What are YOU made of?

S - 25,200 yards
B - 57 mi (3 mountain bike rides)
R - 38 miles
Time - 17.48 hours

Earlier this week, Brian asked me - ever so innocently - via email what my yearly hours had looked like the past four years.  I did a little training log research (my favorite kind) and came up with some numbahs

2009 - 650 (year of first dance with the devil aka triathlon)
2010 - 730
2011 - 800
2012 - 830

Brian used his special coaching mind to do some thinking and asked if I was happy making some improvement with a continued, slight progression (say 845-850 hours in 2013) or if I wanted to have no social life (I already don't have one), less free time (idle hands are the devil's tool), and be more tired constantly (amazing.).  In short, despite working 35-40 hours a week, did I want to really push my own limits and discover how much I can truly train?

Obviously, the answer is going to be "yes."  Maybe not an emphatic YES! but everyone needs to figure out what motivates them to answer a question like this.  Doing this takes time.  I'm motivated by small improvements, patient progression, race results, training buddies, pace clocks, powermeters, etc.  I get to experience MORE of this motivation the MORE I train, so I guess my YES becomes more emphatic.

Next week will see a nice increase in volume.  Back up to lots of swimming and lots of running.  Cycling will still remain on the relative back-burner, it looks like.

This week, I managed somehow to only ride my mountain bike.  I really, REALLY want a powermeter for that thing though, because I'm pretty sure two hours on the trails is equal in TSS to at least 2.5-3hrs aerobic on the roads.  Regardless, I'm definitely improving from a skills standpoint.  More confidence in my bike + more confidence in my own abilities = more faster trail riding.

I ran a lot more this week than I have in a while.  I felt surprisingly fantastic and my paces reflected that; most runs were well under 7:00 minutes/mile pace with no forcing and that is super sweet. Per Brian's suggestion, I've been incorporating some hill efforts into normal runs.  A more fun way of doing hill repeats than going out and banging my head against the "wall" several times.

I got a slight reprieve from swimming frequency this week, only swimming five times.  But I tried to make each of those swims count by getting in at least 5000 yards.  The only exception to that was Saturday, where the main set was exceptionally short.  Luckily, I had built up some yards in the bank and was able to end up over 25k off just those five swims.  Next week will see a bump back up to more "normal" volume ;)