For me training is really a frustrating journey. I will train and see little improvements for a couple of weeks, then suddenly, bam, a significant jump in strength and/or speed. Then generally I will have a setback and then start the slow build again. It basically 2 steps forward, 1 step back. And that's fine because I'm still moving in a forward direction, it can just get frustrating. This past week I thought I had taken the 1 step back, but this morning I think I took the 2 steps forward. So, basically, I not sure what happened.
Yesterday was a bike ride. I get up before the roosters and lift weights, then as soon as the sun makes an appearance, I'm off on my bike. I did 14.2 miles in 1:06 (I think). I seem to live in a low point. Whichever direction I head out from my house is uphill. I was supposed to do 15 miles but at the 7 mile mark there begins a huge, steep uphill that, frankly, I haven't had the nerve to try yet. I'm saving that for my 2 steps forward day :) After the ride I had a short transition run just to get the legs used to it. I ended up running up and down my driveway playing with the dogs, it was fun.
Today was swimming and running. That lady with her kids was at the pool again. I just keep telling myself that it's only temporary. She's probably on vacation or something. At worse, Hawaii is on some twisted year round school schedule so that will only be out of school like 5 weeks. Anyway, I'm just going to ignore them and give off bad vibes when they are in my way in the morning.
So swimming. I was supposed to do 750 m and I really wanted to work on my TI drills which I've let fall by the wayside since the move. So I did 2 x 100m warm up: 2:56 and 2:24; 250m drills: 6:57; 300m swim: 8:22. All swimming was done sloooooww. I was really working on form and rolling. I was pleased with the way it felt. During the 2nd 100m I couldn't help racing with the guy in the next lane. He was telling someone how he was a triathlete and was racing all these races, blah, blah, blah. We just happened to leave the wall at the same time and I couldn't help but push to keep up with him. Yeah, he's not so fast. The exciting part of that is my goal for the race is 2:30/100m. I did 2:24 and felt like I was pushing a little but I could have kept it up for a while. That's what I'm talking about. So there I was, 750m in 22:49 - sweet since I was going really slow. I think I can pull off 800m in 20 minutes.
Then it was out of the pool and off for a run. This is where I really rocked. I have a route I run that's down from the Y, through the marsh and back. I run for time not distance since time is the limiting factor in the morning. Along the marsh path they have these little markers on the wall that have numbers on them. I have no idea what they mean or how far apart they are, but they are at very regular intervals (this was built by the Army Corps of Engineers so it's very precise). When I started running I felt a little dead and thought, ugh, this is going to be tough. After about 5 minutes I started to feel good, really good. I go to the marsh path and decided it was time to do some intervals. I would run from one marker to another as fast as I could. I have no idea how far it was and that doesn't matter, the point was I did 6 of these little sprints and felt great. The return run to the Y is uphill and I made it no problem. So, to recap, I did sprints and ran further than normal in less time, sweet. I'm estimating it's almost 3 miles in 31 minutes - very sweet!! Definitely 2 steps forward today.
I definitely feel like I'm making progress and that's what I needed to feel. It's these days that keep me going. I have no doubt that tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after, I will feel like a little baby just learning to walk and I will have to think back to today and realize how strong I'm getting.
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