Susan's week

I'm doing about 6-9 hours for the next 3 weeks and then have a scheduled recovery week. We are following a plan by the same coach as we used for our half training last year. I like how he builds in weeks of recovery every 7 weeks or so. I really understood the benefit of rest last year when, two weeks before the Muskoka 70.3 I fell running and really did a job on my face, shoulder, knee and shin resulting in an infection in my leg, antibiotics and no workouts for the last two weeks of the plan. I was so well rested by the time the race came along that I actually beat my first half distance time by over 5 minutes on a course that was substantially tougher and in terrible wet weather. It was very hard to take those two weeks off but I'm a fast learner and the effect of the rest was pretty apparent.

Unseasonable cold and rain derailed our 60k bike on Sunday so we watched a movie and did an inside spin. Pretty boring - generally I just run and swim in the winter and don't really use my trainer much. That will, however, have to be a back up plan for this year as we can't just miss those workouts if the weather is really bad. September and October is generally very nice in Ontario but we could get some bad rain storms with the hurricane season to the south. Those blow up and give us some pretty wet days.

Otherwise we did a 10k run with at 1700 m swim on Saturday after a week with a hour interval and steady run, and Pilates (every week). Local pool was closed so I missed the short swim that was planned.

This week has Pilates today, a 13k hill run Wednesday, spin class for some intervals on Thursday and we will get in our first open water swim next Saturday. We are planning to piggy back on a race course set up for an afternoon race. It will be nice to have a marked swim course. Sunday will be a 1.5 hour ride followed by a 10k run off the bike.

It's all baby steps to the finish line.