Week 4

There'll be a race report coming soon, as week 4 of my training plan was rounded off by the Atomic Man duathlon, where I surpassed my expectations and placed 8th overall!

Anyway, the week in summary...
Swim: Good session on Monday with just under an hour in the pool. I got 2500yds in, and it was a good quality workout. Swam again on Saturday, when I got another good 2000yds.

Bike: This was a mixed week for the bike. I know I haven't been emphasizing the bike enough in my training yet, but I've been building up my running base as I really neglected that until really late last year. As usual, I rode the bike to and from work every day. On average I'd say that's about 20-25 minutes each day. On Tuesday I had a nice half-hour ride at lunch. That almost made up for the guy who nearly ran me over on my ride into work.
On Wednesday I made the mistake of taking a spur-of-the-moment MTB ride with a colleague. He's a phenom on the mountain bike and I am, well, not. Long story short: I crashed. Moving from hard singletrack with pebbles embedded in the dirt, to 2in deep pebbles is probably okay if your tyre pressure is lower than 45psi (I was pumped up for the commute) and if you're expecting the surface change. Anyway, it's now Sunday and the "fresh hamburger" look on my right side is fading.
On Thursday I took the road bike to work again, only to see the winds get up to about 40mph, gusting 55. I took the long way home so I could ride through a fairly sheltered canyon. Saturday I rode the MTB to 4.5 miles to packet pickup for the race, and back, thankfully event free.

Run: Wednesday was my weekly trail run with the Triatomics triathlon club. We did 55 minutes, but I'm not sure of the distance. It was monstrously hilly though! Then my next run was Sunday, in the race.

Race: 10km run, 40km bike, 5km run.The bike course featured an 1100ft climb (among other climbs), but the runs were mercifully not so hilly. A race report will follow, but the short review: great day, nice weather, good people, 8th overall. I was hoping to get close to 2hr30 and ended up with a 2hr25min.

Two things I learned from the race:
a) My training is on the right track.
b) I need to get more run endurance (my long runs have been too short)
The rest of my learning experience will have to come when I do the race report.

Until then, have fun and enjoy whatever you're training for!