Tri-ing in the Holy Land

The ramblings of a struggling triathlete in Israel

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Location: Israel

I'm the mother of 3, a teacher and a couch potato turned triathlete.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Tests and January totals

It's test week. Apparently, that's what happens the week after recovery week. It couldn't have come at a worse time -- I'm in the middle of checking matriculation exams which means an extra 24 hours of work a week and I'm exhausted.

First it was the swim test on Sunday. I wasn't feeling great and it was freezing at the pool (not in the pool -- the water was ok, it's the air that was cold). The 50 meter test was ok -- I actually PRed at 45:44. Then it was the 100 meter test. This wasn't too bad, either -- 1:45. Not my best time, but not far off. The 400 meter test was a disaster. I couldn't even do the 100 meter recovery swim between the 100 meter and 400 meter tests -- I quit at 50 meters. I could feel that my swimming was "off" and I just wanted it to be over. Well, it wasn't over soon enough -- it took me 8:31, which is 27 seconds off my PR for 400 meters. Ugh.

Monday was the running test. I was feeling better, apart from the fact that I'd had a hamburger for lunch. LOL. It was a 5 km run -- two loops of a 2.5 km course in opposite directions. I finished in 28:30 -- not a PR, but a PR for this particular course, which has several hills. I was happy with this time, though I would like to see faster 5k times in my future.

Today was the bike test. This one was the worst. First of all, I didn't sleep well last night. And I had a long work day today. And I had to drive up to the Tel Aviv area to exchange exams -- almost an hour and a half in each direction. By the time I got to the workout at 9:15 p.m., I was exhausted. I was also in a terrible mood because of some crap that had happened at home. And to make matters worse, it was very very windy. I barely made it through the 5 km warmup and when I finished, I told my coach that I wasn't doing the test. He must have seen the look on my face, because normally he'd just make a joke out of something like that, but not this time. He told me that I'd made the effort to come to the workout and that I should just do the best I could and if I couldn't finish 20 km, that was fine. Well, I did finish 20 km. 20.2, to be exact. It was really hard. There was one uphill section into the wind that was awful. There were cars on the road and I had to slow down at all the turns (we were doing a loop that's just under 2.5 km -- we did that loop 8 times plus a 1.5 km loop). And it was dark. Terrible riding conditions and I'm not all that confident on the bike in the best of conditions. I was blowing all over the place and I honestly thought I wouldn't finish. My time was 48:47, which wasn't bad considering the conditions, the time of day and my physical and mental state. My best time ever for 20 km is 44:04 and that was on a very fast out and back course after a good night's sleep (have I mentioned that I'm very slow on the bike?).

So that was it for this month's tests. I hope to see some improvement next month, but all in all, apart from the 400 meter swim, my times weren't too awful.

Now for my January totals...

January was a great training month for me:

swim: 31,100 meters (my highest monthly total ever)
bike: 121.9 km on the road bike and 69 km on the mountain bike
run: 75.3 km (also my highest monthly total ever)

Now there's something to smile about :-)

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