Activity Details in Google Sheets

Activity Schedule in Google Docs

Summary of this week’s activities

First, let’s review my activities during this week. I had 6 run and 4 swim activities in this week. On Monday (27/06) I had a 15K easy run with the following averages: (15.16 K, 5:59 min/km, 133 bpm, 38m elevation gain). On Tuesday (28/06) I had a speed run 4×1200 with the following averages: (13.57 K, 5:42 min/km, 143 bpm, 45m elevation gain). On Wednesday (29/06) I had 15K easy run with the following averages: (15.23 K,  5:18 min/km, 153 bpm, 40m elevation gain) and a 300m swim with average pace 2:04 min/100m. On Thursday (30/06) I had a speed run 4×1200 with the following averages: (13.40 K, 5:40 min/km, 157 bpm, 44m elevation gain) and a 500m swim with average pace min/100m. On Friday (01/07) I had 15K easy run with the following averages: (15.02 K, 5:58 min/km, 144 bpm, 36m elevation gain) and a 400m swim with average pace 2:13 min/100m. On Sunday (03/07) I had 3K easy run with the following averages: (2.69 K, 10:54 min/km,  91 bpm, 30m elevation gain) and a 2K swim with average pace 2:23 min/100m.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
Easy 15K	Speed 4×1200-400 recovery	Easy 15K 300m Swim	Speed 4×1200-400 recovery 500m Swim	Easy 15K 400m Swim	2	Easy 3K 2K Swim	75.0 km Run3.2 km Swim

VO2Max and weekly mileage

My VO2Max this week in my (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday) activities were (51, 51, 51, 51, 51, N/A) ml/kg/min respectively. Also my weekly mileage this week was 75.0 km run and 3.2 km swim.

About individual runs

On Monday (27/06): backpack through the entire run. 10 min Hot tub, 10 min Sauna. I was trying to have this run with the easiest possible pace in order to have enough energy to do the Tempo/Speed workouts of this week while keeping my weekly mileage. I have to be careful about dehydration by having enough water during the day (3-4 liters a day) and I also need to monitor my sleep and nutrition.

On Tuesday (28/06): 10 min Hot tub 5 min Sauna, Stretch later after run (in the pool, I should do it earlier). In the first interval, I was confused with the data screen of the workout in my watch (it wasn’t the same with what I had in my last speed workout), so I thought the watch doesn’t work properly and I just decided to complete a 12K easy run, after the first interval when the watch told me it’s recovery time I found that this is the way that it works, so technically it was a 3.5×1200 cause I had an easy run in the second part of the first interval. Again I was sleeping too much last not cause my body really needed that and when I scaled myself this morning I noticed that I gained weight 1-2 kg (I can’t exactly say how much did I gain weight cause there is a 1kg difference between my upper and lower weight). I was also surprised why I didn’t realize that before specially during my SOS workouts past couple of days. The reason was not clear to me and I was still thinking about it till I found it when I was in the way back home. Usually the imbalanced sleep/nutrition is the very first symptom of increasing intensity of workouts. In past, I was experiencing that immediately after I was increasing my weekly mileage and I was expecting that to happen 12 days ago as I mentioned this in the comment of this activity https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1214504547 . Usually when you experience overeating, you would gain weight. Apparently my body was feeling OK with the 90km weekly mileage but as soon as I added the SOS workouts to my weekly plan, the reaction of my body was oversleeping and overeating. Now I feel better when I know the reason of my imbalanced sleep/weight, I know that it’s temporarily and it would be back to normal in 7-10 days, but as a result of professional training, I try to lose weight mainly by not eating high calory foods until I feel that my body is adapted to the situaion.

Wednesday run activity (29/06): 2Kg backpack through the entire run. 10 min Hot tub 5 min Sauna. I immediately changed my diet by cutting off fat and sugar (even from my coffee and tea) and I’m gradually trying to change my diet to high protein-low calory foods to drop a couple of pounds. Im trying to drop 3.5Kg from what I scaled myself yesterday within 2-3 weeks. That’s what I was training with it last year. Fortunately my body would drop weight as easy as it gain it but it’s more difficult to do it without losing your strength while you are training. Finally my middle toe’s nail (left foot) was as lose as I took it out completely, now I feel more comfortable.

