This past weekend was my first weekend of training. Saturdays are long bike days and Sundays are long runs. Because of the weather, I had to stay indoors. So how do you make a 60 minute bike ride on a stationary bike more exciting? You watch the NCIS marathon on USA :-) It's a lot easier to keep going when you are watching something interesting. If you want to mix it up even more, spin harder during the show and take it easy on the commercials. Then it gives you a bit of interval training which can be more beneficial than just straight spinning for an hour. It's best if you haven't seen the particular episode of that show so you don't know what is coming but it had been a while since I saw it so I didn't remember everything.
Sunday morning, I woke up at 7 all prepared to brave the elements and run for 45 minutes outside. Well, Mother Nature had different plans for me and it was snowing with a fresh inch or so on the ground. I'm not gonna lie, I am a wuss when it comes to running outside in the cold, especially when it's slick as shit. I'm not going to bust my ass. So I swapped out my Monday rest day with my 45 minute run on Sunday. I headed into the gym at 6am Monday and hopped on the treadmill. Because this was a long run, it wasn't supposed to be too high of intensity. Making this treadmill run more exciting was pretty much impossible. But thanks to Eminem's Recovery, I had some good tunes to get me through. I'm also pretty sure I look ridiculous when I'm singing to myself and almost dancing while running.
And now my favorite workout I've had in the past week. Today is Tuesday so it is a swim and run day. I headed to the pool this morning. Anyone who has put in the yardage in the pool knows that sometimes it's just flat boring. Especially when you're trying to get in a lot. I, personally, spend way too much time in my head if I'm just mindlessly swimming laps and over-analyze EVERY little detail of my life. So thanks to Andy, I had other things to think about today. We did a pretty standard warm up consisting of 200 kick, 200 free, 200 IM, 200 free. Then we did a vertical kicking set 2 x [5x :40 on, :20 rest, then two 50's free on 1:00 with a max of 3 breaths per 50]. Then it was time for the main set: the 1:01 Challenge. Here's how it works: it's 50's on the 1:01. BUT, you always have to make it back by the top. So you leave on the top, swim a 50, make it back by the top, then leave on the :01. And you keep doing them on the 1:01 but making it back before the top. You keep going until you no longer make it back by the top. I ended up doing about 30 50's. The last one I made was on :30. I'm not sure if I could have made more, but I had to get out and get ready for work. I'll be honest, I wasn't a big fan of this new coach but he's coming up with neat ways of making practice interesting. After about 8-10 months, I kind of like him now :-)
And now it's off to be an adult and go to work. I'll get my 30 min run in at lunch today on the treadmill and will hopefully be celebrating a successful day with dinner with my brother tonight.
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