Pleasantly Surprised

This Sunday brings to an end my first official month of triathlon training with my coach.  Those of you that know me are aware that I am very much a type A personality, very driven and focused once I set my sights on a goal.  In this case that goal is 267 days away.
Along my training journey I will be subjected to regular tests by my coach.  Not tests like Jordan takes but tests to measure my fitness and my progress.  These help us to stay on track and make sure that I am peaking next August.
I affectionately refer to these tests as “go hard and try not to puke” tests.  They take place on the bike in the form of a Functional Threshold Power test which measures my power on the bike.  I do this test  both in spin class and on my bike in the garage.  It’s basically a 20 minute all out effort and at the end you feel like death!
I completed both of these over the last two and a half weeks or so.  The good news, at least to me is that my numbers were almost exactly the same as where they were in February when I started riding. You might be thinking, “that’s not great considering it’s almost 10 months later”,  but I haven’t really been back at it that long since I found out about the surgery in May.
The other test is a mile time trial.  This one is performed on a track and it is AWFUL!!!  Run as hard as humanly possible for 4 laps and much like the FTP test, pray you don’t puke!
In 2016 I did this trial twice, in February I ran 7:18 and in July I ran 7:04.  Both of those came during marathon training when I was running 5 days a week and doing speed work once a week.
When I saw the time trial on my schedule for this past Monday I was figuring that if I broke 7:35 it would be a win.  I haven’t been really running consistently in ages, I haven’t done speed work since last November and I’m almost 7lbs heavier than I was last July.
Imagine my shock when I finished the trial on Monday and my watch said 7:12!!!
My guess is that all the swimming and the spin class that I do week in and week out had me better prepared and in better shape than I thought.
Armed with these results my coach and I will be able to get the most out of my training by building my workouts using these metrics.
Now it’s time to focus on building my strength in all three disciplines as well as with the weights.  Time to start really focusing on the big picture and the steps that it will take to get there.

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