Central Park and another threshold test.

Not much to blog about these days in the training department.  I have been consistently training everyday.  I do not think I ever trained this hard and this consistently before.  At times I think my body wanted to rebel against me too.  After some speed work on the track a couple of weeks ago with the Masters group, my left hamstring had enough and got really tight.  So tight that I was afraid I pulled it.  It had hurt to walk and I proceeded with my training sessions gingerly at times.  I did finally have my first day off from training last Saturday while I was in NYC for my birthday! :):):)  However, I could have still probably logged something for that day as we walked and walked and walked!  All-day-long!  But it was a fun weekend!

While in NYC, I did do a long run in Central Park!  I ran 20km and it was a great run!!!  I really had fun and enjoyed that run.  I have never ran anywhere (except in race situations) where so many other people were running at the same time.  It was fabulous!  I wish we had something like that here in TO!  It took me just under 2hrs to complete the run and I was running at a steady effort.  The plan was actually to run 1.5hrs until I took a wrong turn somewhere and had a little detour and made the run longer.  Oops!  But I was happy I got 20km in!  So I hope this is a good sign that training has been going well.  My first test will come tomorrow when I run the Chilly Half marathon in Burlington.  I just hope the weather does not wreak havoc out there.  It had been raining pretty much nonstop for the last two days and now they are calling for snow and colder temperatures overnight into tomorrow.  This could mean some icy conditions.  Eek!

This past Thursday I did my second threshold test on the bike.  This one hurt a lot more than the last one.  This time around I was using my powertap with the PT computer as oppose to the SRM with the garmin so the readings were a bit lower.  We figured the garmin was reading about 10-15W higher than the PT computer.  So last time my 203W average for my test would translate to about 193W on the PT.  Well, for this 20min test I averaged 197W, with an average cadence of 91rpm and average HR of 172bpm.  My first test my avg HR was 160bpm so I definitely worked harder this time around.  I am pleased that I still managed to keep my cadence over 90rpm.  I have been continuing to work on my cadence and it seems to be working.  My goal was to hit 200W so I was just shy of that but I was done.  I thought I was going to pass out on the bike and my legs were trashed afterwards, lol!