Back with a Bang!

Prodded along by the nagging of my number one fan, I have made it back to the world of blogging! :)

These past few weeks were definitely not wasted weeks. After getting sick in early February, I sorta got thrown off track and my blogging lost steam. The good news is that I stuck to my training plan and now I'm in a solid build phase leading up to my bike class test next Saturday and a nice little 8k towards the end of March.

I realize that peaking for these events are pretty pointless but I couldn't keep basing. I NEEDED to see the fruits of my labor. I NEEDED to add speedwork. Especially for a person who's planning to focus on Olympic distances I had to get some intensity in.

With that said, I'm feeling pretty good about my run leg. I was able to do a 20 minute tempo run at 7:30 min/mile pace. I remember destroying myself trying to hit a 8 min/mile pace in an 8k race last year, so this is a huge improvement. I'm excited.

As for the bike portion- I have no idea how much I've progressed. I have yet to ride outside. And the computrainer classes kept me working at certain percentages of my FTP, so I really have no way to gauge my improvement- thus far. The weekend after next is our end-of-class FTP test and I'm hoping to have at least a 10% improvement (203 to 223).

But swimming... ahhh swimming. The apple of my eye, my pride and joy...
My progress in this discipline has been above and beyond my expectations. It was only in November that I waddled along at 1:55/100 pace. It was only in December that I decided to pick up bilateral breathing. It was only in January that I started incorporating flipturns. Now those skills feel like second nature and I'm cruising along at 1:35/100 pace in my warmups. I was hoping to be at this point by the end of this year, but I may have to revise my goals. If I can drop my cruise intervals to 1:25/100 by the end of this year, I would be estatic!