Tests, weight, and ramping up

Well, I guess Carlsbad went about as well as it could have. I was impressed with my ability to call my time. I seem to be maturing in my age, as I really am in touch with my fitness and where my body is at. At the tests in Phoenix with Joe, I pretty much called my FTP, LT HR, and max HR. Sunday, I called my time.

Actually, the race went well, but it was clear I am strong but slow. Anytime I tried to push the pace, I really began to fall apart. This was not a surprise, but I thought I might be able to go a tad faster, since the pace I ran felt pretty easy thru about 10 miles.

Here is the actual file from the race, for people to enjoy reviewing:

Carlsbad Half Marathon - 1:18:00

The big thing to look at, which really pleased Joe and I, was the pace to HR decoupling, of only 3+%, and if you take out the first four minutes where the HR was still rising after standing at the start line, the last 1:14 of the race is at 2.74%, which is an excellent number! It shows some great aerobic fitness. This test also gave me a functional threshold pace of 5:52/mi.

The next 3 days were pretty light, and Thursday was back to our test sets. Yesterday's tests and the results were:

Swim - On December 28th was 1:13 average for 15x100 on 10 secs rest. This time I averaged 1:10! Not bad to be 45 secs faster over the course of only 1500 yards! This time was much more consistent as well, since last time had a range of times from 1:09 to 1:16, where as this time had a range of 1:09-1:11.

Run - On December 28th, I ran 19:39 for 5K on the track, at 165 bpm avg. This time, 19:00 at 165 bpm avg, on a WINDY day. Another solid improvement. The best part is, 165 feels easy, right at or even a tad below my aerobic threshold. I thought I would go a bit faster, since my Carlsbad performance was a 164 avg, at under 6 min pace, but I hadn't just done a swim test before it.

Today will be a 30 min bike test, so we will see how it goes. Expecting to hold around 300-310 watts avg for the 30 mins. Was wanting to get up to Palomar mountain, but the recent rains here in San Diego have put a lot of SNOW on Palomar. Not something I'm interested in riding in.

My weight has continued to drop as well, as yesterday and today, 170lbs. I can look in the mirror and see the difference, which is always nice!

Lastly, things are about to get APE-SH*T with my training. Check out the next few weeks on my online training log, and you can see, it's a good amount of stimuli! Joe has me doing Conjugate Sequence Periodization, and it's interesting stuff. It seems to be working well so far though!

Hope all is well in the training world for each of you.

Vance