?” I guess my legs still had a lot left in them.

Friday was a travel day. Sat I went to the pool with my son and his cousins, and stayed afterwards for 15 mins of flip turn practice. Good thing I didn’t have bigger plans because I had another migraine aura. Thankfully, it wasn’t a bad one – I could sense that with the right response I could avoid the headache and nausea, and I was right. And then Sunday was my race, which gets its own post (at some point). (I will let it slip that my more relaxed week seems to have worked out well for me.)