My Left Foot

I guess it's been a while, so I should update my one or two readers about how things are going. So here's a recap of what I've been doing, why I've been doing it, and what I expect to be doing.

General philosophy:
Starting three weeks ago, I've began a new and (for me) different type of training cycle. My workouts are no longer structured by weeks. My swimming continues to be Monday/Wednesday/Friday, but the run and bike workouts are set up differently. In an effort to have more "not working out" time, I've changed to a two days on/one day off schedule. This continues even on weekends, so that there are actually Saturdays and Sundays where I don't do anything. It's been a bit of a change, and much harder to remember what I'm to do every day, luckily I have a full schedule mapped out. Since there are more days off, the days I do hit it are a bit longer. Instead of a 6 mile hard run with a 4 miler the next day as recovery, I'll do 8. I usually have one hard day and one moderate in each mini-block. I've completed one three week pseudo-block, and so far things are going well. I'm generally rested, and I seem to be getting fitter. We'll find out when I finally toe a line.

Swimming:
The new coach is a swimmer. Not a triathlon swimmer, but a real swimming swimmer. And the workouts are what you'd expect from such a person. Hard, fast, little rest, lots of drills, way more kicking than we've ever done before. I'm fighting to keep my place in Lane Two. I've had good days and bad, and by taking two months out of the water I definitely made it harder on myself. But I feel like I'm getting stronger. As I've commented to people already, I'll either get faster or drown.

Cycling:
Last year I put more focus on efforts above FTP, kind of the "raise the left" part of the equation. Although I did get stronger, it wasn't as much as I would have expected. Since training time is more limited, this year goes back to a FTP heavy "sweet spot" style of training. There is the occasional workout above this range, but for the most part I'm building the engine for one hard hour. With regular testing, my workouts will progress from 6x4 minutes to 2x20 over the next few months. Once summer hits, I toss some more higher-intensity work into the mix, but for now I'm building that one speed: fast.

Running:
This is the area that has had too many ups and downs lately. After the ToT 13k, I took a bit of a breather from tough running, and did some work in trying to improve my stride mechanics. During that race my cadence averaged 200 spm, which is way too high. Why did higher speeds require such a fast cadence, instead of opening up my stride? It goes back to about 18 months ago, and a bit of a misguided fascination with POSE style running. Instead of pawback/pull-through motion in the stride, utilizing the strength of the hamstrings and glutes, POSE is posture based, where the movement of the legs is essentially to get them out of the way as you "fall forward". It sounds good in practice, but if you don't pull through, the only way to go faster is clear your legs faster, thus the higher cadence. The posture they prescribe is sound, but, for me at least, they've missed the boat with the leg motion.

Over the last few months, I've been reading more technique oriented work, from the likes of Yessis, Lyman and Fitzgerald. And I've slowly been trying to integrate the pawback back into my stride, but I've had a few setbacks. Quite simply, my left leg has gotten lazy. It just reaches out and sets down, without initiating the backward motion. During a run last week, it pretty much felt like I was pole-vaulting off my leg every other stride. This generated a whole bunch of knee pain since I was landing hard heel down in front of the body. I've added a five minute barefoot warm-up to my routine, as well was some pawback drills before every run. This has made my last two runs a bit better, with what feels like better form for about half the run. My effort is higher for the same speed right now, but as this gets re-ingrained, I'll be better off. Luckily any goal race for this year is 6-10 months away.

I hope everyone's training is going well. I'm too lazy right now to put links to the stuff I've been reading/watching, but if you're interested, let me know and point you to it.