Take a break. Have a coffee, Pal.

This is what I hear every day at work. I have a mighty work ethic, be it training or shovelling iron-making materials into metal bins. I can definitively say I've earned a recovery in training - I've finished out my second tough build week. 12.5 hours this week, and tied for the highest training stress in a week (against my 14 hour week). Today I'm taking the day off completely, then will slowly ease into training. I expect a pretty quick recovery, then it's back for two more weeks of work. Actually, two and a half weeks. I plan on starting some good quality this Thursday. Three days should be enough.

My Friday-Saturday-Sunday were as follows:

Friday
SWIM - 50min - 800m wu (standard 1k minus the 50's), 2x (3x100m on 2min, 2x50m on 2min from blocks, 100m kick easy, 100 swimdown)
RUN - 30min - easy, treadmill run

Saturday
BIKE - 120min - Moderate, hilly ride with a couple hill sprints and some long steady climbs

Sunday
RUN - 45min - easy 10km
SWIM - 45min - 400m warm up (IM stuff), 2x (50fists-50swim-50paddles long slow, low stroke count
50fists-50swim-50paddles hard, try to match stroke count 100 kick), 300m cd w paddles, IM stuff

My last couple days weren't all that high-impact, but I consider it steady, aerobic icing-on-the-cake and done on pretty tired legs. Today I've got that dull, aching pain in the legs. It's a good thing.

This week I'm going to keep working on the swim, but won't do a dedicated hard run until Sunday. On Sunday I will be racing a local 10k to get the second build week started. Thursday I plan on doing some quality riding with the Sault Cycling Club. Always do a bit of running off the bike. Always always always.

Last year I had a personal best 10k time of 35:28. I had paced this poorly as I got over-excited chasing some really fast guys. This Sunday I'm likely going to be in a good position to run my own race so I should be able to see another new PB. In contrast to my last 10km attempt I'm going to start conservatively, something around 3:30-3:32/km for the first 2km. If I'm coming through the first 5km in 17:30 after that, I know all I have to do is sit at that pace. Any extra speed I can find will just put me even further under that 35min mark. Last year the winning time was something like 36, so I'll hopefully have someone around to help me push the pace in the last 5km. Before then I should think about getting a racing singlet or something. I don't want to be that guy in a tri jersey again.

Anyway, I still have a nice chunk of content I'd like to write out but there has been a good amount of current stuff to write about. Maybe the next thing I'll post is something about my summer race schedule. In short, I'm racing the Muskoka 5150 and Toronto Triathlon Festival olympic distance event. These are both AG World Qualifying events.

Adam "Time to roll the legs" Fortais