Not much for early mornings these days

I find that I go in cycles with respect to getting up early. I can make it a part of my routine and it becomes almost normal. Other times, I find it wears me down. By early mornings, i mean getting up before 6 am. For the past several years I have been swimming about 3 mornings per week. It was been great and has resulted (ironically) in me getting to work earlier than if I did not swim. When I don't swim, I take my time getting up and getting to work and don't roll into work until about 9 am. when I swim, I am done swimming at 8 am and get to work before 8:30am.

But for the last couple of weeks, I have felt tired and have only gotten up early a couple of times to swim. I have swam at lunch time a few times to make it up. (now that i think of it, i did get up early twice this week- today and monday) Today, I swam about 2500 metres which is a bit longer than I have been swimming. My left shoulder gets a bit sore which means I am doing something wrong or have a weakness causing overuse of that shoulder. (or it could be old age) Yesterday, I did nothing. I was going to go to a yoga class but opted to skip it and get home early. Tuesday, I ran about 8 k and felt sluggish. Monday I swam. Today, if the weather holds out, I am thinking of going for a 40 k bike ride (bike ride number 2 of the season)

Cycling on March 13th

Yesterday I went for my first bike ride of the season. It was great. Tyler Read and I went for an easy 40 k ride. The weather has been fantastic and bodes well for lots of early spring riding. Otherwise, I also did a spin class yesterday and went for a couple of short fast runs with my friend, Rob, last wednesday and friday. I did hot yoga on wednesday and friday as well. I swam on thursday and did a spin class on thursday evening.

Today, (Sunday) I ran about 13 k and felt a bit tired. That is not surprising as I did about 3 hours of exercise yesterday.

I can still run

Since last week, I did hot yoga on Friday; taught spin on Saturday morning followed by 90 minutes of hot yoga; Sunday I ran a fairly hard 17 k followed by ssome weights and core exercises; Monday I swam 2000m and did hot yoga and today I swam again 2000 m and am teaching a spin class.

On the run on Sunday, I went with a friend who has been running alot so I felt like I needed to step up the pace a bit. I felt surprisingly good; I was able to maintain a steady fast pace the whole way. I know my friend was feeling it. I have been running a bit less this winter and because of the time doing yoga but maybe that is not a bad thing. I am itching to get outside biking and the first nice day where I have time, I am going to head out.

Jet Lagged

I have tried to get up early this week to work out or swim and haven't been able to. I had some very early mornings coming back from San Fransisco combined with late nights watching the Olympics. I also didn't realize the pool was going to be closed all weekend. so far this week, I have done hot yoga twice and swam once. I teach spin class tonight. I am thinking of going to UPEI tomorrow at lunch and running on the track indoors for a change. I am also thinking of finally getting on my bike trainor this weekend for a couple of hours.

The hardest thing for me is to slack off a bit. I think that is common with triathletes. It goes with the personality type. Even though everything you read says you should periodically give your body a rest, it is hard to do in practice. My new thing of doing hot yoga is probably allowed my body more of a break than its had in several years in addition to improving my flexibility. I really enjoy the fact that I can squat lower than I could before; I can bend my back further; I can stretch out my quads further etc.... I still have a ways to go and am not super flexible but it is helping a lot. I have been doing 3 hot yoga classes a week; 3 spin classes and about 3 swims plus running when i can.

Back from vacation

I arrived back from San Fransisco yesterday (Sunday, Feb 28th) I was away for about a week and got some exercise while away; I ran a couple of times for about an hour each time around San Fransisco including a couple of long, steep hills. I did three 90 minute hot yoga classes throughout the week where it felt like I sweated out about 5 pounds of fluid each time. Otherwise, I ran 8 k yesterday and did some weights. I was going to swim this am but opted for sleeping in.
If I was following it, this would be week three of my half-ironman training program. I will have a look at it this week and at least try to do some of the runs and swims.

How much is too much

Doing an hour and a half of hot yoga right after an intense one hour spin class is too much for the average Saturday. I did that this morning and then had to have a nap this afternoon. I also planned a big swim for later in the day but bailed half way through it this afternoon when Darcy and Sean headed for the hot tub. I hadnt seen them in a while and decided to have a visit with them.

Yesterday I did hot yoga; Thursday past I swam at lunch time and taught spinning in the evening. Tomorrow I plan to go for an easy 12-13 k run with some other triathletes. I get to San Fransisco Monday afternoon. I plan to do some running there and maybe some swimming and hot yoga.

cranky

Yesterday I was so cranky for no good reason. It seemed like the extra holiday through me off a bit. I swam at 7 am and was cranky; was cranky at work; taught a spin class and was cranky till about half way through the class when I started to get over it (the power of exercise) I purchased an "intermediate" half ironman training program yesterday off the internet and it seems ridiculously hard. But, I will use it as a guide. Like the ironman training program that I used, it has way more swimming than I need. It has swims of 4000 m which seems a bit much for a 2000m race. It has alot of long brick training as well (2-3 hour bike rides followed by an hour run) If I was following it, this would be week one of 16 weeks. I think I will start following it at about week 3 when I return from San Fransisco.