Week 30 Wrap-up

Thank God for recovery weeks--that pretty much sums up my thoughts through most of last week. Heading into Week 30, I was wiped--Week 31 was pretty intense, and, coupled with the lack of sleep I had, I ended up ready to curl up and sleep for a month. But, never fear, I hit the pool bright and early Monday morning and started in on Week 30 training. With reduced volume in all disciplines, I was actually feeling back to normal by Wednesday--probably also helped by the very conscious (if not always successful) effort to get to bed earlier.

I had to shift my Thursday run to Tuesday (normally, I have a run already scheduled on Tuesday along with a bike, but this week it was only bike) to accommodate day-long focus groups for work (ugh)--worked OK, but I felt like the Gatorade Endurance Formula ad that says something like "If you wake up at 4 am but don't get to the office until 9 am..."--namely because I woke up at 4:05 and sat down at my desk at 8:58. (Of course, it wasn't all training--Tuesday mornings are about the only time I get to do any training with Sue, Michele, and Erin, so there's always a fair amount of talking as well.)

The big highlight of the week, though, was a trip to the great North (aka Minneapolis) to hang out with the Clique (the group of college friends that Vardo and I have). Originally, Vardo and I had planned to do some training together, but, sadly, her grandfather passed away last week and she was unable to make the trek to Mpls. Sparkle, though, gladly (or maybe not-so-gladly) stepped up and offered to run with me. The original plan was to run outside, but that plan got scrapped Friday night when the pilot told us the air temperature was -12F with a -51F wind chill. So, Sondra (one of the locals) found us a Y that offered day passes, and Sparkle and I pounded out our mileage on warm, toasty treadmills. The rest of the weekend was great--just hanging out, bowling, eating very yummy and non-WW friendly bar food, and falling asleep watching "Napoleon Dynamite"--in the grand scheme of life, it really doesn't get much better. I had to skip the 40 min recovery bike scheduled after the long run, but I'll make that sacrifice any day to hang out with those guys.

I'm feeling pretty good about my training at this point--I'm most surprised by how far my swim training has come. Jenny's tip about my head position has enabled a big step-change for me--I've shaved 4 strokes/length off consistently and am ~5-7 seconds faster/100 m...not bad for a crappy swimmer. I still find it amusing (and likely always will) that I actually go slower when I kick...guess I'll just keep muscling my way through it and use the excuse that I'm saving my legs for the bike. My biking seems to be coming along as well--I'm hitting a slightly faster mph at the same heart rate, plus (more importantly) I'm spending way more time down in the aero position thanks to my comfy new bike. I'm still maintaining my sanity, too, although one of my co-workers just left on maternity leave, and I picked up most of her project work and all of her direct reports (which also means Jeremy and Erin now report to me until she returns from leave--weird to be in that position). So, we'll see how things go from here, but I'll keep digging (to use a NASCAR quote from last weekend)...

Here's the roll-up...

Swim: 2:58:00 / 8000 m
Bike: 3:58:07 / 65.16 miles
Run: 2:04:28 / 12.55 miles
Total: 9:00:35 / 82.68 miles

Week 29, here I come....