Progress
I did end up going to the gym on Friday after work and doing the following: Run 20 minutes, Bike 20 minutes, Swim 400 yards. I was pretty pleased with how much I got done and wasn't too tired. I did notice that my back isn't as strong as it used to be, as it started to get very tired during the last part of my swim. For the week's training, I was under my planned training by 50 min for biking and 800 yards for swimming, but was over my planned running by a whopping 2 minutes. Given that I'm just getting back into training, I'm not going to be too hard on myself. I did an hour of pilates (plus running to and from the gym) on Saturday. Friday night, I also rode the mountain bike alongside Heath while he ran for about 2 miles.
My struggle right now is admitting how poor my cardiovascular health is for running. I can keep up a really good speed on the bike while maintaining an aerobic heart rate, but when I run, my heart rate spikes up really high. I am forcing myself to be a slave to my HR Monitor for this winter training. I have it set such that the treadmill will adjust in speed and incline to make sure my heart rate stays in an aerobic zone. This means (ugh) that by the end of my 20 minute run, I was going super duper slow. This is frustrating to say the least, but I'm hoping that if I train right and make sure I'm training aerobically, I'll get to a point where I can go quite a bit faster and still keep my HR in check. This will help me considerably going forward. I've been running my 5Ks at an anaerobic rate, which means I can't keep it up much longer than 30-45 minutes. I've never taken the time to make sure I'm aerobically fit for running. My legs and joints and everything are fine with me going faster than my heart wants to. I need to be okay with slowing down, so I'm going to suck it up and do that for the next while and hope that it pays off in the long run.
Today, I'm headed back to the gym for 20 minutes of running and another 400 yards of swimming. My overall goals for this week is to stick to the training plan volume and stay in the proper heart rate zones.
