A mixed bag of training.

Six weeks from this moment in time I should be finished or nearly finished with the Ironman.  At least that is my plan anyway.  As we all know however things don't always evolve as planned.  Such was the case this week with my training.  It was a week of intentions that never came to fruition.

I managed to run 20.2 miles this week which is much needed as my run it the weakest point of all in triathlon and my main concern in the Ironman.  I had several really good runs during the week and my long run on Saturday was 10 miles out in the country in beautiful Fall weather.  So the running aspect of training this week ended on a good note.

I hadn't spent any time in the water last week so I made it a point to get some more pool time in this week.  I visited the pool three times for lap swim and managed to swim 3 miles in total.  Swimming is an area I can direct less attention to as it is the shortest part of the Ironman and I am a fairly strong swimmer,  Again a postive aspect of this weeks training.

The longest part of the Ironman is the 112 mile bike portion.  Cycling demands a high level of focus during training and this is where I fell short this week.  I usually ride on Wednesday's and Friday's before the long ride on the weekend.  Wednesday of this week I was wiped out so I took a day off.  Friday I managed to squeeze a ride in after work and just before the sun set.  I felt good going into the weekend knowing that I had plans to ride on Sunday with 2 fellow Ironman Arizona participants.  Saturday night rolled around and I got word that both Greg and Brett wouldn't be able to make the ride on Sunday.  No big deal it would be a solo excursion of around 100 miles.

I head out on Sunday morning in the 45degree temperature.  Took me a little while to get settled into a relaxed pace and the cold morning.  Around 13 miles into the ride, I was descending a very steep hill approaching speeds of 30mph.  WHAM!! Thump! Bang!! Oh crap, fishtailing rear end.  Hold on to the drops, relax and get the bike to stop.  Exhale, slowing, stopped.  Take a look at the rear wheel and tire.  Tire is toast as is the rim.  What the hell happened there?  On the descent I was in the shade and I must have hit a major pot hole in the road.  Enough so to abruptly end my ride and force me to call Tina to come pick me up.  Like I said sometimes things just don't go as planned.

I ended my week with only 54 miles of training in over about 6 hours.  Definitely not the week of training I envisioned.  Oh well!  Nothing I can do at this point but take the highlights from it and put the rest behind me.

Tomorrow starts another week and I'll motor on.