Triathlon training: Week TWO

End of another week of training. I definitely had some progress this time and that gives me hope.

If you run up hills long enough, you too can have these sweet  buns!

Early in the week I started cross training while running. The first day of running I ran 2 miles but after 5 minutes of jogging I would stop and do ten reps of  a different activity like jumping jacks, push ups, crunches, and burpees. The second day of running I finally tried a bit of trail running by using the horse trails rather than the road (the benefit of living in horse country is that instead of greenways we have horse trails. lol). I also decided to try tackling a large uphill fire road by doing a couple of sprints up part of the hill. This looks like it's the start of a new routine. Hopefully by the end of this I'll have buns of steel!

My new trail running shoes also work well for cycling.

As I've mentioned before cycling is my biggest weakness. I have been trying to steadily go up a road without dying. The first day I was breathing so hard and going so slowly I felt like a tortoise would surpass me while giving me a glare. However the next day of cycling I was able to do a bit of stretching before mounting the bike and that helped me not only get a better start but I managed to go all the way up the hill! And boy once I made that hill going down was like a roller coaster. I checked my phone app's statistics later and I was going 30mph down hill. What a ride. LOL. This was probably my proudest moment all week. :)

This is what my commute to the pool looks like.

This weekend I drove down the hill to the aquatic center. I decided that I would add one or two lengths each session and will also work on swimming a certain amount of lengths without stopping. Yesterday (Saturday) was a total of 13 lengths (26 laps) and I swam 3 lengths without stopping at a time. This morning I swam 15 lengths, swimming 4 lengths at a time. With this pool it takes 17 lengths to swim a mile so I almost swam a mile this morning! I was really excited and I almost swam those extra lengths but I was already pretty tired and didn't want to push myself too soon. I'll tackle that distance happily next weekend.

One thing I now have to watch out for is my car. Driving up and down the hill is a 30-40 minute one way commute on a windy road. My car has been good in the past but lately it's been acting up a little bit (happens when you own a well used 1999 Honda sedan). As I was driving down the hill this morning I suddenly realized that my power steering had stopped working. If you've never had that happen to you it makes turning left and right so hard that you have to use all your strength. I survived the ride down the hill but then had to head to the mechanic once my swim was over. All is well now but if my car continues to fall apart it will be hard to head down the hill and meet my swimming quota.

I can't see any changes in my body yet. I've been eating way too much lately to expect any weight loss this week. However I've continued to wake up feeling healthy and refreshed every morning. This is the sign that is telling me my workouts are slowly working wonders to my body. I also love knowing that I already did my workouts and don't have to worry about them around dinner time. It's still dark and cold out and I know that if I had tried to schedule my work outs in the evening after work I would have failed my training already. LOL. The only thing I'll probably miss in the future is sleeping in. I have to wake up at least by 6 am every morning to get my work outs in and wake up at 7 a.m. the latest during rest days because I have to get up for work anyway.

I'll do a quick post with my weekly weigh in tomorrow. Have a happy MLK day tomorrow American friends and hope everyone's weekend has been a happy and eventful one.

-w0rld