Swim

2 sessions at 2700m each. I am super proud of this week’s efforts. The first swim took me around 1h 20min to complete, I forgot my Garmin so that’s an estimate. My next swim was much faster, at around 1h 7min. I was resigned to spending just as much time at the pool as my first swim this week and was happy to see how much quicker I was able to get the same distance done. To be fair, I had different workouts for each swim, and really it doesn’t matter how long it takes me during training as we weren’t doing time trials. But considering how swimming is not exactly my forte, it just really pleases me. I’m getting close to swimming the farthest I’ve ever swum in a single session.

Bike

2 sessions, my heavy intervals session, and 2 hour 15 minute long ride. The heavy intervals sessions is now marginally longer, at 1 hour 10 minutes. It’s a nice workout. My long ride was a good one, and similar to last week where we had a “mad effort” segment. It was only 10 minutes vs. the 20-minute segment. I did the best I could and tried to drop some higher efforts at the end. We went to mail a letter the other day, and there were Haribo candies on sale that caught our eye. I had a craving, so we picked up a few packages. I ended snacking on quite a few for my long ride and thought it made for some good fuel.

Run

2 sessions. One Moneghetti session, and one long run session at 2 hours. Moneghetti workouts help build endurance and speed. I enjoy this weekday workout a lot because it feels snappy. It’s a little Fartlek-y in a ladder format, so it feels snappy. This long run consisted of 18 3 minute half marathon pace intervals. My long run is after my long ride, so I thought it was going to be hurtsville.

The long run was surprisingly not terrible! I felt pretty strong throughout my long run, with the exception of my last 2 intervals where it felt like I was developing a side cramp. I didn’t feel thirsty, but I must have been dehydrated. Just like my long ride, I also snacked on some Haribo candies. I ended up doing about 15 minutes of stretching after my run. It felt like my hips and legs really needed it, and I’m glad I did. I don’t think I stretched enough after my long ride, so I made sure to spend some extra time on my hamstrings.

Overall Thoughts

In terms of this Ironman Canada training recap, this felt like another good training week. I was thrilled and proud of how far I am now swimming. I’ve been trying to keep the calories up, as well as keeping up with hydration. Hydration was my focus from last week, and I think I did a decent effort. But I know the night before my long ride, I indulged in a few cocktails and didn’t drink as much water as I could have. It seemed to turn out fine because I was able to put out a pretty good effort. Though I did end up going to bed really early that day. And then I got a little crampy on my long run the next day. It looks like I’ll have to keep working on hydration.

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Ironman Canada Training Recap – 28 Weeks

Swim

2 swims, 2300m and 2400m. Like I said before, I felt much stronger on the swims this week. I’ve been working on entering the water wider and speeding up my turnover. I’ve been doing a lot of swims with paddles. And the 2400m swim was all paddles. I feel a lot better than last week with regard to my swims. I often sneak out for lunchtime swims, but because the distances are getting much longer, I think I might have to switch up my schedule soon.

Bike

Only 1 this week, a heavy intervals session. We do this one every single week without fail. And we only had one bike session this week, since we are trading out the long bike session for a day of skiing! We did 1 heavy intervals session, and I felt pretty strong. I hit new resistances again on the bike, but I wasn’t able to hit as many high heavy intervals as last week.

When I told my coach we wanted to go skiing this weekend, I will admit, I was a little disappointed to see we were going to swap the bike session out vs the run. Though, I suppose we have the BMO Half Marathon coming up pretty soon in, so it makes complete sesnse. That race is only 11 weeks away, so I should definitely be working on the runs!

Run

2 sessions. A hilly session as well as a 1 hour and 45 minute long run. I think I mentioned it last week that I had a bit of knee pain after my bike and run sessions, so I spent some time rolling out my legs after my bike session, as well as my long run. This week, I felt a lot better on my long run. I think it helped that most of the run was at 2% on the treadmill, so I got to activate some different muscles. Not a single twinge of knee pain today. I also did a new set of post-run stretches, and I think that helped too.

The long-run called for the warmup, then 45 minutes at a moderate effort at 2% incline. Then a 5km best effort, then into the cooldown. I didn’t bother texting my coach to ask her to clarify if I needed to run the 5k effort at the 2% incline too and decided to run that at 2% incline too. I figured it would be great for training.

