3/21 & 3/22 -- Shaking off the weekend

Monday rolled around and I found it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Luckily for me, Michelle has started coming to Masters practice with me in the evening, so no need to wake up at 5:15AM. GOOD, because I needed the sleep after a tough end of (and, well, whole of) last week. I eschewed an easy spin and decided just to go to my swim lesson with Mark and then swim practice. The lesson was good, Dirk and I worked some drills to open our hips more and rotate better. My stroke count decreased by the end of the lesson, so it was useful. I just need to implement those lessons during my faster sets. For practice, we continued mainly working on drills, with lots of 75s, and ended with a 4x200 descending pull set on 3:00, where I finished my last 200 in 2:22. I like Ward's practices better (this was more of a CUBU practice) as there are longer sets and shorter rests. But I can use the drill work, obviously.

I was feeling better by Tuesday, having fought off a short-lived, one-day "cold" on Monday. My legs were feeling better so I went to South Germantown for an 80 minute ride. It was sort of warm, not really though, as the Germantown Clipper was present as usual. I averaged around 220w for the ride, although this time the Clipper had shifted direction a bit from the usual south or west and I got a little tailwind on the tougher sections, so that was like a reward for my persistence! Then afterward I met Jordan, Scott, Jamie and Steeeeeeve for what was supposed to be a 30 minute run for me. Well, I got excited to be running with them again and kept going... bad idea. We ran a hilly route and I played a part in pushing the pace to under 6:30s. Once I realized what a mistake I was making, I backed off with Steve and stuck to the trails. Still, I think the damage was done as I would be more tired from that RECOVERY run than I should have been. I need to stick to Todd's advice next time!

I was listening to this during work today... I thank Michelle for alerting me to its existence.