Training Update

For those who care, here goes.

As of 2 weeks ago, I've now started swimming 3x a week with the Markham Masters Swim Club.

Given that I've only swum no more than 30 times since the year 2000, this is a major training addition for me. Why the change? I started swimming in September due to my recovery from Achilles surgery. I could not do the amount of running I wanted to do so this was the easy option. I only planned on swimming once a week from September to June, but I've been enjoying my swimming so much that I extended my membership to swim 3x per week.

My right shoulder is holding up ok due to all of the swimming. Some days are better than others but I can feel the strength building up despite the pain. In fact, I hit a personal best time of 1:36 for 100m last week (although I've never timed myself before at a full out effort). I was not looking to make serious time improvements for my Ironman swim but that may happen as a bi-product. I will gladly take it if it comes. I know I can swim tons faster if I push it, but I will focus on getting faster at a fairly easy effort. After all, there is still 180 km of biking and 42.2 km of running to do afterwards.

The Achilles is making slow but steady gains. I am up to 1 hr and 20 minutes of constant running (avg. pace 6:27/km). So I am not breaking any speed records yet.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

H