Course Corrections

Every once in a while I get a week that completely throws my schedule into a tailspin. A funeral on Tuesday messed up my regular brick workout as did the annual "Take your kids to work day" on Thursday. Wednesday I overslept and missed my planned running workout and I was too busy the rest of the day to catch up. After a little improvising I managed to at least get some running in on Tuesday and Thursday but everything else suffered.

When open water swimming, every once in a while you have to look up and see where you're going. If you do this often, the course corrections you'll need to make are minor. Wait too long and you'll end up wasting a lot of energy and will likely need major corrections to get back on track. Iron Wil learned this the hard way recently - actually going the wrong way on a swim course for about 10 minutes before discovering her error.

This unexpected break in my routine forced me to look up and think about where I am and where I'm going. Overall it's a mixed bag - some things are working well, some things actually seem to be hurting me and need to be scaled back, and some things need a bit of attention.

• I've noticed that since I've started doing more Yoga I've been having problems with my lower back and my adductors so I'm going to scale back and instead incorporate more stability ball exercises. I still don't have a solid core routine going yet so I need to do some fishing around.
  
• My basic workout template is working out well for my available time - bricks on Tuesday (tempo)/Thursday (interval), long swim Friday, long bike Saturday, long run Sunday so this will remain unchanged.
  
• Now that I have the NYC Marathon coming I'll throw in another run on Wednesdays (provided I can get out of bed!). In order to not shock my system too much I'll start with low mileage (3.5 mile) and build it to 10 over the course of a few months. I'll also need to start bringing up my long run on Sundays. I'd like to hit at least three 20+ mile runs before the marathon in November.
  
• Cycling has been suffering due to insufficient saddle time. To remedy this I definitely have to get more consistent on my long Saturday bike rides. Bringing my bike to the club when weather permits for my Tuesday/Thursday bricks instead of doing an indoor spin class will also help. I also need to start going to either the Tuesday or Thursday club rides on a regular basis.
  
• Long swim is fine. Two years ago I would not have believed that my swimming would ever be comfortable but it is - so I'm leaving that one alone.
  
• Still have to think about where the circuit training stuff will go. I think I may shift to dumbell based workouts instead of machine based workouts to get more muscle recruitment and coverage.
  

So that's it - overall it seems that just a few little tweaks are needed. I've found during the course of training that little adjustments work best for me. In the past when I've made major readjustments I've gotten injured or completely derailed.

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Workout Summary

7 mile run (Tuesday)

7 mile run (Thursday)

3200 yd continuous swim (1 hr)