Monday, September 17, 2007

Take Two!

TWO whole minutes off my previous best 5 mile time! I ran 5 miles at a 9:04 pace the other day. It was hot and so I figure that when the weather cools off a little I'll be running sub 9 pace (that's my hope anyway). The long bikes are paying off too by increasing my lactic threshold.



Also recently I did a quick time trial of 1000 yard swim. The goal was to finish in less than 19 minutes. I SMASHED it finishing in 16:30. This time trial was to 1) set a benchmark early in my training for me to measure my progress against and 2) to determine if speed and endurance should be my primary focus or technique. The result: technique. Now that I can swim 1000 yards in under 19 minutes, I should focus on my efficiency more according to Joe Friel's book "Going Long".



Coming up this weekend is my first Olympic Triathlon. It will be in Miami and is modeled after Escape from Alcatraz. Instead, it's Escape back to Miami. There's a ferry that takes you out to an island where you wait for your swim to start. Then you swim back to shore 0.7 miles, jump on your bike for 24.9 miles and run 6.2 miles. I'm really excited about the race, but not looking forward to trying to be ready to teach first thing Monday morning since the race is on Sunday 4 hours away. I'll have to stay really focused all week to get my work done so I can play hard this weekend.

1 comment:

Peter said...

All things are related, but my theory is that the biking is just giving you aerobic system a good long workout without having to spend so much running time pounding the pavement. Plus, marathon training has a lot of fatigue because of the constant buildup.

Lactic threshold is a muscle specific ability to efficiently burn fuel, and running and biking muscles are generally pretty different, especially if your bike has a tri setup. So that's probably not where the improvements are coming from. You're just getting fitter.

Hope the weekend went well.