Balancing training in 3 sports…swimming says ‘what about me!?’

I have a meeting with Coach Gale Bernhardt today to fine tune my next 4 weeks of training…7 weeks to Ironman…2-3 weeks taper…so 1 month to get the last pieces in place.

…once you’re within 3 weeks to go to Ironman:

your time is better devoted to prayer than exercise

My bike and run training have gone well…solid…so well in fact that one of my primary questions for Coach Gale was/is…from my email to her:

…I have an issue that I wanted to get your feedback on, and was going to see if you had time next week for a quick chat once I had my numbers better organized

 … the question was/is ‘what do you adjust if workouts are going too well?’

 …sounds too funny of course, but I have to tell you that I’m ‘hammering’ the Intensity compared to our 20% criteria, and in the short-term at least, holding up, hitting new PR’s in testing etc.

 So at this point, I was going to run out this week, and see what happens…but I’m like turning out ‘scary’ numbers, and still intact

 …didn’t you say that’s typically 2 weeks before the crash 🙂

So with 4 weeks of training to go, although I want to get to all the fitness that I can, I don’t want to spiral through the top, over-train and break something or get sick…so the constant training theme…push the limits…but not too far.

The one thing that I’m seeing in the quest for bike and run dominance is that I’m stepping on my swim workouts, and not getting the quality that I should there…so need to make some adjustments to ‘protect’ the swim training so that I’m not as tired as I have been on swim training days.

I had a lot of focus on the swim about a month ago, and had very good improvements…as the bike and run have wound up in Intensity and Volume, they’ve ended up crowding the swim training…the swimming is still about 7000 yards a week, 3:30-4:00 hours a week, 3-4 workouts a week…but I haven’t been getting through the workouts as ‘cleanly’ ‘according to the workout spec’ as I should be.

If it were just bike and run, I think I’d be in great shape now, and could continue my training path…but there is that 2.4 mile swim to start the day, and that needs to be smooth, relaxed, efficient…so I will need to pull the bike/run stuff back a bit to make some more room for it over the next month.

…reminds me of a friend of mine that was always complaining that it was impossible to find good help to keep his outdoor pool and garden maintained

…sort of a high-end type of ‘problem’ to have 🙂