My Road to Challenge: Training Week 35 of 40

	Week 35 (July 14 – July 20)	Cumulative
Total training hours	20:48	506:35
Swim	04:04 / 9.2234 km	101:07 / 210.9393 km
Bike	10:33 / 261.7 km	179:04 (spin class + trainer time + 2477.4 km)
Run	05:51 / 54.8 km	129:28 / 1290.86 km
Strength training	00:20	40:08
Yoga		52:25

Week 35 was my biggest swim-bike-run week yet.  I was excited to see my assignment for the week… and a little overwhelmed. It turned out to be a challenging week for it. The two days with morning and evening workouts were both days that I had to work downtown, which meant long commutes. And both were days with late meetings.

On Tuesday, I opted to get it all done before returning home. Up at 4, I left the house at 5, ready to hit the lake at 5:30 am. And I had a terrible, terrible swim. After the heat wave we had, Sasamat was much too warm for a wet suit swim… a 3 km wet suit swim. I felt like I was poaching myself and like I had wasted a workout when there are precious few remaining before race day. After my swim, I drove in to the city, spent nine and a half hours in the office and then changed into my run gear, planning to run… somewhere… before heading home, finally deciding to run at Burnaby Lake. I’d never run there before but the distance seemed about right for what I had to do. OMG. What a gong show. I was completely disoriented, got lost, was trying to maintain pace on some zone 3 intervals while still stopping to read signs to find my way out. I realized I didn’t run around the lake, just up and down one side of it, and when I got home and looked at the Garmin data, I was surprised to see I was running on the opposite side of the lake that I thought I was on. You might ask how that’s possible but let me tell you, you can’t even see the lake from that trail – not at this time of year anyway – or at least, not on the side I was running on!

Fortunately, I’d taken Wednesday off to celebrate my baby girl’s 15^th birthday (15!) so could sleep in, get my training done in the morning and then hang out with her the rest of the day. Here we are enjoying post-hill-repeat-followed-by-brick-run popsicles.

So you would think with that mid-week day off, Thursday would see me well rested for am/pm workouts but no… In bed by 10, but pulled from it not too much later by the sound of someone driving into a parked car on the street… Suspicions of impairment… waiting around for police to arrive… a second parked car driven in to… well. It was a long while before I made it back to bed. So my Thursday pool workout came after just 3 hrs and 45 minutes of sleep. I told myself this was all good preparation for race day. I won’t sleep then either. Get up with a swim I’d rather not do. Work hard all day and then finish with a run. And that’s how the day went. My end of day run though: bliss.  I do feel like I’m getting slightly addicted to the 9 pm dinner standard: Vega Sport protein powder (chocolate), almond milk, a frozen banana, and frozen mixed berries. Blended thick and eaten with a spoon.

Friday night the weather turned and having been spoiled with lots of hot, dry rides… the weekend everything changed. Sunday was my biggest ride ever… as in EVER. I had 6 hours to log and there was no way I was spending them on the trainer… seriously, I did 4 hrs in one spell a couple of months ago and swore that I’d never do it again.  I looked to where the sky seemed lightest and rode in that direction. It started out not bad… then started to rain a bit. Then rained harder.  I was making my way to the Tsawassen Ferry Terminal and at times it rained so hard, I could barely see. My socks were soaked. My feet like ice cubes. And my new wind breaker… not a rain coat. LOL. I’m still trying to master the nutrition and had set my Garmin to chirp every 10 minutes as a prompt to drink. Unfortunately, I often couldn’t hear it over the wind, rain and roar of truck traffic on the SFPR. It took me 2 hrs and 23 minutes to get to Tsawassen, I was soaking wet, I’d made it through only one bottle of carbo-pro. I was starving and I needed a bathroom. With no one to watch my bike and no lock though, there was no relief for me. I sucked back a gel and returned in the direction I’d come. I knew that there was a Husky station on River Rd that we’d stopped at before when out riding SFPR. It was pretty quiet so I figured they’d let me bring my bike in and I could have a pit stop and buy some emergency energy - because there was NO WAY I was downing any more liquids until I found a bathroom. So I made my way to the Husky station and it was pretty quiet alright. Too quiet as it turned out...

I nearly wept. Apologizing profusely to my bladder, I started making my way back along River Rd, looking for options for an emergency break. Everywhere that seemed like it might be a reasonable stop had a sign warning “this area protected by video surveillance”. Not wanting to be the next viral Youtube video, I kept going. A Chevron on Scott Road was my relief but I didn’t hit it until the 4 hr mark in my ride. No fluids. No fuel from 2:23 to 4 hrs. Soaking wet. It wasn’t my happiest ride. Emergency Mars bar. Check! The rest of the ride was pleasant (funny what some calories can do when they aren’t being evil) and it even stopped raining. By the time I started my run, it was dry and a little bit muggy.

I’m pretty proud to have made it through this training week, logging a few firsts/milestones: highest SBR volumes, biggest single ride ever, and I fell asleep while having my hair blow dried at the hair salon Saturday afternoon (you know you're tired when...). 5 weeks to go.

Week 35 looked like this:

Monday	6.7 km run 20 minute TRX workout (Core + 5 minutes of squats)
Tuesday	3 km lake swim 12 km run
Wednesday	Brick: 41 km ride including 4 x hill repeats (SFU) followed by 5.1 km run
Thursday	2800m pool swim 18 km run
Friday	3.4 km lake swim
Saturday	Brick: 67 km ride followed by 6.7 km run
Sunday	Brick: 153 km ride followed by 6.4 km run