Solid Week and NO RACING

After last weekend's race debacle, I was looking forward to a nice week of simply training. This week didn't disappoint one bit. Due to my lip stitches I didn't get into the water until Friday. This made room for lots'o riding. All road bike. 4x group rides and 1x quality solo session.

I hit the M/W/F 5am group rides and a 70 mile group ride on Saturday. More and more people have been coming out of the woodwork as the race season is upon us....plus the weather is killer. It actually felt hot this week with temps creeping into the upper 80s. Not that group ride power numbers are what I am after, but I did set some all-time high marks this week. By time Saturday's ride came around I was pretty tired and I had to earn every pedal stroke. By the end of the ride I was bonking pretty good. Then...to add insult to injury I bonked again on my run later in the day. Nice day! In hindsight it was 90% poor nutrition. I can't believe I still make poor food decisions, but it happens.

Tonight I just wrapped up a nice 3500y swim. Pretty basic main set of 8x300 at a "moderate" pace with :20 rest in between each. By the end of the set I was going :07/100 faster than when I had started. Swimming is such a form thing it's sick. Plus, I am learning that I need quite a warm-up...particularly after a long week.

Also today I was supposed to do another 10k race. Well I didn't do it. I just wasn't feeling up to the whole race-day thing. It's long and tiring and in this case not that big of a pay-off. I did however go to the job on one of my favorite trails. I did a 10min warm-up with 1 moderate and 1 race-pace acceleration. Again, back to the warm-up thing, not quite enough. I need like 20min with 3-4 accels. Whatever, I did the thing hard. Not fast, but hard. The course is 95% on trails and has 1,000ft of climbing.

I am kind of moving from a run phase to more of a bike/swim phase. Will be fun. At the end of this week I will be down in Tucson helping out with a Grasky Endurance Camp and with Trifest.