Blinded

It's been a great week, that's for certain. Before I even resumed training after my day off Monday, I was thrilled to see an updated results posting from the Saratoga Duathlon indicating that I in fact took 10th overall in the individuals. Breaking into the top ten overall in a short-course race was one of my season goals this year, and I can't describe the pride I feel in seeing it through so early in the season.

With the new week came the first wave of heat and humidity in the Northeast. In fact, this weather pattern started over the weekend, and took it's toll on a number of racers this past Sunday. I generally perform pretty well in the heat, but that's largely on account of disciplined training in the elements. When it's early in the season, however, those first weeks of acclimating can be tough - and that's where I'm at right now.

Tuesday brought a short 1600m swim at the tank simply to cool myself down from the day, and to work on a little bit of technique. In the evening, I had my routine Tuesday night trainer ride on the tri-bike - this week focusing on high cadence intervals. Wednesday brought more heat and a breakthrough day in the pool for me, with a sweet 2500m swim in under an hour as a great format; after a mixed 600m warm-up, I did 1000m straight with every 4th 50 as kick, followed by a 400m pull block and then 16x25m descending intervals and a little bit of a cool-down. Like I said, this was a great workout.

Wednesday night I took an easy hour run in the 88 degree and comparably humid weather to put in a smooth 7 and a half miles or so to work on acclimating. Working out in these conditions brings with it a whole new set of issues to think about, like: hydration, elevated heart rate, sweat rate, cardiac drift, etc., but better to just get out there and do it now so that come race day there are no big surprises. That's my philosophy anyways.

I was a little bit sore this morning, probably on account of lower hydration levels (despite my best effort) during last night's workout. But after hydrating the best I could throughout the day today and keeping as much weight off my legs as possible while at work, I put in another stellar speedwork session tonight in comparable heat and humidity conditions. Another major plus of tonight's workout was that it was speedwork without the track; once a month I do my speedwork as an 8 mile loop on the road at tempo pace with 20 second accelerations every 3 minutes. It's a killer workout, but gettin'r'done makes you feel on top of the world. As it turned out, I managed to turn out the miles tonight with a pace of around about 7:30s, while ramping things to sub-6:10s during my accelerations.

Over the next several weeks, I'll be walking a real tight-rope in trying to put in my final "big volume" workouts, while simultaneously mixing in just the right amount of speedwork and trying to back off a bit on the non-key workouts in an attempt to peak for the Tupper Lake race. So far, this season has gone very well; my motivation has been consistently high and my results to-date have been right on the mark relative to my expectations - so here's to hoping I can continue this fabulous trend!

Thanks for reading, and stay cool out there.