Let the Training Begin!

Now that I’m feeling better I’ve started training for the upcoming tri season. I was supposed to start last Tuesday but illness kept me on the sidelines until Friday. That morning I headed up to the gym to swim 750m. My swimming has definitely suffered while I was out of the pool but I am hoping that after a few weeks I am back in a groove.

Saturday morning I ran six miles on the Iron Horse, the first three I ran with Jen then turned around and headed back to the house. She was running 16.5 so she kept on going up the IH and we met for breakfast a couple of hours later. I kept a relaxed pace during the run since I had not ran for two weeks. My final time was 53:36 for an AP of 8:56. I think my splits were something like 9:47, 9:22, 9:10, 8:34, 8:15, and 8:04 - i’m totally pulling those from memory but the gist is that I ran faster every mile but never went too fast.

After enjoying a nice breakfast of crepes and coffee we stopped by Sports Basement and bought our wetsuits. Both of us got Blue Seventy suits – I went with the Helix and Jen went with the Reaction (both of us went with the Farmer John style). Of course I was right in the middle of the size chart so I agonized over which size was better (L or ML) for an hour or so – I finally went with the L but I’m sure I will question if that is the right size for a few months. It was one of those moments when I really needed someone to just tell me which one to get because I really couldn’t make a decision. I think I went with the right one because the ML was pretty tight around my chest and neck and the L is snug but not overly tight.

On Sunday the Madone finally saw the light of day after a two month hiatus; it was great. I was planning on riding 20 miles on the trail but I felt so good once I was riding that I ended up doing 31 – I think my avg mph on the last 10 miles was probably around 22/23 mph. I noticed that the strange clicking noise I heard when riding in the past is still there and still annoying as ever so I stopped by the bike shop to have them check it out. The tech said I should bring it in this week sometime and they will dig into it a bit and see what they can find. The first place they will look is in the bearings because I only hear the noise when I am on the bike and pedaling. Since it is still fairly it shouldn’t cost me anything to have it fixed which is great.

This morning I was back in the pool for another 750m – I felt a bit sluggish in the water but I pushed through and ended up doing the distance in 14:24. This year I am really going to focus on my swimming and I hope to be able to bring my time down quite a bit.

Overall it feels good to be getting back into a routine – tomorrow I am running and I think on Wed I will go up to the gym for a spin class. This weekend we are going to Phoenix so I’m not sure if I will run on Saturday but I would like to get a ride in on Sunday when we get home.