Coming Together

    My new work schedule has me starting at 7:00 am, so my morning workouts are effectively over. There is no way I am getting up at 4:00 am to get in an hour on the bike before work. I miss my morning workouts though, and I liked being able to do two separate workouts a day. Now though, I can get in longer afternoon workouts without it cutting into my sleep any more than it already does. Tuesday, I hit the pool and swam 2-1/2 miles in 1 hour and 40 minutes, not too bad, and it was a good feeling swim. Thursday I was able to swim for 70 minutes, focusing on technique and skills, get home and cycle for an hour, also focusing on technique. Friday I had an epic swim, 1-1/2 miles in 55 minutes, which is my fastest swim to date, and it felt f'king great. I followed it with an hour on the bike doing a gearing/power pyramid: 20 minute warm up, then increasing one gear at a time 3 minutes hard, 1 minute easy, up 4 gears, then back down, for 2 sets. Saturday, my workout was forestalled by a medical call so I didn't get started til 8:30 in the evening. I did another pyramid set, followed by an intense core workout. This morning, awakened by my pager at 7:30 for another medical call that was cancelled the moment I got to the station, I was up early so figured it was a good morning for an endurance cycling workout. Two full hours of high cadence, decently high gears. An interesting point of cycling indoors; since there are no down hills, no coasting, just constant pedaling at a steady state cadence, 60 minutes is the rough equivalent of 90 minutes on the road. Another interesting point, and one I have tried to take advantage of over the last few months; doing two workouts, separated by a mere 12 hours or so, is actually very much like doing the same amount of time all at once. In other words, an evening ride of 1 hour, plus a morning ride of 2 hours give the body the similar benefits of riding 3 hours in one fell swoop.
    I am pushing my swimming and cycling up a few more notches lately. My swimming has had a few monumental leaps lately. One improvement has been my stroke count. Last year I was taking 16 strokes per length, I have shortened that to 12 to 13 strokes. That is a 20-25% increase in efficiency, which is huge. To break it down, that saves me roughly 210 strokes per mile, or 8 laps, or nearly 1/4 mile worth of energy expenditure. Swimming is all about efficiency. I am eager for the water at the Cove to warm up enough that I can resume my open water swimming, I will be interested to see how long it will take me to swim the 6 laps that will give me 3 miles. I think I may need to invest in a waterproof stop watch.
    My cycling, although at this point, nearly all indoors, has improved as well. I consistently pedal at a cadence of 88 to 92 rpms, which is a good, steady cadence. I am working on my power, which brings my cadence down a bit, but I need to be able to grind at lower gears for long periods in order to to fulfill the cycling leg and get off with enough juice to still run. It is slowly coming together. Slowly. If my knees hold out, I will be fine.