So, after celebrating Canada Day on July 1st, I’m quietly and internally celebrating my own country’s Independence Day on a beautiful July 4th up here in Victoria. Our training group has been reduced somewhat, with Colin and Kyle both away doing some races. So mostly it’s just me and Simon. Fortunately for me, Simon just raced (and won) Canadian Nationals on Sunday, so he’s not at his fastest, making it easier for me to stay less-far behind him during workouts.
This morning was a bit gray as we headed to the pool, for what would be some experimental pulling technique work. But in typical Victoria fashion, the day brightened up considerably and ended up being beautiful. After several 800’s tweaking technique, it was decided that the old standard — lots of band-only, followed by hard-pulling — was still the recipe for success on the swim.
Then it was back to HQ (House of Q, that is) for some 007 shoot-em-up action on the PS2, followed by some PB&J, and then a serious nap. Post nap, it was time for some fartlek running around the park after running the game back to the video store as a warm-up. With all the training I’ve been doing, the long warm-up has become essential, since my legs definitely take a while to come into form. But I know that this kind of training will pay off down the road when the big races come around.
Tomorrow, we’re at the lake for an open water swim, and then back in the saddle for some more hard riding. Simon’s gearing up for his big race at LifeTime Fitness, so I’m doing my best to help him prepare for that big dance. Sadly, I have less than one week left with these guys, but I hope to be back much sooner than next summer.
Until then, just remember, in the words of Floyd Landis, “like when you’re training, you can always do one more. Always. As tired as you might think you are, you can always, always do one more”… So there’s no such thing as overtraining? “If you overtrained, it means you didn’t train hard enough to handle that level of training. So you weren’t overtrained: you were actually undertrained to begin with. So there’s the rule again: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins.”
Jordan Rapp 