Monday, July 17, 2006

Heat Wave

Well, so much for my two solid weeks of intensity and volume. With the heat of last week and this weekend many of my sessions had to be shortened. It has been very frustrating. I have felt really good and I have wanted to push harder and farther, but common sense has called me off a bit. Yesterday was supposed to be a long ride. Didn't really happen that way! It really felt just like a jungle. The heat and humidity made the air thick, and the sweat rolling into my eyes really sucked. I'm no sure that it is possible to keep up on hydration in condtions like that. So, long story longer, I cut the ride really short.

One other thing that I found is that I need to continue to do pool workouts. The open water swimming has helped with my sighting and comfort swimming in my wetsuit, but I have suffered a drop off in speed. Last Thursday I did my first pool workout in about three weeks. WOW was I slow. I wasn't tired or having a hard time doing the work, I just didn't have the speed in the water. Not that I really had any speed to start with, but I can't afford to lose any more. So I am going to focus on pool workouts only for the next two weeks, then during my tapper when I am swimming less intense workouts I will hit the lakes again. Hopefully I can regain a little bit of the speed and efficiency that I had earlier in the season.

On a positive note, I think that my feet have just about healed. After the race blisters and the burn blisters I think they should be good to go now. I finally went out a bought new training shoes that were far overdue. I had over 400 miles on my old ones. Today will be my first run in the new trainers, so I am hoping that they will work out. You can never really tell just by trying them on. If there are going to be problems they usually don't show up for quit a few miles, and then it's too late.

All in all, injuries, heat, and short workouts aside, I think that my training is going pretty well. One can always say I wish I did this or I wish I did that. Of course I have many of those statements, but overall, I think I am ready for the Steelhead 70.3.

ZURICH, ZURICH, ZURICH!!!

2 comments:

tri-mama said...

Oh, the heat has definitely been tough-this morning felt awesome! Huddle suggested that most of your swim volume should be in the pool, with perhaps a weekly open water sesssion- I know what you mean, I'm doing one pool, one open water now. See you (well at least your back for the first 2 mins) Weds? How about Jill?

Lance Notstrong said...

I rode last Saturday and the temp at the end of the ride was 108!!!