Afternoon Cleaning

I'm guessing by now that everyone out there is starting to trickle back to their jobs and their day-to-day routines after picking up all the confetti and recycling all those wine bottles from New Year's Eve. Myself? Well, I've landed back at work and have gotten back to business as well.

My week in sport started out with some very good bike workouts. As you know, the last time I tested for power at LT, my numbers were on the order of 20% higher than those obtained during my preliminary test right before I began base training. This was a great motivational factor, however, all my bike workouts have been adjusted accordingly (for the new power numbers) and... Damn. They're hard now! Okay, I know, it's not like they weren't hard before, it's just as soon as you start to "get comfortable" with the workouts, it's time to up the power zones again, and then it starts all over. Ugh. Anyways. The bike workouts are good and hard - right where they need to be, and in truth, are starting to feel easier each workout - another very positive sign.

Running has also been quite good, with my weekly long runs hitting the 2 hour mark, and a total of about 5 hours of running per week. My speed at tempo is starting to increase, and my leg turnover is also right where I want it to be. Along with running, my swimming is coming back to me - I had to take a week off from swimming over the holidays on account of the pools being closed. I managed a couple of 2500 m workouts in this week and will be upping those to above the 3k mark in the upcoming weeks. Oh. Speaking of which, I was inspired by all those swimmers out there who always seem to have the best workout structures. That is, my workouts are usually pretty simple (read: boring as hell), like main sets of 15x100s for speed, broken sets of volume, or drill work... But those darn swimmers know just how to break things up during a pool session so that (a) things remain interesting and (b) still serve a specific training purpose (e.g., speed, endurance, etc.). But, where could your Average Joe find such valuable information for himself? Tippity-Tap-Tap on the keyboard and: Eureka! I came across this little gem that has a countless number of awesome workouts arranged in a very sensible manner on a deck of waterproof, poolside cards. I skeh-daddled over to my nearest Borders and found a copy for myself. All I can say is: If you're a triathlete and you don't come from a swim background, you should totally pick one of these books up.

Lastly, it's time to get the kudos bag out again. This time around, I want to acknowledge Wil over at Through Th3 Wall who just got herself a new domain and a stellar website with help from Okolo. Wil blogs like the wind and puts the rest of us triathlete-bloggers to shame with her lengthy, poetic posts, and has recently announced a pod-casting component for her fans in conjunction with this guy (you might have heard of him). More kudos for Tammy and Elizabeth as they are a few days away from running the Arizona Rock & Roll marathon out in... uhh... Arizona. Those crazy kids. Running a marathon in January! Finally, kudos to my good friend Tim, or Triple T as I like to call him, for closing on his first house! Get out the spackle and the paint cans bro, and remember those smooth, instructional words of Mr. Miyagi: Paint deh Fence Daniel-san!

Keep it easy.