A comedy of errors and week of 3/8

Interesting week for me, from a training and (non) racing perspective..

The weather turned really rainy in Seattle or it was too cold to actually be outside on the bike; never the less I was able to get in a solid week across the board; and I really do believe in the trainer as the ultimate strength device if an athlete can manage to stay on it for about an hour each session..

Sort of like cross-fit for your legs, not to mention that is very challenging mentally to knock those sessions out.

At any rate, most of the winter I've stayed motivated by a couple of things:

- The impending truth that I will go back to work at some point and that will impede some of the mid-week riding.. Tough isn't it? :)

-A Winter Triathlon out in the Methow Valley I stuck on the calendar this past weekend. (Mtb, XC Ski, Run)

As a result I'm further along then I was last year at the same time across the board, without putting mental effort into it and simply doing a couple of solid sessions a day w/some reduced load sprinkled in for good measure I'm moving toward good to great early season fitness.

I would have liked to test that fitness out in Winthrop but it just didn't work out. I completely spaced the date the event was on and I simply didn't race. There are more details then that, but not getting a chance to do a fun race and test fitness with no expectations just doesn't come along very often, for me anyway.

So, we're entering early multisport season and I just need to be careful that I don't go outside of Zone 2 or L pace; it's important to develop/increase velocity at that level of effort and to do that an athlete needs to stay inside that envelope with small incursions over (and under) Z2/L pace.

For me that means periodic intervals on the bike, not weekly, but maybe bi-weekly.. Swimming is swimming but some of the aggregate has to be quickened velocity. And running, folks need to run very easy on the off days and keep it at L or M when they get to the track..

I did manage four sessions swimming and biking and higher freq run week at five sessions, so all in all a good week.