Training Update

I’ve lost some of my excitement to go swimming.  Dragging my butt out of bed at 4am to hit the pool just isn’t doing it for me right now.  I think I missed an entire week of swimming, but I’ve slowly picked it back up.  Especially after the wake-up I received at Fort Custer Xterra.

My swimming distance is up 20% when compared to May 2012 and up 29.1% YTD 2013.  My swim hours are only up 8.3% when compared to May 2012, so I am swimming faster.  For the YTD 2013, my swim hours are up 16.5%.  Goal next month is for a nice 30% increase in swim distance over June 2012.  

As for biking, I’m starting to get in some longer rides finally.  It helps that I don’t have a heavy summer teaching load.  This past weekend I rode the Iceman Cometh route, although it wasn’t near the intensity of the race.  I will say that Traverse City is not a very bike friendly area.  In the 5-miles I had to ride on the road to get home, I was honked at twice and yelled at once.  I was warned by people who live there that there is a battle with cyclists going on, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  Still, it was a very nervous 5 miles. 

My biking distance and hours are up 61.62% and 94.4% when compared to May 2012.  However, my YTD numbers are down significantly: Distance is down 71% and hours are down 21.25%.  Driving these numbers down is a result of me removing a few mountain bike races from my calendar. 

Finally, the area I can improve the most: running.  Thus far I’m an pleased with the volume of running I am doing, however I could up the intensity by adding some track intervals.  My feet took awhile to recover from the Fifth Third River Bank Run.  My heels were insanely sore for a week, then I had the Xterra, and I could just feel the bricks in my legs.  At least the Xterra was on a trail and not pavement. 

For the month of May, my running distance is up 128.7% and running duration is up 104.35%.  My YTD numbers are also up: 48.6% for distance and 27% for duration.