A Week in the Life – The Offseason

My last post about about ‘a week in the life’…posted a few months after. My season, at that time, was in full swing. I wanted to go through what the past week was like for me. While it’s the ‘off-season’ for most, I am working on building my base and I already had some good time away from triathlon during the months of September and October.

Sunday – Cyclocross race

The weather was sunny and windy. It was only my 2nd CX race of the year, but I brought a friend to her first race and she had an absolute blast!

Monday – Run and Swim Day

7am run: 40 mins – Mostly zone 2 with a few pickups. A good way to let the body decompress from the race yesterday

Drop off car for a service, drive home. Work. Builders are here, chaos.

Noon: Lunch time 3k swim. My coach threw in 10x50m sprints then 4x400m zone 2 efforts. Some days I think it’s amazing I don’t drown during these sessions.

Back to work, builders still roaming around. Worked a bit later to deal with US folks and a few things to tidy up. Post work I had some cleaning in my house to do.

7pm dinner – forced my butt down to rest and relax the rest of the night since the day was pretty full on.

Tuesday – Bike and Strength

6:45am – strength: 45 mins + stretching

Working later today, so shifting my start time to 11am. I had a lot of work today, it was mostly non-stop with emails, blogs, customers and recording The DevOps Lab. I finished work by 7pm, just in time for a virtual Zwift race with my local team.

7pm: Zwift race. This was a big race for me as I had just had a bike fitting. I had been struggling to maintain an aero position. Thanks to my new favorite bike fitter he got me there! My legs and body responded well, which really means I could hold more watts!

8:30pm dinner – tired & hungry

10pm – Walked up to bed, legs died ..LOL

Wednesday

5am woke up – forced myself back into a deep slumber until my 7:55am alarm. Rest is sometimes as important as training.

8:30am – Strength set: legs day!

9:15am breakfast and getting to work. Need more coffee

10:15am – planned a walk and coffee break

noon – recording for an event. The walk earlier helped clear my head and kept my body from really cramping up.

2:30pm ‘Lunch Swim’: 3.2k of hard efforts. My body was not ready by any means (or maybe my head wasn’t), but I got in and got it done. My coach likes to give me sessions with stones, yes, stones. If you’ve ever done a closed fist drill, this is it, but with weighted stones in your hands. I did 10x100m hard with stones, followed up by 10x50m sprints. I dread the stones, but today I relaxed into it. When I started the swim, I kept my expectations low i.e. ‘Just get through it’. Instead, I saw massive progress in my pacing.

This is the point in my training where I feel that ‘click’. Sessions are still hard, and not always as performant as I would like, but I get them done and I feel like I can conquer the sessions.

4pm back online and working until 7pm

8:30pm Dinner – I kinda lost my hunger a bit today. I had planned out my meal, but really wanted something else. I sucked it up and just got the calories in.

11pm bed – Late night, I just couldn’t really gear down to sleep. It’s the one downside of working late, it tends to jack up my adrenaline and my brain, and it makes settling into a normal bedtime difficult for me. I also find that the knock on affect the day or two after really catch up to me. This week I am trying to really mitigate the fatigue.

Thursday

7:30am alarm: We’re creatures of habit, my body woke me up at 6:50am and wouldn’t let me fall back asleep. I woke up feeling a bit off. My stomach was very grumbly and the whole PMS thing was rearing its very ugly head.

I had my BCAA tablets, followed with my protein powder and almond milk. I had to let the belly settle then warmed up for my workout. Until…I got my house key stuck in the lock. 30 minutes later, I resolved it with the help of my friendly neighbor (who I had to wake up during his hangover).

8:45am Run: Hill Reps and fatmax pacing. Read this as up and down a 0.5km climb, with tempo pacing after. Total run time: 1hr 5 mins.

Late start to my planned run, but I made the call to get out the door in lieu of a lunchtime run. Today was one of those days that I knew that if I had waited, I wouldn’t have ran. I would have gotten too caught up in work today (I’m working on some exciting stuff) or I would have not felt it. Sometimes it’s best to shove your tail out the door while you’re a bit numb in the mornings.

My legs were toast on this run, my body really clung on with duct tape and super glue for this one. I had a brand new pair of running shoes, I was motivated by it being Veterans/Rememberance Day (SEMPER FI!), but my body didn’t respond to harder or faster. The run is done, that’s all that matters today. Some days you have to listen to your body, I know on very specific days (i.e. the day before my cycle starts) I have all sorts of stomach issues and my body just has nothing in it. I understood that, so I just enjoyed the hills.

10am – Late start to my work day, I took a shorter lunch break and skipped my afternoon walk. I am dead set determined to finish at 5:30pm today. While it will be dark, I’ll promise myself a walk today after work.

7pm logged off work, ate dinner then did some stuff around the house and I didn’t make my walk….ooops

Friday

7am Swim: 3.8km – this was a mix of paddles, pull and stones. Yes, stones again, in fact 900m of them. My arms were toast after this session. I swam it well, but it was just a long time in the pool. Total swim time was about 1 hour 05 mins, I felt like I had been in the pool ALL DAY. The session that wouldn’t end.

4:30pm Bike: 1hr 10min turbo session – 6×3 of lactic shuttling. I don’t know what that means, but basically my coach threw in 6 x3 at max HR efforts. My legs died. I made it to 4 of 6. I’m okay with that. I didn’t go into it with fresh legs. Sometimes a shorter session is better than just skipping everything.

Work is done for the week, logged off a bit early as I’ve had a some busy days.

Saturday

Saturday tends to be my ‘longer run’ days. Welp, I had 1:32 of intervals or some mildly hilly terrain. I thought this session had some ‘rest’ efforts after the hard 2k and 1k efforts. Nope. I was limping in to finish this one. It was one of the first long runs that I have had in a long time where I didn’t have stomach issues…it was a win

Sunday

CYCLOCROSS!!!

I love the off-season, it gives me a chance to do some things a little differently. I raced last Sunday and I was back at it this Sunday. It was my second race with this new league and a new course!

There were 60 women in the race and it was so much fun. It wasn’t my fastest race, but it was super technical, which I absolutely loved!

I finished a mediocre 23rd place overall, but sinc eI don’t really train for CX< it’s just a bit of fun, I don’t mind.

Here were are, another week of training. 10 hours and 16 minutes of total training time.

The totals above are for my week, I take them with a grain of salt. Swim duration is down because I swam faster than my coach set (but I completed the sets) and my watch doesn’t pick up every single drill, so while I completed it, my watch didn’t get evvery single bit.

Overall, I nailed the sessions, had a strong week and am excited with where my season is going 🙂