Week Five Re-Cap: Base 1

Base 1 started this week. I'm coming into it sicker than sick but I still do what I need to do. My original goal this week before I got sick was to complete all workouts in their entirety, including strength. Luckily, as the week progressed, I completed nearly every workout despite being so sick, not sleeping, and entering our highest volume and highest intensity to date.

Elizabeth warned us that we would be feeling the hills and the strengthening this week. Whew. I did. It started with Monday night's workout which has always been swim and 30 minutes strength at the most. This week, it was Running 30 minutes and Swimming 2500 yards. This introduces a whole new challenge of where I'm going to work out, espcially in the winter still when it's too cold to really run outside. I mean, there are seriously only so many hours in a day and these workouts are on the other side of the city practically, in the heart of downtown Chicago. I asked around over the weekend and my monday night swim coach suggested that I come early to swim practice and use the treadmills at Presidential Towers before swimming. Since I was sick, I was lucky I felt good enough to go at all. I ended up running 10 minutes (Liz taught us "some is better than none"), then completed our longest monday night workout to date: 2500 yards. Not bad.

Tuesday night, we have class. However, Liz allowed us to run first for 20 minutes prior to class. Hey, getting out earlier is fine by me. I ran the 20 minutes then we had our usual Tuesday night torture workout. We did a LOT of hill workouts on the bike. We went for nearly 75 minutes then it was time to go home. Still sick. Of course, I couldn't get past the fact that I was supposed to run 30 minutes yesterday instead of the 10 that I DID run, so I decided to run MORE after this torture bike class. 15 minutes. Now, I was only 5 minutes shy of what was planned for the week. Acceptable.

Wednesday was a much needed rest day. I was still sick, had to do a presentation downtown for research, had to run up to Lakeview to meet 2 old friends, Heidi and Jenni that I always cancel with for sport or philanthropy reasons, then had a 2 hour Power lecture sponsored by the Chicago Tri Club. I think I finally got home by 10pm. Some rest day. Getting sicker almost a week later and now we're starring at another 6days before my next rest day. How does this happen.

Thursday was more hills. My voice was now going after doing assessments out in Willowbrook and I haven't slept more than 5 hours a night in over one week. Still on track with my workouts, though. This run was 50 minutes, all hills- up to 4% incline. Eek. I did it though. I did skip my strength when I got home. Too sick.

Friday was swim practice at 6am. Too sick and didn't want to get my teammates sick. So, I decided to go after work to Xsport and infest that pool instead. Ha. Had a decent swim actually, but still no voice. I even did strength at home.

Saturday was a day from Heaven. I was still fighting laryngitis but Akemi and I set out to do Ted'd 7:30 am bike class. It was good. We rode for about 2 hours actually, then I did 30 minutes of strength, and 30 minutes of stretching (much needed). I was starving, so I headed over to Bongo Room for my favorite Sweet Potato/black bean/avocado/egg burrito. Fresh grapefruit juice. Intelligentsia coffee. Heaven. On. Earth. AND, it was sunny and above 35 degress. Maybe even 40 degrees.

On Sunday, still no sleep- maybe 4 1/2 hours, but I fought it anyway and headed out to Palos for a great hill workout with Joe and friends. Such a great challenge. I did just under 9 miles in 1:15 including some massive hills. It's always a good thing when you run with people faster than you and you can keep up. Even on hills. AND, stay in your heart rate zones. NOW we're talkin! I did skip the optional swim because I'm sleep deprived and still sick. I did all the required workouts this week. Whew.




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