First outdoor swim this year!

We are blessed with a real early visit by summer.
Usually, in may, here in Norway, it is spring.
Temperatures would be moderate, some rain, som wind, some sunshine, and maybe some unexpected night time below freezing until mid of may.

Not this year!
We have had proper summer temperatures since early may, and it's absolutely faboulous.
Since our local pool is only open during the winter months from october to march, I had planned to rely on another pool about 30km away.
Unfortunately, that one had to close due to instability problems in the roof - and will stay closed until mid of august!

So since the nearest pool now is 50 or 60km away, and I don't have a car (just yet, we'll see about that), I'll try my best and get my swimming done outside, in our lake, as long as temperatures will allow it.

So, yesterday, I had planned a longer bike ride at a rather relaxed intensity.
And since I was about to ride around our lake, I would pass several places where it's easy to access the water, including one of four camping sites with a beach.

So I packed a little backpack, a swimskin (that is, a wetsuit with just 1mm of thickness), googles and a cap, and a small towel.
And - with the wind blowing in the right direction, yes, at the smaller of the two beaches on the one camping site, there was this little girl swimming and enjoying herself in the water.

Oh man, if she can, I can, I thought.
When I was little I was about as tough as that little girl, but I grew out of that a little bit, even if I am always ready for a cold water challenge just for fun.

When I started to put the swim skin on, I was joined by two other girls (not in wetsuits, but bikini) who wanted to swim as well.

Nice.
The one girl was quite tough and in a good mood, and explained the best strategies to get into cold water.
- You can just get into it! she said.
- You can tell yourself it's warm.
- It will get better after a while!
And so on.
She was the first to get wet, but I followed, inspired by her guts, and was soon swimming along.

It was more of a test of equipment than swimming, but I had a really good time.
I think it was the first time I swam in the lake while there still was some snow visible not too high up in the mountains!

Swimming felt good.
It was cold, but good.

I decided to just have fun instead of doing a more structured workout, since I still had more than two third of the lake to ride around to get home.
And my bike form is far from good.
My legs are usually burning also at the slightest hill, my hamstring scream and I feel really out of shape. Running is getting better although hard as well, especially when I try to take it easy, weirdly enough.

Well, I am pleased with yesterday.
Let's hope our beautiful warm weather continues for a bit longer, so I can go swimming again.

Nice!

Swimming again!

Our local pool is only open throughout the winter months, meaning from midt of october until end of march. Since I want to get fit in swimming again, and had to see if everything works, I went there at the first day of opening.

I had brought my Garmin watch to test, too.

But most of all, I was hoping that my shoulder(s) would work properly for swimming.

Last time I tried, december 2016, my right shoulder hurt for days after a simple 1000m swim. No more swimming after that!

But now... Two lengths to test if the watch is recording and all. Check.

Some fast 300m to warm up and test my shoulder(s). Check.

A 1000m time-trial to estimate my swimming T-time (according to Joe Friel). Check.

I must say, it felt good swimming again.
But I have definitely lost some patience over the last two years when I didn't swim any distance. What was I supposed to think about during all those laps?

I did like a good friend and ultra-Ironman triathlete Marie, did on her first (and probably also on her second) triple Ironman: I dedicated each lap to a friend, family member or person.

Funny enough, towards the end of the 8th lap I somehow went totally blank and thought "Oh man, I don't know any more people!? Who am I going to think of now???" - endurance sports and probably any sports is mental to a huge degree! (I did manage to think of a different for each lap until I finished the 1000m set, and I think in the future, I won't go empty for ideas).

So happy after my first day of swimming again! (And a bit looking like she-hulk).

I finished the set in 20:58 minutes (avg 2:06/100m) - which is basically not much slower compared to that pace when I was actively training for swimming. I guess my gains in strength did cover over my loss in swimming routines throughout the last two years 🙂

Looking back at summer 2015..

Edit 25.october 2017:
Back in august 2015, while I was recovering from Plantar Fasciitis, and most of my training was based on building strength. I also squatted, benched and deadlifted, but hadn't considered doing this more than training for triathlon.
Since I like what I did back then, I imported this post from an earlier training blog of mine:


"I'm still doing base work.
That is, triathlon base training, in order to get my endurance as good as possible, and improve my basic skills.
I'm also  trying to work on my weaknesses, although it's not that easy to find out what those are.

Joe Friel suggests to compare oneself with the other participants in an age group to see where you are fastest and slowest.
I think my weakness is definitely the bike part.
My strong side is the swim.
And I'm doing ok on the run, at least on the run part in triathlons.

But what I think is one of my abilities that need most improvement is force and muscular endurance, both on the bike and on the run.

I love my bike, I'm just not that fast on it :D

At the same time as I'm trying to improve those two, I'm also trying not to stress my feet to much, and take my plantar fasciitis into account. That is, the PF is almost gone. I'm actually synptom-free, at least really pain-free!

