Week 14: A little more balanced

This week went much better than the last two; I was still fairly stressed by the weekend because I had two take-home finals to work on and one of them ended up taking about 20 hours (I probably should have spent closer to 30 on it, but oh well).  I started doing homework before training in the evenings and using the workouts as a break.  I ended up swimming 3 days in a row, which I thought would make me fatigued for Friday’s straight swim, but in the end it seemed to improve my rhythm and comfort.

Wednesday 2/29/2012

Got up at 6 and swam for an hour, had a leisurely breakfast before heading to lab.  Came home planning on doing my bike to run brick, but it started snowing and was really windy so the run part wasn’t going to happen.  Since I didn’t need to get it in before dark, and I was in a bad mood, I went to the grocery store.   I came back in a much better mood, but decided to tackle homework before biking (plus I had just eating some chocolate cookies and needed to let them digest).  By 9:30 I had a couple parts of my take home test done (the easy parts…) and still needed to work on my presentation for lab tomorrow. The bike ride might happen, it might not.  I’d rather go to bed at a reasonable hour and be able to swim and lift tomorrow morning and do a longer bike tomorrow evening anyway.

Thursday 3/1/2012

I had no trouble getting up and swimming this morning, even though I skipped last night’s workout.  It’s nice to know that missed workouts don’t always snowball.  My presentation went pretty well; I didn’t come close to passing out!  My 1 hour bike ride also happened, although I was on the phone for most of it, so I couldn’t do the Z4 portion.  

Friday 3/2/2012

3000 yard straight swim this morning!  It felt really good, although my splits weren’t what I was hoping they’d be.  The chorus of this song was stuck in my head; it was surprisingly perfect for a long swim with slow, even pacing.  It was also my first day in my new lab rotation and I really enjoyed it.  I was only able to fit in a 30 minute run in the evening because Sarah and I were hosting Chicken Friday (a potluck that happens on Fridays and revolves around chicken) and I needed to get home to start cooking.  I was supposed to do 60 minutes with 2x7.5 minutes at a Z4 heart rate with a couple minutes rest in between.  I ended up doing 30 minutes, with 5x2 minutes at Z4 with 2 minutes rest in between.  I was pretty tired by the end so I think it was a reasonable substitute.

Saturday 3/4/2012

Well between the several glasses of wine I had during Chicken Friday and the garlicky leftovers I had this morning (it was Italian-themed), I had a really bad stomach ache during my bike ride.  I had to stop after 2.5 hours because I felt like I was going to throw up any time I went aero or rode more than 13 mph.  I transitioned to napping in front of my fire rather than running for 30 minutes.  Lesson learned…

Sunday 3/5/2012

It was a warm, beautiful day, especially in Memorial Grove/City Creek, where I ran.  I just wanted to keep running and running, not go back inside and do homework.  Days like today make me so glad that I live and train in Salt Lake (although I hear Spokane had similar weather that day).  Maybe it just made me glad that I was able to get out and enjoy such a beautiful day, if only for 1.5 hours.

(Photo from: http://effervescentmediaworks.com/Photography/Locations/Memory%20Grove.html, one day when I have a smart phone I'll be able to post pictures I actually take on my runs)