Ticking Boxes – February 2017 Polar Performance Report
This is one of those “better late than never” scenarios, I am afraid. I wanted to pause this month to talk a bit about last month’s training.
February Training
Distance covered: 737 KM
Training hours: 45
SWIMMING: 4.5 hrs. VERY low month for swim volume. Oops. This has a lot to do with pool accessibility in the winter.
RUNNING
I was travelling the weekend of Feb 13-19 and I moved my long run to the Monday which is what made my weeks so unbalanced.
CYCLING
Keeping it consistent with about 4-5 hours of indoor riding consisting of two workouts and one long ride.
New/Interesting Places that I Trained
I travelled to Grand Rapids Michigan on Family Day weekend and did some awesome training to get ready for my adventure race. We did some orienteering, mountain biking and trail running.
We rode the Barry Roubaix course and it was absolutely glorious to do some riding outdoors.
Races I Ran
I added this race as a tester to see where my fitness was at. The moment I woke up, I realised that my goals had changed. You can see from the photo that we had some healthy snowfall so my only goal was to race it smart. I turned my watch around and focused on a consistent, happy pace. I had a LOT of fun at this race despite the questionable footing and falling snow and ended up running a 32:09 and taking third for females. No records were set this year but it was a great day with good people and it ended with pizza. Everyone won.
Gear/Training
I used the Polar V800 to track all of my track work, outdoor cycles and runs this month.
The New Balance 860 continues to be my favourite shoe as I build mileage. I did just get the new 1080 and will be testing it out this month.
I am a Performance Project athlete under the coaching of Dave Galloway.
I have been using TrainerRoad software on the bike and noticing some big fitness gains as a result.
Thoughts
PHYSICAL
February was about ticking boxes. I settled into a training rhythm and workouts felt difficult but within my reach. Right now, I am focused on building fitness and staying healthy both physically and mentally. I did an FTP test on the bike and raised my threshold by almost 60 watts. I am making huge gains on the bike, holding steady on the run and working on technique in the pool. Everything is good.
MENTAL
February was a brutal month for me, scheduling wise. Work was extremely stressful and I carried that into my training which made me a little weaker mentally than I liked. I never had any workouts that proved devastating like last month which does show that I am getting better at mentally handling stress that I carry into my training.
For March
Easy for me to say now that I am half way through. I would have put something about the 72 hour but I will save that for next month. I have set a goal for a spring half marathon, I am thinking the Mississauga half, leading into my triathlon season so I will be giving my running a bit of TLC. I would like to get to the pool a bit more but my schedule is proving it to be a bit difficult with work right now. I am starting to do a small strength session before my aerobic work because the other day, I did 30 reps of an ab exercise and I had DOMS for days. Both embarrassing and illuminating.
OK! Time to go train!
