Tuesday workout

Today's workout. I thought I needed a little running challenge (after blowing off my half marathon on Sunday) so today (so far) for starters I did half-mile repeats on the treadmill at the club. I also played around with the grade to vary intensity:

• 0.5 mile walk warmup at 20 min/mile, 2% grade
• 0.5 miles at 12 min/mile, 2% grade
• 0.25 mile recovery walk at 20 min/mile, 2% grade
• 0.5 miles at 10 min/mile, 0% grade
• 0.25 mile recovery walk at 20 min/mile, 2% grade
• 0.5 miles at 12 min/mile, 2% grade
• 0.25 mile recovery walk at 20 min/mile, 2% grade
• 0.5 miles at 10 min/mile, 0% grade
• 0.25 mile warm-down walk at 20 min/mile, 2% grade

Normally a 10 min/mile pace outside is really pushing it for me (my 5K PR is 31:30) but it felt relatively easy at 0% grade after the previous work at a 2% grade. I know it's not the same work intensity as a 10 min/mile pace outside, since you're not working against air resistance, but at least my legs were moving that fast for a brief while.

Then into the pool, after 3 quick sets of crunches! 1000m at an easy pace, varying my strokes. I particularly concentrated on breathing on the "wrong" side for me (which involves a lot of sputtering and water up my nose, since I'm totally uncoordinated in that direction) but it DID prevent any of the one-sided back pain that I had experienced from breathing only on one side. I'll have to continue with this bilateral breathing work. I'd like to get to the point where I can breathe comfortably on either side, or alternate breaths on either side, because I hear that kind of versatility is very helpful in open water swims where the waves may be coming from either side, and one-sided breathing can tend to make a person veer off course.

Yesterday I did 45 minutes on the bike trainer (planned for 60, but I put it off for too long and it finally got too late to complete - funny how that happens when I procrastinate) and did a few sets of crunches. Catherine decided it was fun to sit on my chest while I was lying on the floor trying to do crunches. That made them somewhat more difficult.

I still plan to do 45 minutes on the bike trainer later today (up from the original plan of 30 minutes) to continue on my Five Days of Consistency.