Wednesday swim activity (29/06): At the beginning of my marathon training, I added a 1km of daily swim to my schedule cause I thought 20 min of swimming won’t impact my daily training. Later I found in practice that it’s too much so I decreased it to 500m swim with a slower pace and then I finally decided to cut it off. Now again I’m trying to resume my swimming and at this point I feel that I’m OK with 200m-300m lap swimming per day or at least a few days a week. Past few days when I was in the pool just for pool exercises and not for swimming , gradually I started to feel strange with swimming and after awhile I was so reluctant to go for swim which is very bad, as a triathlete I really need to be comfortable with swimming all the time. I guess I need to clarify about the reasons of my daily swim here. I have three reasons for my daily swim based on it’s priority which are as following: the first one is for it’s advantage for my muscles both because it release stress from my muscles and also it activate my upper body muscles which are both awesome. The second reason is because it makes me happy for the rest of the day , even if it’s as short as a 300m lap swimming. Finally because it also prepare me for ironman triathlon race but that’s something that I never want to think about it at this moment. Preparing for a sub 3 hour marathon takes such a focus and mentality from me that I really dont want to (and I also can’t) think about anything else such as a traithlon race. The reminder for my daily swim is, it should be slow.I dont know why whenever I get into water I want to swim fast which usually won’t last more than a few minutes.

Thursday run activity (30/06): 10 min Hot tub, 5 min Sauna, Stretch after swim and Sauna (again I forgot to stretch right after the run) It was a very tough activity in a hot and sunny day along the busy sea wall. I experienced a new Max HR in the new set of my training which was 196 bpm. and it totally explains how hard was the workout today, I was totally wet after the run. In general it was a good speed run but at this point, I am not going to have more than two Speed (SOS) workouts per week cause I actually can not do it. Usually it’s recommended to slow down the pace in hot days or basically just train early in the morning during summer but I was busy this morning and I couldn’t do it in the morning so I had to run in the afternoon. Fortunately tomorrow is a holiday (it’s Canada day and congratulations to everyone:) ) and I can resume my regular morning training from tomorrow.

Thursday swim activity (30/06): Breathing every other cycle in an easy paced swim. Length lane was closed so I had to swim along the width. I don’t know why width swimming is much faster than length swimming. My ave. pace today was 1:50 min/100m and I am sure if it was a length swim it would be something around 2:10-2:15 min/100m

Friday run activity (01/07): 2Kg backpack through the entire run. My both knees are improving, first my right knee then the left one.

Friday swim activity (01/07): Breathing every other cycle. It was such a nice day that I got creative and find a theory to explain why I burned out from swimming in my daily schedule and what’s the right amount of swimming for my training plan, it’s all about the 10% rule. So far and before the new level of my training, the highest level of weekly workout that my body used to it was 8 hours weekly workout.Therefore based on the 10% rule, whenever I wanted to increase that level of training, I shouldn’t increase it more than 10% of 8 hours (8 hours and 48 min) and in a safe training plan, I should stay on 8 hours weekly workout at least for 4 weeks. 10% of 8hours weekly workout is equals to 48 min and with my regular swimming pace which is 2:10 min/100m , it is equals to 2.2Km weekly swim. So in a safe training plan I should add swimming to my weekly plan after week 4 and with a 360m (2.2km/6) daily swim. When I look at my excel analyze file, I can see that I burned out from swimming on July 22nd which is in week 2 of my training when the ratio of my swimming over my running was over 20% for a week. That totally make sense cause first I shouldn’t add swimming to my plan from week one and second my weekly swim shouldn’t be over than 10% of my weekly run where in my case it was 20%. Based on the above calculations, a 2.2Km weekly swim (360m daily swim) is safe for my training plan, and therefore I created a new colum in my excel analyze file for the ratio of my weekly swim over my weekly run and in future it shouldn’t be over 10%. I really got excited with the new discovery that I had today, good job!

On Sunday (03/07): It was an easy run/walk cause since last night I cannot even walk properly due to taking out the corn of my little toe (left leg). Awhile ago I had a blister in my little toe, I drained it in order to be able to run and it grow up larger the day after and I again drained it. Usually in that situation a corn will grow up in the position of that blister and it would remain there untill you take it out from the root (I have previously experienced this and I knew I can clean the surface of the corn which would make me ready to run but again after awhile I would have the same problem and apparently in the background the corn would get deeper but I’m not sure about the latter one) Having that in my mind, I decided to take out the corn from the root and since it was a bit deep, I cannot walk properly since last night. In my previous experience where the corn was deeper, I was able to run 36 hours after taking the corn out. I had an easy 3K run/walk ( I was running till I found that it’s absolutely impossible to run so I walked the rest of it) just to have an active (running) day and then in order to keep the weekly hours of my training, I had a 2K swim afterwards. I also had 14500 steps during the day which was a good step to make myself ready for my next run sooner. In general it was a very positive day which mentally prepared me that no matter what, I’ll continue my training and swimming is the best cross training for runners and triathletes.