Olympics Recovery
It’s been a week since the Olympics ended, and I think I’ve recovered from the withdrawal now. It was starting to get a little old staying up really late every night anyway. I watched NBC pretty much every night, which was good, because they had all the major events, but I kind of missed seeing more of the more obscure sports. During the Olympics, I didn’t ride my bike as much mainly because I couldn’t get up in the morning before work because I had been up too late the night before, and I felt too tired after swimming/running in the evening most nights to ride on the trainer. Sometimes after going easier in a sport for a while, it can be hard to get back into things, but I was able to get fully back into biking this past week, and I’ve been going just as fast, if not faster, than before the Olympics started.
After a speed bike workout on Tuesday and a race pace workout on Thursday, I went for a long tempo-ish ride yesterday. The route was the same 67.5 mile loop up Page Mill, down to Pescadero, Stage Rd, up Tunitas Creek Rd, and back down Kings Mountain that I had done in April and June. In April I completed the loop in 4:50 and in June I went 4:23 after going harder up the top part of Tunitas Creek Rd. This time I kept a steady tempo most of the way around and finished in exactly 4 hours. It was kind of funny after all that riding to end up back home just as the stop watch went 3:59:58, 3:59:59, 4:00:00. I took some splits for future reference - from home up to the top of Page Mill was 56:04 / 2400ft climb, down to the bakery in Pescadero was 57:33 (1:53:37) including 600 and 350 foot climbs, took a little rest there to eat some pastries, 38:14 (2:31:51) along Stage Rd and Highway 1 to Tunitas Creek Rd which have 400, 300, and 450 foot climbs, 46:38 (3:18:29) to the top of Tunitas Creek Rd which was a 2000 foot climb, and 41:30 (4:00:00) down Kings Mountain and the rest of the way home. It was a really good ride, and the only downside was getting stuck behind some really slow cars going down Kings Mountain.
I also had some good swims this past week. Before doing the 1500m time trial in 18:21 a couple weeks ago, my key workouts had been happening in about the same times, and I wasn’t seeing a lot of noticeable improvement week to week. Times were definitely faster and more comfortable this week. In a workout with 4×25, 4×50, 4×100 I did the 100s in 69, 67, 67, 68 which was meant to be at 400m pace. Then a couple days later I did 5×300 on 5:00 in 3:41, 3:39, 3:39, 3:37, 3:38 which was meant to be at 1500m pace. The best thing about that workout was that in previous weeks I would start at around 3:40 and after a couple, I would start to slow down to 3:45ish and stop after only 4×300 because I wasn’t meeting the target pace. This time I actually descended and felt like I could have kept going.
On the running front, things are still progressing. I still feel some pain the first 5-10 minutes of running, but it then goes away and doesn’t hurt afterwards or the next day. I’m still being cautious, though. I’m using the Super Feet insoles for now, but I stopped using it on the non-hurt foot because I started getting some plantar fasciitis. I’m up to around four 40 minute runs for the week, and will plan on four 45 minute runs next week. Then I’ll try four 50 minute runs, and then it’ll be time to back off for Nationals in Portland on September 20. I think I’ll be happy with where my swim and bike will be by then and am hoping if things go well in those two segments of the race, despite not doing any race pace work on the run, I’ll be able to do ok to finish off the race.
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