Transition work/800 repeats

I woke up at 5:30 this morning to join in a transition workout courtesy of Julie Swail. My bike was already loaded in the car, tires inflated so just rolled out of bed and headed off to her gated community in Irvine. We had a bunch of last minute cancellations so it was just Julie, her friend Christina, and me. The workout went something like this: 400 yard swim, 1.5 mile bike, 1200 meter run. The entire circuit takes about 13-14 minutes, but the real value comes from the transition work. I needed practice getting in my bike shoes when they are already clipped in, and also need practice getting my running shoes on quickly.

I actually only swam 300-350 because the girls were much faster in the pool. However, my swim today was as fast as its ever been. I guess the competition helped. As expected, my biggest problem was getting in my bike shoes. A couple times, Julie and I hopped on our bikes at the same time and she'd gap me by 10-15 seconds. I can un-clip on the bike well and hop off, but getting in my running shoes is equally pathetic. The first two intervals I finished way behind, but on the last two I was close enough to catch up on the run. We took about 5 minutes recovery to re-set our gear before starting the next interval. I was absolutely gassed at the end, but hurried home to shower and head to work.

After work, I headed to the track for the usual Tuesday night workout. Despite the wind and rain we had a great turnout today and the storm clouds had cleared by the time we got going. Today's workout was a repeat of last week, 6 x 800 meters. I was drained from this morning, and my right knee was hurting on the warm-up, so I stayed in my trainers and tried to keep the first few repeats slow, letting my body control the speed. By the 3rd interval I had loosened up and was running my usual pace. On the 5th I changed into racing flats to get a couple quicker reps in. My splits today were 2:29, 2:25, 2:21, 2:22, 2:18, 2:13, with a 3 minute (400 meter) recovery in between each interval.

I cooled down two miles on the grass and headed straight over to Spa Gregories to cash in one of the free massages I won at the Spirit Run last month (see first post). I'm doing much better now, but am still really sore from all the recent work. I'm going to have to force myself to start tapering.