Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I Have Some Fast Friends

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I've got some FAST friends!

I'm feeling pressure from all sides of the sport. I wrote the times of the UBCTC members who raced in the Sun Run on Sunday. There were a few other non team members who I compete against as well who posted lightning fast times such as Yue-Ching Cheng who ran a blistering 34:31 and Jonathan Kisilosky with a time of 36:54. Both these two really seem to have picked up their game this season leaving me in the dust. And don't even get me started on Facundo, thats a whole other story. What all this tells me though, is that I've gotta get my act together.

Its not only on the run though. Derek is swimming like a monster these days. I think a conservative estimate is a 5 minute lead he'll have out of the water, which finally brings me to the Bike. For this I haven't had any races yet, however, if my Victoria training weekend was any indication, Nick is going to serve me up there pretty good.

With all this in mind, I've decided to really amp up my training. Time to quit with the laziness and get going. 

On both Monday and Tuesday, as well as tomorrow, I will, and have gone swimming with Derek in the mornings and I really think these training workouts will make huge improvements. Swimming with someone faster prevents me from being lazy. In order to simply make the set, I've got to kill myself the whole time. Tuesday we did a killer hard set:

6x100 Alt 1 Free/1 Kick 20 SR 

16x50 4x (Swim/Build/Kick/Fast) @ :60 

3x (100 Pace (1500) @ 30 SR 
100 Kick @ 2:00 
4x50 Pace 
(1500) @ :45

Broken 200 @ 10SR per 50 

200 ezzzzz


Keep in mind that the 4X50 at the end on 45 seconds. Well 45 seconds is my race pace so I was killing myself to get in and get some rest. All in all was an amazing workout. I complimented this workout by drinking nearly a full 2L chocolate milk and was still hungry all day.

Having had a successful swim workout, tonight's mission was for a run.

My new target time is to get down around 35 minutes/10km by the end of the summer, so I decided to do a track workout trying to hold 35 minute pace (3:30/km). The workout was: 

warm up
4X400 w/30 rest
3X800 w/45 rest
1200 w/ 60 rest 
1600 w/ 60 rest
2000
cool down.

My legs were still feeling it from the Sun Run, especially as I got tired, so in order to prevent risking injury I cut the workout short halfway through the 1600 when my hamstring started to twitch. Other than cutting it short though, I managed to run everything on pace or fast which was great.

Race season, here I come!

5 comments:

Derek WL said...

Haha For some reason, you getting amped up about training is making me SUPER excited about race season!

WAHOOoooooOoooOOooOooO!
Keep it up man! You're lookin strong!

Facundo said...

We should go to the track one of these days and run until we can no longer walk. The one on 41st and west boulevard is pretty good... might make it there on saturday.

Vincent said...

Hey, I'm for sure down for a track workout. I'm actually away this weekend, but sometime next week we should do a track workout along with a good ride hitting maybe Cypress on the weekend. You down?

Anonymous said...

Hey, Isn't a half in victoria comming up soon? How's everything looking for that race?

Oh, and have you know any good bike routes out in Vancouver for riding? I'm looking for some variety from the ol' head east towards mission and back.

Vincent said...

Yeah, I've got lots of good routes near and around Vancouver.

What area are you looking at?

If you head towards downtown there is always stanley park, which can lead to the northshore and horseshoe bay/Cypress.

Or cut east from there and go towards Deep Cove/Seymore.

If your feeling something flat, there is the richmond loop, which can be anywhere from 40-80k depending on what turns you take.

I'll make a post about it