Week 11 wrap up

Week 11, 212 miles, 13.9 hours.

What an awesome week of training! This was my bike focused week and the one I was most dreading. Biking has not exactly been my strong suit or something I ever look forward to doing. Swimming has been my strongest sport for some time, running is something I'm finally seeing a lot of improvement in, and am feeling more and more comfortable at longer and longer distances. Cycling has been the one sport where I've been the most reluctant and worried about come race day. I haven't felt strong, I get sore easily, and haven't felt like I've seen any improvement. This week started changing my thoughts on that. The first three days were cycling with constant increases in distance. Wednesday was a tempo ride, where I maintained nearly 20 mph for 90 minutes straight, with 2 significant climbs mixed in. Saturday was another long ride, followed by an easy 30 minute run. Sunday was the monster day. It was my longest ride of my life and it felt really good, and gave me another huge jolt of encouragement. It was a 4 hour long ride and I rode 75 miles. Another discovery I made was that I was actually more comfortable in tri shorts compared to cycling specific shorts. I didn't feel the same incredible pain in my nether regions that I did with other shorts, with more padding. Still felt some obviously friction pain along the top part of the inside of my thigh, but nothing I wasn't able to tolerate.
Awesome weekend of riding and I feel a lot better about my cycling skills as a result of this week.
Normally I'd be entering my recovery week now, but because of the Half IM in two weeks I've switched weeks. So i'm going on 4 straight tough weeks now, and next week will be a recovery. At least that means that after that week I'll only have two tough weeks till the next recovery. Cycling and running are both going to really start ramping up in the coming weeks. Going to be a very tough next month. However, I have no doubts as to my ability to get through it.