Other Activities

We’re spending a day at Big White to go skiing. It’s the first time all season that we’ve gone skiing. It was such a nice day! Visibility wasn’t great, but there was so much champagne powder. It was pretty busy because it was Family Day weekend in BC, but it was still really enjoyable. We skied at a very leisurely pace because we had a long run the day before and I didn’t want to have fried legs for my heavy intervals workout the following day.

Overall Thoughts

I was listening along to an amazing class with Chase Tucker on Peloton Digital, and I never usually take his classes. But I really liked how in the last segment where he asked us to give our best efforts. And he said that didn’t necessarily mean the highest number on the tread, but that it could mean being the most present or being in control of that self-talk. That really resonated with me, and I bucked up a bit. He also said something that made me commit to evolving my self-talk.

Chase said something along the lines of, do not tell yourself that this is good enough, but ask yourself can you do more? Can you do better? And I absolutely LOVED that. Lately, I have been dreading small parts of my workouts, like when I read that I had to do a 5km effort after an hour of running in my long run. Or like seeing 2 10x100m in my swim workout.

I immediately started thinking about what speeds I should set the treadmill at, instead of just going out big, and scaling back if I had to. I think it’s the ego. And a bit of limiting behavior. And I know not every workout has to be a complete sweat fest. Anyway, I don’t know when it happened where my inner voice became not so nice. But I’m working on it. Positive self-talk is just like a muscle, and you have to work on it all the time.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my latest Ironman Canada training recap – 28 Weeks. Below the form are all the previous recaps for your reading pleasure!

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All Ironman Canada Training Recaps

Here are all the previous Ironman Canada training recaps for your reading pleasure!

• This post is the 28 Week recap
• 29 Weeks
• 30 Weeks
• 31 Weeks
• 32 Weeks

The post Ironman Canada Training Recap – 28 Weeks appeared first on The Lifestyle Of Us.

Swim

2 swim sessions, both Walton sessions. Feeling pretty good so far. No shoulder pain from re-incorporating using swim paddles. If you’ve never swam with swim paddle before, it’s the best. It builds strength, and lets you swim so fast. It’s a joy to be able to blow past people in the fast lane. I’m not a fast swimmer… YET. So swimming past people brings me great joy.

BIKE

2 sessions, a heavy intervals and a 2-hour long ride. Feeling pretty good here. Starting to hit some new resistance ranges on the bike, which is really encouraging. I look forward to all my bike sessions, and I hope I can say this in a few months still. It’s the most important part of the Ironman, and I want to be strong and be able to enjoy my day out there.

There was a 5 minute section on my 2 hour ride that did test my mental strength. It was the second 5 minutes hard at 60-65rpm, 3 minute easy section. Right before the 15 minute cool down, and more than an hour and a half of riding. I wanted to give in and turn down the resistance, but I was riding along to a Peloton class and the instructor said something along the lines of needing to push ourselves out of our comfort zones, because that’s when new neural pathways are created, and where growth happens. It message came at the perfect time. It reminded me to hustle and get the work done, and I was pretty happy to put out a consistent 200+ watts through that last 5 minute segment.

RUN

2 sessions, Fartleks and 90 minute long run. Inner thighs felt a little sore after the Fartleks session, but can’t complain. I’ve been diligent with doing my glute activations with resistance bands. The 90 minute run was a bit tougher than I expected. It was a hilly run, and I had to walk a couple of times. Not long, like 20 seconds or so, mostly to stop a side stitch from happening.

We’re doing a bunch of specific run workouts through the week (even in my long runs) which I used to do haphazardly back in 2017. It turned out well for me then. And even though it was all over the place, I managed a 2:02 half marathon. I’m very excited for what’s to come this year, because now I will have greater consistency to my overall training plan, and I should be able to run a sub 2 hour half marathon.

Reflections

Still feeling great this week, and reflecting on the month, feeling great about the month too as reflected in my Ironman Canada training recap. I love streaking challenges, where you do something like every day of the month kind of thing. So I jumped on the New Years bandwagon and  started off with a bunch of 30 minute bike sessions to ease my way back into training. Then I finally messaged my coach to get started with triathlon training again, and I think we’ve made great progress so far easing me back into the swing of things. This week did have a jump in volume, which I didn’t really realize until my coach told me so. Overall, still feeling good and strong.

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