This Week in Training…Week 11 – Let’s Go!…
Build Phase Begins (sort of… still easing into it)
Solid week. Not perfect, but very solid. More importantly, I don’t feel nearly as beaten up as I did earlier in the cycle. That’s a good sign that the adjustments are working.
Swim 🏊
- Workouts: 2
- Total Time: 1 hour 18 minutes
- Total Distance: 4,025 yards
Same as last week. Steady. Next week, I’ll try to bump this to 3 swims, which will be a challenge with scheduling, but it’s time.
Bike 🚴
- Workouts: 4 (over 3 days, including a commute)
- Total Time: 3 hours 33 minutes
- Total Distance: 51.8 miles
The long ride (2 hours on Saturday) was… rough. Slightly hungover and didn’t eat beforehand – brilliant planning. About 1:20 in, I finally had some honey packets and, shockingly, my legs came back to life within minutes. Lesson re-learned: fuel matters.
Run 🏃
- Workouts: 4 (including ~1.5 miles off the bike)
- Total Time: 2 hours 56 minutes
- Total Distance: 18.2 miles
Today’s 7.5-mile run was solid. It started as a bit of a death march, but I settled in and finished strong – even after the 2-hour ride the day before. I had enough left in the tank to swim afterward, which feels like real progress.
Total Training Time 🧮
- Total Time This Week: 7 hours 46 minutes
TrainingPeaks Metrics 📈
- Fitness: 93
- Fatigue: 154
- Form: -38
Numbers say I’m working hard, but I don’t feel crushed. That’s new – and encouraging.
Reflections ✍️
This was a good week. The biggest takeaway is that I’m handling the workload better. Earlier in training, this kind of week would’ve wrecked me. Now? Tired, yes. Destroyed, no.
The bigger issue right now is nutrition. I’m not overeating—I’m just not eating well. That needs to change. Time to get back to the goal of 30 different fruits/nuts/veggies per week. It sounds ridiculous until you try it. Smoothies help cheat the system a bit.
Next week looks a lot like this one, just with about an extra hour of training (another swim and +30 minutes on the long ride).
All in all… it’s going okay. Which, at this point in training, is exactly what I want.