Swim - Bike - Row & Sauna

Even though I am not back to running yet, I am more than happy with this weekend's workout. I feel almost like trying to run again, but I do not want to rush it since The Race is exactly in four weeks. And stating this makes me little bit crazy. I need to get in some hard and some really long workouts to be ready for the long effort of the 26.2 miles (oh my God!). With still no running, one has to be creative in order to stay sane with the cross training. Basically everything is said with the post title.

I came up with it during Saturday's workout, when I was thinking I was going for Swim - Bike - Sauna combo. But then invite for a movies came in, so I managed only the Swim and Bike (bike = stationary bike = boooooring - thank God for movies in my iPhone and the Choice magazine!). So 1 200 meters (= 1 312 yards) of swim in 43 minutes and 60 minutes on stationary bike for Saturday. I am now managing to go 1:1 freestyle (crawl) and breast stroke, pretty happy about that, hope to be able to go all the time freestyle sometime soon. Any useful tips on this one? The Coach told me, that averaging my HR around 150 on my workouts in Genove does not impress him, since that is too low an effort for my cardiovascular system. So I was trying to go above 160 towards 170 bpm on the stationary bike - see the graph. My avg. HR was 165 bpm with max at 176 bpm.

The Sunday workout was previewed as an imitation of a long run effort (at least 2 and something hours of cardio). That also meant proper fueling strategy (testing the fueling for my marathon race) and proper after workout refuel, but cautious before the sauna. I took my padded cycling shorts in order to survive the long effort on a stationary bike (they are was uglier to bike than the beautiful spinning bikes). I am definitely getting a bike trainer following DC Rainmaker's suggestion in order to use my own bike at home instead of going to the gym to use crappy stationary bike. 

The planned two hours on bike seemed impossible after first 15 minutes, but thanks to the movies on my iPhone and refueling around 1 hour with a GU energy gel (jet blackberry) and continuously with Isostar and water, I somehow managed. The race was my biggest motivation, because apart from knowing that I need to get some of these long efforts under my belt, I couldn't push myself to go on with that boring activity for that long. And I definitely need the iPad for these boring workouts :) I had to aim for slightly lower HR than yesterday, the cardio could manage, but my legs are not used to such a hard biking efforts, finally managed to go steady with avg. HR of 158 bpm, peaking at 168 bpm. 

After refilling my water bottles and swallowing my second GU energy gel (vanilla bean) I went for 30 minutes of rowing. The rowing was fun, because I haven't done it in quite some time, so I enjoyed myself and the 30 minutes flew by pretty easily. Finished off with approx. 20 minutes of lifting and strength core training. After the workout, I took Power Bar protein shake - powder mixed with milk (yes I brought therm cup with milk and mixed my shake at the gym). Got the sample at the race in Vienna, vanilla tasted really good. I need to buy myself some protein powder, although I try to avoid the chemical food as much as possible. But I needed to get some fuel in in order not to collapse from hypoglycemic shock in the sauna. Sauna was great reward after working hard the weekend. Special bonus was that my great friend masseuse was there and had 40 minutes for my tired back. I hope you had a great weekend too!!!

Saturday's workout - Crappy iPhone photos in the mirror, I know I know. You might be able to see the lighter pink on the bottom of my t-shirt - that's the original color, all the rest of the t-shirt was soaking soaking wet.


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Please help me help the kids! I'm running the NYC marathon to support the Team Hole in the Wall