Come Train With Me

I kept a written training log for years. From 1999, right through the biggest years of training and racing.

How many times have you been training with someone and wondered about the thoughts behind the “no breath pass” and what might be written inside the pages of the training log back home?
I’ll share little tidbit thoughts, challenges and more. Come train with me, try the session, share a laugh, sweat and tears.

This is some unfiltered and unedited thoughts of a few days of my  training. I’ve shared from behind my eyes and inside my crazy head. Have a laugh, roll with me, and come along for the fun.

Friday Aug 10th/ 2018:

Swim

Warm up:

400 swim, 300 pull, 200 kick

4 rounds ( 3x 25 dec 1-3 down to fast :40)

8x 50 as 4 on :60, 4 on :50- Held :41-:42

Main Set:

4 x 100 off the blocks MAX effort 100 on 3min.

5min easy pull

4 x running start fast 25’s---easy 25 back to start.

5 min easy pull.

Today was the first masters swim workout I’d been to in awhile. Well welcome back princess. Holy shit, how can such little swimming hurt so much. Didn’t help that my lane mate for the sprint 100’s was doing 51sec. Yes you read that right, 51sec for the 100!!! The coach told us to keep your lane partners 50 split time, when my lane mate came in on :26 for 50 fly to finish the 100 in under :60 I was like...hmmmm…. Don’t worry about keeping my splits! My all star 1:13 first max 100 free was a guns a blazing. By the time I had gotten to number 4 the plan of, “just hold under 1:15 for all 4”, went flying out the window as I flopped in at 1:20. The best was when the coach said…”Wow, you really did go for it on the first one!” Ha!

I guess when we were asked at the start of practice if we wanted to sprint today, or do distance, I should have ran to the distance lane. I still have a fantasy of being a sprint queen one day though! They just seem so dam cool! I will say I had a good chuckle diving off the blocks with the reaction time of a stoned rhino, goggles filling up with water and nearly falling off each time. Fun stuff! Welcome back to Fast Friday!

Sat Aug 11th/ 2018:

The Group Ride

60 miles from a random meeting spot ( because all roadie rides need a random meeting spot :) ) on Brown Road out to EOP ( end of the pavement) You can look it up on map my ride or strava pretty easily as it’s a local favorite. This ride goes right through the tortilla flats and national park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortilla_Flat,_Arizona

If you ever get through this area it is a must do ride. Probably one of the most beautiful rides you’ll do with fun climbs and winding descents. The views with Canyon Lake are pretty incredible.There are some cool historic stop points out there to refuel at, including a general store that sells yummy fudge!

I haven’t been up here is Mesa on a Saturday in a while and when I knew I’d be in town this weekend I reached out to my favorite riding buddies up here to see what they were up to. These guys are fast but always nice enough to let this triathlon chick tag along when I reach out. They mentioned there would be a group ride heading out to EOP  with Damiano Cunego. Just a guy that won a little race called the GIRO DI ITALIA.

Will it be gentlemen or hammer fest? This is almost always the question when you decide to head to a group ride, add in a Giro D'ITalia winner there  and you really aren’t sure what the dynamic might be. I figured it would be either super respectful and social, or it would be a complete hammerfest of excitement to be riding with a athlete of his level. I came ready for it to likely be the second. When you are a female that shows up on these types of rides you better hang on and and hope to catch some wheel that is happy you are there with them. Luckily I found that wheel out the driveway because we were going hard from about the first 500m into a brutal cross wind. There had been a storm the night before and behind these tall men I can’t see ANYTHING. So I really just try my best to hold the wheel and trust. There was one sandbar I hit that I’m pretty sure my bike went into full on cat mode as my front wheel went plowing through the deep sand and my ninja reflexes had to hold the hell on not to take us all out through the mud. Good thing I’m quicker on a bike then I am off swim blocks!

