Pre-Marathon Season Week 1 - In The Bag and Up the Hill

Welcome to Pre-Marathon Season, Week 2!

 

The Loaf

I feel like a football player . . .  in the pre-season, doing a lot of testing and planning for the months ahead.

Pre-Season Week 1 went more or less as planned: lactate threshold tests (swim, bike, run) and not much else. Establishing a baseline for the coming months.  I'm not very good about remembering to do my LT tests at the prescribed intervals, but I do try to at least keep them up semi-regularly to see how I'm progressing. I raised my LT heart rate 3 beats on the run, while the bike and the swim paces stayed more or less the same.

Just like the last year that I was successful and uninjured (2011), I'm going to keep some swimming and biking in my routine, but there will be some new speed and endurance work this time.


The bike LT test took place in the "hills" of Clermont (the only hilly place in Florida - about 1500 feet of climbing.)   It didn't end up being much of a test since I forgot to hit "lap." This included 3 climbs up 312-foot Sugarloaf Mountain. "The Loaf," as I call it, is the highest point in peninsular Florida. It probably was less of an LT test and more of a Sufferfest.


Canonical correlation output in SPSS

We also did 2 climbs of sister hills "The Wall" and 1 of Buckhill.  It was only 30 miles, but holy crap - what a way to get back on the bike after a few easy weeks.

I had to stop twice on the last climb up The Loaf, if that tells you anything.

As a bonus, last week's stats homework didn't kill me, either.  Let's hope this week's exam doesn't, either. (I'm hopeful, even though I complain a lot.)

There's a lot of craziness, but there's a lot of good stuff ahead.