Weekly Update: 23-29 January 2017

This week was a normal week training wise; I'll be busy for most weekends in February for I appreciated the standard week. For further details on what my usual week involves, see my post here. 

Outfit
Here is the outfit I wore to bootcamp on Monday...getting some use out of my City 2 Surf shirt. 

Running
This week I completed three runs. It was easier this week because Thursday was a public holiday so I didn't have the difficulty of fitting in the third run on a Thursday night before early swimming training on Friday morning. Because of the extra time I decided to run a 12km instead of the usual 7-8km. It had been ages since I'd completed a long run. I hadn't exceeded 10km since last September's half marathon. There hasn't been the need to and I've been focusing on shorter, faster runs since. It was great to see the improvement in my fitness since last September. 5 minutes and 30 seconds per kilometre for 12kms now feels very comfortable and I could have continued for longer. 

I attended a new Parkrun location this week with my friends. It was such a different experience because it was so huge- 550 runners in total- compared to 150-200 runners at my usual location. It seemed unmanageable for the course and it was so difficult to get a free run. It was like a large running event where you can't actually run for the first couple of minutes because there are too many people in the way. Given the circumstances I was happy with my time of 24 minutes and 38 seconds. It's a minute out from my best time but I was expecting it to be slower and I can never be disappointed with a time under 25 minutes. I was surprised to rank 66/546 overall and 9/252 gender ranking.  Overall it was a positive experience and a course I"d like to run again. 

Swimming
This week I completed five training sessions and attended usual Wednesday night swim club racing. The total distance covered was 15.7km which is more than usual because of the Bold and Beautiful ocean swim. I felt a potential injury coming on as I've felt pain in my upper back on the right hand side for around a week now. I've experienced this two times before last year and it went away eventually but this time is worse. I've put time into rehab exercises and hot and cold treatment which has helped. I haven't missed any training sessions but took it easier on some days. It's interesting because on Wednesday night I was worried about racing, especially the 400m freestyle, with the injury. As a result I adjusted my expectations and didn't worry about time or pacing. I felt relaxed during the race and focused on a longer stroke. It was the most comfortable 400m freestyle I've ever done. I usually get so nervous before a swimming race so taking the pressure off made the world of difference. I surprised myself with a personal best of 5:50.16. On a similar note I swam a personal best of 38:69 for the 50m backstroke. I've been wanting sub 39 seconds for awhile now so that was a surprise.It was a combination of improved underwater and the no pressure. My back hurt a little during breaststroke but overall it felt better in the pool than out. 

In addition I completed an ocean swim with the Bold and Beautiful squad at Manly this week. See my post about it here.  

Tennis
Tennis was standard this week and I played four sets at tennis club. I'm going to have to miss the next two weeks of tennis because I have an ocean swim event and a swimming carnival. I am so sad about that! Hopefully I can find some other time to play during those two weeks. 

IMPROVEMENTS
- I didn't address my areas of improvement this week but I won't be too harsh on myself because of the pain in my upper back. I knew many of the improvements I wanted to make would have made it worse. I wasn't able to do any weights or pushups this week (I'd introduced 5 pushups per day three times a week very recently). I'm wondering if this was the cause of the pain, in addition to general overuse. I'm not sure it would have been from swimming because I don't usually get injuries from swimming and it's a part of training I'm very used to. The strength training is much newer. I'll see how I feel next week as to whether I can address some intended areas of improvement.
- I want to get back into 100m sprints around the athletics track. I haven't done this for ages despite intending to. I should be doing more intense bursts of training and I find sprinting in running less painful than sprinting in the pool. Just five lots of 100m sprints is an efficient use of time. 

Weekly Photo
This is from the Bold and Beautiful ocean swim I did on Thursday. Unfortunately it was cold and overcast but I still got some good pictures. See my post here. 

What did you achieve this week?