Tale of Two Workouts

Today’s plan was to get some speed work in. I have been neglecting this part of my training and after today I really wish I would have continued. After not being able to meet up with anyone due to scheduling I headed for the Mead track to do my workout. After a nice 10 minute warm-up, I started some ply metrics. It had been a while since I had done these but I really wanted to work on quick feet. After a few minutes and some stretching I began my speed work.

The plan was to do alternating 400’s. I would sprint a lap and then jog a lap. My first 400 sprint was a bit faster but the final three 400’s were all within a second or two of each other, which I was pretty happy about. Somewhere in the last 400 I noticed a bit of irritation in my left achilles tendon. I still wanted to do some alternating 200’s but after starting the first 200 I knew something was wrong. If I have learned anything over the last couple of years, is that your body will let you know when you need to stop. I quickly stopped my workout hoping to catch the problem before it got worse. After a quick stretch I decided to call it a day. This is not good but I hope that I caught it before it was too late and I can heal quickly. Definitely frustrating after all the running I have been doing and so far I have been able to stay relatively healthy.

Still needing to get a workout in I decided I would head for the pool. You really don’t need you achilles tendon to swim. I didn’t arrive to the pool until a few minutes after 9:00 and was glad to see only a couple people in the pool and the lap lane was completely clear. I started my workout by swimming ten 50 meters sets on the minute. I was glad to see the stroke change from Sunday was really working. I usually finish in about 45 seconds per 50 meters slowing dropping to about 50 seconds. Today all ten of the laps were between 40 to 43 seconds. Doesn’t seem like a huge drop but over a long race the time can really add up. After my set I decided to it was time check my overall pool endurance.

With the new lingering pain in my achilles I decided to use the pool buoy and swim until my arms were going to fall off. The new stroke was using different muscles and I wanted to put them through the ringer (and release a bit of frustration of earlier). When it was all said and done I was able to swim for about 30 minutes without stopping. I was really excited about this because now I know that when it comes to the swim at Boise, I can make it. My arms really never felt like they were going to fail. I did swim the final 250 without the buoy and notice a bit of a slow down but it was nice to leave the pool and end the day on a positive.

After arriving home I began to ice my injury and hopefully it feels better tomorrow. I am supposed to go for a nice ride and then run 6 miles with Tim. Let’s hope it all works out.