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New week...time to step it up!

After a great 55 mile recovery ride on monday (yes-it was ALL recovery) I'm ready to step up the training. I put together a 4-week training program to get me ready for St.Anthony's. Becaues I am self-coached, I have the fun of putting together my own programs, but I use specific run/bike workouts to work on my speed and intervals. Swimming is left up to Matt and based on this morning..he is enjoying working on speed and lots of it. After the swim this morning (3000 yrd) I did one of my hardest interval sets on the treadmill. After 1 1/2 mile warm up including 4 x 200 pick-ups, my main set was 3 x 1-mile at 10K pace. I ran 8.6 mph (6:58 min/mile), keeping my heart rate at around 156 and I felt really strong. Because I live by my heart rate monitor for my training, I could tell that the lactate was building around the last 2-3 minutes. That can only mean... keep up the intervals! I really miss my long 2-3 hour runs. No speed, just nice and easy in my zone. That is my style of running! I really enjoyed the set and I finished with 2 x 400 at 5K pace (6:35 min/mile, 9.1 mph) and that felt great as well. Afterwards, I called it a morning. Oh even better, I stopped by Karel's before I went to coach my cop friends in the pool and I had a pancake, eggs, toast and protein smoothie for me. I guess he was taught well :) hehe. Or maybe he couldn't eat all of his breakfast after his cycling workout. Either way...YUMMY!
This afternoon was coaching with Sarah. She has a new tri-bike and she looked great out there. I pushed her for a good interval set and I ended up doing 45 miles (including me riding there and home). I just LOVE being on my bike. Tues and Thurs are my big days of training, including sat and sun. I keep mon as an active recovery or day-off day and friday is a aerobic ride for now (until Ironman training starts to build up). Wed is tempo/speed with a brick in the morning. I will add more bricks but right now I am making sure the foot is healed.
Lots of people have been asking me when I will start training seriously for Kona? OH my..I guess I DO need to start thinking about it. Well, probably in about a month I will step it up in volume as I am getting ready for Ironman 70.3 Florida but my focus is on my speed for racing Elite at St.Anthony's. Plus, I'm enjoying my weekends and finishing training before 11am :)
I must brag about my brother. He had an article written about him in the Michigan Daily. He has his two biggest meets coming up, Big Tens is this weekend and I will be watching him at Penn State for NCAA's in April.
http://media.www.michigandaily.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=6bb477e2-f9d3-409e-af95-618d0ee45e64