Tuesday, September 13th 2011

Swim:  90 minutes (a bit less)

“Strength Run:”  3:07 (absolute f…. hell)

Core:  40 minutes

Comments:
This morning I had a swim test.  Up until yesterdays long, easy swim, I missed about a week of swimming so I lost my feel for the water.

The swim test was in the middle of the workout “100 meter all out from a push” …

I was only scheduled to do just one x 100 meter all out, but my goggles filled up with water and my time was slow (1:09)… so after a 500 easy, I did it again.

1:06 for 100 meter free from a push …

I was tired and my legs were dead after the 2 x100 freestyle all out…but next I had a 1,000 meters for time.  

I breathed every stroke … and although today I didnt have a good feel for the water, I tried to swim fast – I know Mario had me do these tests for a reason, and he was looking at my times –but the last 400 meters were miserable .. my legs were dead, i breathed immediately into and off the wall …. just a horrible 400 meters.

I touched the wall and was very interested to see my time — but to my extreme disapointment, my stopwatch had not started … so all that work was for nothing — and there was no way i was going to do it again…because i was dead.

The rest of the workout was mostly easy sets, but i had no feel for the water, and no energy.

After the swim, I had a few hours break before my next schedule.  I went to the local grocery store to get some food, and I noticed that I seemed to be tired from the swim workout on a level I havent experienced before … I was like a zombie walking around the store; very tired.

I worked a bit with the Dubai office – got great news from Fabien on one of our Saudi Arabia congresses …. so  I was in good spirits and I sort of looked forward to the run because my schedule said “easy 2 hour fat burning run..” 

But when I got to Mario’s house, he told me that we had a “strength run test.”  ?????

Strength run test???
Yea, me neither … I have never heard of a “strength run”  … so I had no clue what was in store for me.

3 hours and 7 minutes of pure misery…

For those who have followed my training for a while, you might remember the mountain road that Mario had once pointed at while driving and said one day we were going to bike to the top … but the road is so steep that I seriously, thought he was joking. 

A few weeks later, we rode our bikes up a part of the mountain road, but not to to the top.

Well today, we ran up the entire mountain road to the very top … a non stop run up a very steep mountain road is fucking miserable…

but the run down was just as miserable as the run up,  maybe even more miserable going down because we ran on narrow dirt paths …  down and then up and then down and then up on tiny, narrow dirt paths (not the street like we had run up)  but hiking paths.

I am out of shape — and I regret to have missed several workouts during last weeks recovery week.  After the 7 day test, I took the recovery week forgranted and just considered the easy workouts to be something “optional” …

many times during todays run, I told myself that I would not miss another workout again – even if its just a recovery workout, like a 30 minute swim … I will not miss another workout before naseba seven.

After the run, we had 40 minutes of core.

Mario told me that we will be doing many “miserably difficult” training sessions over the next 6 weeks because he wants to ensure by the time naseba seven comes around … the pain I experience during the 7 days will be nothing compared to the pain I endured in training.

Tomorrow we have a 7+ hour bike (200km) … followed by a 90 minute “fast run.” 

Mario told me the bike course we are taking …we rode part of it before and its hell.
Wthin the first 10 minutes we will begin a 60+ minute very steep climb … and then several other massive climbs will follow. 
We will ride into Germany.  Its a gorgeous ride, but difficult.

I know I keep hammering this point — but my 52 year old coach, Mario Huys ran the exact same miserable run course  I did today … and he is going to do the entire training sessions with me tomorrow – both the 200km bike and the 90 minute run.  He is the best coach in the triathlon world, and what makes him so good is that he puts his heart into it.

I might come across like I am moaning in this blog … but I’m not.   I like very difficult workouts — but in today’s entry, I tried to share exactly, how I felt during the workouts.