Yesterday (Monday, 4/2) was my typical Monday yoga session, as well as continuing the run streak to 27 days. I limited the run itself to a mile - the minimum to keep the streak going. The good news is that as of the time of the run (around 6:40pm), it had been > 6 hours since I took a couple Advil, and the ankle felt pretty good - not perfect, but better than it had been. So that was good news.
Yoga was the great workout as usual - it really has become as critical to my fitness as any other workout because it just 'resets' everything, and touches upon so many things that need strength training attention to stay healthy and uninjured.
Today, I was looking at TrainerRoad workout plans, trying to figure out how to approach the rest of the time until Lake Placid. Many of the programs are in the range of 9 weeks long, and their focus varies from base building (low intensity, sweet spot workouts) to advanced (higher intensity, long intervals). In the back of my mind, I was thinking 'oh, I got like 20 weeks or something left', so I was thinking I could knock out probably two plans and then have a couple weeks taper. So then I looked at the calendar, and my heart skipped a beat - as of Sunday, there were only 16 weeks left. Sixteen! So my mind raced for a second, thinking through everything - I wanted to get through the second base building, I need to get intervals in, I need to get threshold in, I need to get outdoor workouts in (with at least two in the 90-100 mile range to figure out fueling, plus some intense hill workouts), I needed to taper. Oi! How was I going to get all that in in 16 weeks!
So after a few moments, I settled down a bit and decided - ok, lets focus on the priorities. I've got my base at this point - it is what it is. So I need to start doing some fairly high intensity intervals - say, 5-6 weeks worth. Then, maybe 5-6 weeks worth of stretching the intervals out and lowering intensity (more towards threshold), which leaves a couple weeks worth for long rides when the opportunities present themselves, as well as hill workouts.
With all that in mind, I decided I should probably make the weekday workouts 90 minutes in length - there was no reason I wasn't doing so previously, aside from the fact that the workouts were only 60 minutes before.
So today I picked Centennial - one of the first ones in the advanced build program. I picked it because it was intervals of 6-8 minutes in length @ FTP, plus at the time I didn't realize that weekday workouts in the advanced build are 90 minutes in length - I thought it was only weekend ones that were. This time I also had gatorade instead of just water. While the intervals were challenging, it did seem noticeably easier with the extra fuel from the gatorade, so I think I'll be doing that from now on.
After that workout, I headed out for a 1.5 mile brick run. Went very well, barely a peep at all from the ankle, so I think in another couple days it'll be ready for a 5 mile test to see where things stand. It also felt really, really nice to run again on an ankle that wasn't complaining every time I planted my foot down.
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