Back to normal

My friend Christian from Switzerland left on Monday morning with a Swiss friend in a road trip to Edmonton (I guess stopping in most towns since they will take about 8 days to get there…). We had a lot of fun together, went out a couple of times, had many amazing meals and dinners at home and in restaurants, saw the fireworks, went to the Caribbean day, Stanley Park and many other things. All of this combined with a 40hr work week and 23hrs of training to be precise turned out to be rather taxing on the body and mind.

The plan Monday afternoon was to put in 5hrs since Saturday and Sunday were easier than normal, however once Christian left all of a sudden my energy was zapped. I went for a 2.5hr bike ride and when I came home the only thing I could do was nap. I napped for 1 hr. When I woke up I was so groggy that the only thing I could do was eat and do laundry for the following 2 hrs. I finally got myself ready and run for 1:15 on the treadmill slightly increasing speed every 5 minutes, it was a good workout despite the fact that I did not feel like doing it from minute 1.

Tuesday was rather uneventful. Swim in the morning at Kits pool for 1.5 hrs (which was not pleasant as I woke up cold after so many days of 30+ degrees and the water felt cold for the whole workout), showered, and 30 min massage before work. At lunch time I went out for a jog in which I was completely useless, either due to the previous nights run or the energy zap I mentioned before. Got 1hr done, even though was garbage. After work I did 1.5hrs on the bike with an average cadence of 99. I was not caring about speed at all, just wanted to get the legs spinning fast as I noticed on the last couple of rides that I was inclined to push harder gears with 80-85cadence. Legs felt no better but no worse after the ride, which I guess it’s good.

Today the plan was to swim in the morning again, run track at lunchtime (there is a track 15 blocks from work), and TT 1hr in the afternoon. However, once again I found myself very very tired and decided to push the bike ride to tomorrow afternoon. I was supposed to do about 3.5hrs today and 1.5 easy day tomorrow. Now they just became 2x2.5hr days, I find this better than to have a crap workout on the bike today. Anyways, swimming in the morning got replaced with track as I woke up cold again and was not in the mood to get naked and jump in a pool (it doesn’t sound that unreasonable does it?). At lunch time I did errands and the afternoon will finally involve me getting naked and jumping in the pool (but now will be 21C sunny outside and not 15C, 30mins after waking up)

For the next 10 days I will be pushing hard in training, recovering on sleep, eating right, and working on staying injury free. After that its taper time for the national championships! It will be great to mini taper (finally) for the first time this year; have a little more time, feel strong and have to hold back to save it for the race. All previous races I went in with tired legs, arms, fatigued; I want to see what I can do feeling rested.

Mom and dad are coming before Kelowna and staying until September when I leave to Australia, it will be very nice and fun to see them (like always!). Also, the 4 of us are racing in Kelowna!!! They will be doing their first tri on Saturday (the Try a Tri with our training bikes =P), my brother will be doing the sprint on Sunday morning and I will be racing in the afternoon. It should be a fun / intense weekend for me followed by 3 relaxing days in the Okanagan, I am really looking forward to it…

Some pictures to come soon, hopefully this week I have more time to post than last week.

Thanks

Facundo