Back from Phoenix

I did manage to get a couple bike machine workouts and even a short hike in while in Phoenix, but am glad to be able to get back to regular training. Pity that didn't happen. Heh. Beautiful 60 degree weather (a true rarity up here this time of year) meant that all indoor training had to be scrapped for outdoor activity.

Friday was a total throwaway - I left my hotel room at 5:45 am MT and arrived home at 8 p.m. ET. A truly long day, especially since I barely slept the night before.

Saturday Dr. Z and I went for a hike. Well, more like a walk in the woods - we walked to the base of Scarface Mountain and back - a total of about 3.4 miles.

Sunday it was time to try out mountain biking again. We did a slightly harder route, and I did fairly well considering it was only my second time ever. I even jumped my first log!

Pictures of the weekend will be coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy this picture of me hugging a ginormous cactus while on my hike on Thursday.

ANOTHER swim breakthrough!

Today's swim workout was a nice long warmup followed by a 1000 yard time trial. I've been having some serious breakthroughs lately so I was psyched to see how I stacked up.

I started with a nice easy 300 yards to warm up. I felt stiff and sore from yesterday's strength training, but kept it easy. Was shocked to hit the wall in 7:13.

Next was 6 x 50 hard with 15 second recovery. The slowest was 1:07. And this is was with no one to pull me along, which is always a problem for me.

So, after 600 yards and then a full minute recovery, it was go time.

I decided to bust for all I was worth. At one point I wasn't sure if I was at 300 or 350 yards so I checked my watch. 6:50, which could only be 300 yards. Holy shit. I was fully in the hurt locker, but tried to hold on. Wanted to quit so badly, not being used to pushing myself on the swim for that long, but kept at it and finished in...are you ready for it?

23:50. Holy FUCK. 2:22/100 pace.

Now, any swimmer or even triathlete would laugh at that, I know, but that is a HUGE breakthrough for me. Just a month ago 25:00 would have been a breakthrough. I even double-checked to see what the pace would have been for 950 yards in case I missed a lap, but that would have been 2:30/100 even and I was definitely hauling faster than that.

I was supposed to do 3 x 200 at that new T-pace afterwards, but I was SO shot that the first one was 5:00. That (and having to leave for a meeting) told me it was time to go. However, I was more than happy to have left it all out there for the time trial. I'll take that over being able to do the post-work any time!