Well...my training finally took a hit due to the winter weather. With 15" of snowfall overnight, and wind chills in the -20s, I officially had zero motivation. Here is the breakdown of week 6 and week 7:
Week 6
Swim: 6600 yards
Bike: 29 miles
Run: 18.2 miles
Best of the best: Wednesday's swim workout. The workout immediately followed a bike workout (27min threshold ride). Main set was 12x100 @ 10" rest. After a couple of these 100s, I made up my mind instead to hold a constant interval of 1:20. At the beginning of the workout I was holding 1:08-1:10s (probably the first 8 or so) and then the 9th and 10th repeat were around 1:12, then I had a 1:13, and finally a 1:16. This was a good indicator that I am gaining some swimming endurance/speed and makes me pretty excited. I can't stand swimming slow and losing my swimming shape, so being able to do 12x100 @ 1:20 is uplifting.
Honorable mention best of the best: I braved the 5 degree weather and went for my long run outside on Sunday. I ran from my apartment to Ames City Hall and back. The total was about 8.75 miles and the total time was an hour 15min. It was nice to be able to run this long outside, however the cold was pretty terrible. I finished with frost covering all of my body from head to toe. It actually looked pretty cool!
Worst of the worst: My bike mileage was pretty down this week. I missed out on my long ride on Saturday due to a YMCA swim meet in Des Moines. I told myself I would ride after the meet, but I could only make myself ride for 45minutes instead of an hour and 45min.
Week 7
Two words can describe this week: No Motivation. Throughout week 7 the winter weather conditions were harsh. 20" of snowfall. The high temperatures of the week in the single digits. All of this, coupled with a lot of schoolwork led to no motivation to complete my allotted amount of workout time for the week. Here are the totals:
Swim: 4000 yards
Bike: 39 miles
Run: 12 miles
My total time for the week was only 50% of what it was supposed to be. This was not a good week at all.
Best of the best: The ISU Triclones held our annual time trials on Saturday and Sunday of the week. These time trials are to determine the top 7 male and female athletes that will be our team for nationals in April. Saturday we had the 10k run time trial. This went better than expected as I have not been running what I should be, and not been running hard intervals hardly at all to increase my speed. My time for the run was 40:19. It was a two loop run and the group I was in ran negative splits (20:20, 19:59) for each 5k. My calves definitely have been in pain for the 4 days after that run though...
Honorable mention: At the YMCA swim meet in Boone on Saturday I told the kids I would swim a 500 butterfly if one of our 7year old girls finished her first ever 200free with all flipturns. She did it, so in turn, I had to do my 500fly. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Finished it in 7minutes exactly, so I was decently pleased.
Worst of the worst: The overall trend of the week was the worst. Only getting in 50% of my total workout time is unacceptable. I have blamed it all on the weather, but in reality, the weather can't be completely to blame. Week 8 will be a lot better.
Thats all for now! I'll leave you with the forecast high temperatures for week 9: (something to look forward to..)
Monday: 37
Tuesday: 42
Wednesday: 51
Thursday: 53
Friday: 46
(these temperatures may not seem extremely warm...but coming off a week of single digit high temperatures, it's a HEAT WAVE!)