But I have to be careful not to do too much running, not to increase weekly mileage too fast, and do lots of variation in my running training.
What I want to do, is increase my running workout frequency, that is, three times a week running really short distances (below 6-7km) or low duration (less then an hour), on variable surfaces (trail is more forgiving then the road), maybe even do only running skills instead of pure running, or do just two workouts of slightly longer duration.

But I still think that I'd benefit from running more often, at least if I can keep the intensity and duration low, and the quality high.

So - Joe Friel also tells us to avoid "big gaps with days of no training for any of the three sports".

Well - as for swimming I'm not concerned, I can swim fast enough and still have a good race experience with only a swim workout a week.
As for cycling, I have those frequent short bouts of hill training almost each day, when biking home. Even though the hill back home lasts for "only" 10min or so, it is quite steep, and when I have been shopping, my bike is quite heavy, so there is almost never two days in a row where I haven't been on a bike seat!

But - running is a totally different story.
When I trained for long-distance triathlons and marathons before that, my ideal workout frequency was three times a week.
A short run, a medium short run at a slightly faster pace, and long rather slow run.

Now, having had plantar fasciitis I kind of fear running more than twice a week, but that might actually be exactly what I need: small bouts of running, or running skill sessions, running-related strength training or drills, or short-lasting trail runs around 4-5km together with Lukas, with plenty of stops to breathe out, stretch, monitor my feet, and enjoy.

Today I was kind of wondering what to do.
I definitely want to do strength training in the late afternoon, but I haven't been running since sunday, meaning I haven't been running for wole three days.

After hiking/running 14km on sunday (that is, walking most of the distance with short jogs of maybe 5km together) I felt the need to stay off my feet on monday.
Strength training was great to do, and walking Lukas in the woods while finding blueberries was great recovery as well.

Tuesday I had an hour's appointment at my doctor, which wore me out mentally, and since I had a slight touch of strange sensation in my left thigh muscle, I skipped the run that day. Although I was motivated, and the weather was great.
After my deadlift PB the day before I definitely felt my legs could need an extra day of recovery.

Wednesday came with beautiful weather and trouble with decision-making - I felt both like cycling and swimming and running altogether.
But - I haven't been swimming much this year, and since my new wetsuit makes swimming so much more fun, I definitely wanted to swim.

My Zoot 3.0 - inside out - ready for swimming!

So I packed my wetsuit and swim stuff and took my bike and cycled to Telnes to swim. Since I also felt for a bike workout, it was the perfect distance of 15km, a great warm-up for the swim and some small but steep hills to work a bit on my force skills (big gear up the hill, and easy pedaling the rest of it).

A bit tired after the bike, but still ready to swim.

The swim was great, and it was interesting to have measured my swim pace with the GPS on my cell phone tucked into the back inside my wetsuit. Luckily it didn't drown since I had done a good job of covering it in plastic and tape. But the GPS reading was rather weird... although I of course would loved to have pace of 12min/1km for sure. But believe me, I don't, and I didn't downstream in a river either, so the readings were really far off!

About half an hour of swimming pluss the one hour of biking made a fun and solid bike&swim workout.
I must admit I felt tired when I woke up today, but then I had woken up and laid awake from a nightmare, so I guess it wasn't what I'd call a good night's sleep.

So...what today?
The plan suggests strength training and running.
But we have such great warm weather and sunshine today, that I rather want to do anything else thana training inside. I could have taken an "early" morning run together with Lukas (my early morning runs start at 10am) and then go lifting weights at 4pm, but I really was drained when I woke up.

And I don't want to skip strength training since this is what I benefit from the most these days. I need more strength, to work both on my muscular endurance and sports-specific force.

So - strength training it is.
And - before that - running skills, since it is already three days since my last running workout.
I asked Joe Friel's advice again, finding a suggestion on page 86 in "Your Best Triathlon":
Strides drill.

Strides.

That is something I can do on the treadmill before lifting weights.
I could also do that outside, I'm really not sure yet what to choose.
I guess the treadmill is more time-efficient, since I'm going to the gym anyway today.

Friel is mentioning that he has his triathletes do this drill called "strides" almost every week in the Base period, so I guess it's the kind of workout I could do more frequently as well.

The workout set-up is as following:
Warm-up 10-15min, and then the SS set: 6-8 x 20 sec at a fairly fast pace, but not as fast as possible. Focus is on landing flat-footed with the knee slightly bent if doing on a slight downhill (as suggested), and counting and increasing the cadence.
The goal for cadence is 90-96, that is, 30-32 right-foot strikes pr interval (20secs).

I'm going to do that.
Actually the workout should be done on  a slightly downhill, and the distance covered be marked and tried to increase. But  - we'll see about that.
Since it's been a long time I've worked on my running cadence, I'll just focus on the cadence and not the length of the stride.

So - plan is made for today. At last!"