The Road to Austin...Weekly Training Summary

This was my third week back to regular training in preparation for the Longhorn 70.3 race in Austin, TX on October 25th. I've really started to feel in great shape again. I'm slowly building my long ride and long run back up as I believe those are keys to racing well in the longer distances. For the week my total training time was 23 hours. This would have been a modest week during the summer but now that school is back it is probably the highest volume I've had in a week where I worked 40 hours. For the week I ran 55 miles, biked 165, and swam 9,100 yds. In addition to those totals I lifted weights 3 times, did speed drills, strides, lunges, and plyometrics all twice, and core work 5 times. My toughest workout of the week was a 70 mile long ride on Saturday followed by a 4 mile tempo brick run right after the ride in 23:14 (5:48 pace). I did the run on lots of hills to simulate the run course in Austin. On Wednesday I had a good bike interval workout. I did a 43 mile ride with 6x 10 minutes hard followed by 5 minutes recovery in the middle of the ride. I've done this workout 3 straight weeks now and my wattage numbers have increased each time on the 60 minutes of hard riding from 258, to 271 last week, to 280 this week. On Sunday I did a long run of 13 miles which was the furthest I've gone in 5 weeks. I'll get to 14 next week but won't go over that before the race. I was fortunate to talk to triathlete Chad Beert who raced in Austin last year and he was kind enough to go over the course and details of the race with me on the phone. I'm excited to race a great field there and hope to be in contention for the win. 3 more weeks of tough training before a week long taper. Thanks for reading...DREAM BIG!