Five Weeks until the Halfmax Half Ironman Race

A couple of weeks ago,  I was in a panic about the training plan from the book I’ve always used, having difficulty following it.   It was just too much with my work schedule.  So,  I met with Triathlon Coach, Marty Gaal, who worked up a plan for me.   It’s still alot, but more doable, and Marty said just commit to Tu,Th, Sat and Sun.  If you have to skip the other days, don’t sweat it.    That alone helps alot (and yes, I’ve had to skip some!)

This is my training plan for the week that Marty Gaal gave me:  I have a long run midweek.  That is very different from what I always did in the past.  Change is good.   🙂

• Monday 30-Aug off
• Tuesday 31-Aug swim at lunch IOS ride T run
• Wednesday 1-Sep run at lunch 45 min steady
• Thursday 2-Sep swim at lunch 1.25 hour run with 2×15 min Z3 on 5 min recovery.
• Friday 3-Sep off
• Saturday 4-Sep long ride, 3 hour build to moderately hard/tempo effort T run
• Sunday 5-Sep long run 10-12 miles (max 2 hours)
• Monday 6-Sep ride or off (LABOR DAY, no work, w00t!)

When I did the Harris lake nuclear swim, I faded in the 2nd half.  My time was 4 min slower as compared ot last year. It made me realize that I am just not used to swimming that hard for that long.   So this week at the pool, I chose a “Muscular Endurance  – Distance” swim workout from my “Swim workouts in a Binder” book by Gale Bernhardt.   I hate those workouts because it has a lot of long-ish swim sets at race pace.   It was hard, but it’s what I need more of.