Another solid week of training and I’m feeling pretty good overall despite a hammy/glute issue that is trying to steal all of my joy. I learned an important lesson this week with my running that I’ll get to in a bit but first here is a quick rundown on my workouts.
- 3 sunrise walks (generally two miles)
- 900 yard swim
- 2 runs (one being my first double digit run since January)
- Indoor 1hr spin class
- A two-hour recovery ride
- 3 yoga classes.
So first, let me tell you about my glute\hamstring issue. It’s a bit perplexing. Lately, after a bike ride, I seem to have some pain in my left glute/hamstring. It bothers me to sit and I can feel the pain radiate from my glute muscle down into the hamstring. Coach Liza had me skip a hill repeats training run on Tuesday to focus on recovery. I used a heating pad to warm up the muscles right before some light stretching and then I converted to ice therapy. Did this for a couple of days and was feeling a better. By Sunday afternoon, the pain was back. I’m sure it’s just an issue with my muscles being too tight, but I figured I was doing a better job at stretching, especially with taking the yoga classes. In any event, I’m focusing on getting this alleviated as quickly as possible since I have the NWM coming in just a couple of weeks and also the Marin Sprint Triathlon in early November. I’ve also scheduled a visit to a PT to work on it a bit.
Now, to share the lesson I learned this weekend. Coach Liza likes to put HR zone runs in my training plan. I have a love/hate affair with this workout. I love it because it generally means I have an easy workout because usually we start low and build from there. I hate it because, when I go out for a run, I just want to run and get it over with. What I learned this weekend though, is how my body feels to run in specific HR zones. While I may be slow, I’ve learned that by slowly increasing my HR zone, I’m actually close to, or as fast, as I would have been overall. I now know when I’m running, if I need to scale it back a bit to rest a bit, I know how my body feels to do that. Another lesson I’m learning is when coach tells me to do an easy ride, that I also need to scale back then too. I’m learning that each workout is specific to optimizing your endurance over the long term.
The road to 70.3 isn’t going to be easy. My goal is to get there injury free and in the best possible shape that I can be and be as prepared as I can be. I want to finish strong.
Well, that’s about it. Another week of training in the books. What’s going on in your world?