Into the weekend!

It was a cracking morning for my morning swim today, with water temp of 26 and a beautiful sunrise coming up, winter is ending!

My swim is coming along really well form the work I'm putting into it and I'm feeling quite strong in the water now. The extra k's may not necessarily transfer into a big chunk of time of my swim, but I'm are that I will come out of the water much less fatigued than normal.

Swimming is my weak leg

and I normally come out of the water sucking in the big breaths and have to work very hard for the first half of the bike to make up lost time. Hopefully in Kona this will not be so bad, although up against best in the world I'm sure that I will still be on the back foot somewhat.

This mornings swim session was 4000m and involved;

200 w/u
8 x 50 (free/non free)
4 x 100 as (fist, catchup, hypoxic, sighting)
6 x 200 on 3:50
100 easy
7 x 100
1000 aerobic

Felt quite good right through to the end of the session and my confidence is growing with the swim. Previous ironman preparations a 4km swim was BIG and I would only do that a couple of times on the last 10 weeks, now I'm knocking out a couple a week!

My long run in the afternoon was a tough one!

The plan was;

2hrs done as;

30 min @ 4:40min/km
30 min @ 4:30 min/km
30 min @ 4:20 min km
10 min @ < 4:20 min/km
20 min aerobic cool down, holding good form through to completion.

Long run link

This run really tested the concentration levels and mental strength as it built up intensity as the fatigue was coming on. I used it as a test for my race shoes by going out from home 30 mins and returning back 30 mins, then swapping shoes from ON cloud surfers to the New Balance Zante's. The jury is still out on what I'll use but I'm leaning towards the Zante's.

What a run that was though, I was working pretty hard for the last 10min section of running faster than 4:20min/km's! I could feel my hamstrings and calves working hard and starting to get sore, so I was glad for the aerobic final 20 mins!

A great day of training and I executed two tough sessions relatively comfortably.