Still Winter and Good Workouts

I'm not a big fan of cold weather so I can't wait until it warms up. It probably won't be consistently warm (say 60 degress) until April, but I can always hope! The powers that be are forecasting upper 40s and sunny for Saturday, which is actually pretty nice for Colorado winter. The sun is a lot stronger at 6000+ feet and the dry air makes it feel warmer than, let's say, Illinois. This means the run I've got on my schedule for Saturday should be quite enjoyable. I'm looking forward to getting off the treadmill and running outside.

The workouts for this week are going well. I'm basing them off workouts in the Triathlete Magazine's Book of Training Plans for "level 5 sprint race" base phase. I figure using that as a guide will get me into a second base phase for the olympic distance plan, which is 16 weeks and my race is 20 weeks away. It's early in the training season so it's important for me to keep it easy and short. Time to build endurance and get the muscles used to training again. I do like how it incorporates some short intervals in each sport about once a week to remind the muscles how to move fast. They short enough that probably at least 95% of the workout is still easy/moderate aerobic effort.

Here's a sample of today's workout:
Morning Swim:
250yd warm up (mixed stroke)
8x25yd drills (I use fins and do Total Immersion-style drills) 10s rest
5x150yd swim fartlek - each 150 with twice through 50yd build (accelerate), 25yd descend (slow down), 15s rest between each 150
4x25yd sprint with 20s rest (these felt pretty good today - felt like I was gliding through the water)
4x25yd kicking drills - kick on back for 2, kick on side for 2
250yd cool down (mixed stroke)

Lunch run: Though it was probably warm enough to run outside today, as the sun was shining, I didn't bring warm running clothes to work so I did this on the treadmill
0.5% incline
5 min walk to warm up, increasing pace to 15min mile
30 min easy run. Kept heart rate aerobic - used my heart rate monitor. pace ranged from 5-5.6mph (12min/mile-10:42 min/mile)
4x20s "strides" - accelerated to 8-8.5mph over 20s, walked 40s recovery at 3.0 mph between.
5 min cool-down walk

It all felt good, even though I have a bit of sinus congestion today. Didn't interfere with my workouts (had enough energy, nose wasn't running...)