I hung in there in the wind as we rode out towards the climbs. As we hit the first climb the guy’s really went for it. I was in the rotation and as we hit the base of the first climb it was just my luck I was on the front as part of  the pace line. I was like, “ Oh CRAP, this isn’t where I want to be right now!!!”. As they went up that first climb I moved right and stayed the heck out of the way. Holy crap were they MOVING!!! Fun to watch. In my younger years I would have killed myself to hang on to them. I’m a little older and wiser now, I knew this was out of my league to hang on the climb with them today.

I could always see them just ahead the remainder of the ride. I caught back on at one point for a moment to only drop back off as they flew down the descents at 60 miles an hour. I’m o.k downhill, but on these twists and turns at that speed, I just don’t have those skills. I got out to the turn around not far behind. I think at this point in the ride what started as about 30+ guys was down to about 10. I think some of the guys that were left behind got fairly heated when the pace was so aggressive, but I kind of expected that today and really just enjoyed being with them for a while. That ride is so beautiful even when you end up solo it’s a pretty darn awesome ride. I was happy to cruise home nice and steady. Fun little pow wow in the parking lot with friends afterwards to hear the war stories of the ride and a pretty awesome way to spend a Sat morning.

I’ve always said, sports bring all walks of life together in a way we never might otherwise get the chance to. On this particular Sat we all were able to enjoy a small 60 mile ride with a top cyclist we would otherwise only be able to watch on t.v. that’s pretty darn cool!

Sunday Aug 12/ 2018:

Masters Swim- A lots of breast stoke crap and some descending 200 pulls. Was happy to just be in the water and loosen up.

Run Treadmill- It’s so dam hot here in AZ in the summer opted for treadmill.

Hamster wheel!!! Broke the run into segments mentally.

Warm up 20min

2min walk

2 x 26 min at 7.5-7.8 speed, 4min easy between.

10min cool down

So much sweat I think the other gym members were literally concerned.

Nothing special. Just getting the work done!

Monday Aug 13/ 2018:

Groundhog Day

People think training is glamorous and has to be fun, magically and new PR everyday. But the reality is most the time it’s just work or what I often joke is “groundhog day”.

One time one of my training buddies Justin Daerr and I were talking about all the hours we trained ( back when I raced professionally) He asked, “ How many of these sessions do you think we remember or are memorable?”  I think after a lot of conversation we agreed on that out of 25-35 hours/ week for 365 days/ year about THREE were actually memorable.

Just do work! Not many of them are magical, but when all combined over a long time, they make magic!!!!

Todays training- Some swim at masters. Don’t remember really what we did, but I was there 60min and I swam!
 

Tuesday Aug 14th / 2018:

Run track. 104 deg F out! Dam hot!!

Warm up 1 miles

Drills

1/1-2/2-3/3-3/3-2/2-1/1

HARD/ Easy

1 miles cool down

Looks easy. Was hard as f*%k with the heat. Tried to get to the same start/finish point each time for each rep on the ladder. Thought I was going to vomit after the 2nd 3min.

Wed Aug 15th /2018:

Did the ASU first team practice ride. Skills on the field with the girls and then about 90min easy-steady ride with one hard climb of about 5min in the middle of it. Skills included on a soccer field, follow the leader, pylon weaving course, track stand in the box, pick up and bottle drop off ground, U-turn, get up to speed and bunny hop ladder.

Swim- I’ve been doing the same swim once a week for about 4 weeks now. I was swimming like crap about a month ago and when I feel that way the best thing for me is to repeat a basic threshold swim where each week gets better as my fitness comes around.

800 warm up mix

10x 50 :50 holding :41

500 steady fins

10x 100 pull on 1:30 holding 1:21-1:22

200 cdwn.

Thursday Aug 16/2018:

2 hours easy ride - teaching new athletes riding as a group and outside stuff. Nice and easy.

45 min easy run around my loop. About 5 miles ish. Easy. Felt good actually. Surprised to feel good tonight, but I’ll take it.

Easy peasy day! :)

Hope you enjoyed a few days along with me. Thanks for reading and rolling with me.