Doubles

The last two days have been double workout days. Yesterday, I went to the lunch hour swim on the base and covered 1950 yards. After my warm-up, I did some 100-yard time trial tests to figure out my "T-1 pace" (which turned out to be 2:11). This will be used a lot in later workouts to help me with my speed and maintaining a good pace throughout the workout. After the tests, I did a combination of speedwork and drills for the rest of the hour and averaged 2:49/100 yards over the workout.
Last night was another Gazelles ride but only 6 ladies showed up out of the entire group. There were 5 of us who normally frequent the 26km/h group and then the president of the group, who is usually in the 30+km/h group. We did a tough 45km ride into the park and back. The president was very helpful in talking us through the hills, giving lots of tips and techniques as we went. It was a good challenge and lots of fun - it's the furthest I've ever been into the park. What I've discovered is that the beginning of the park is all uphill; once we turned around, it was smooth sailing except for one last climb just the park entrance.
For dinner, I made a fancy pizza using the artichoke pesto from last week instead of tomato sauce and topping it with chicken, broccoli and tomatoes. The pesto substitute was a last minute decision because I forgot to buy pizza sauce but I think it turned out better this way. I also made a salad using diced cucumbers tossed with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. A nice summer meal.
Today, I dropped Chris off at his physio appointment on base and went to the pool for the lunch swim again. Turns out, the lane swim was cancelled so I had to go at 4 instead. This time, I covered 2200 yards (2:38/100 yards), consisting mostly of pull drills to increase arm strength with some quick speedwork thrown in to spice it up. At the end, after 1200 pull yards, my arms felt like jelly (in a good way, of course). The book I'm using for my swim workouts is awesome because it has waterproof pages. No more memorizing lengthy, complicated workouts or writing them down on a piece of paper that quickly gets soaked and becomes illegible. It's genius!
Tonight I didn't really feel much like cooking so I made toasted tomato sandwiches with a carrot salad on the side. For the salad, I was trying to imitate the carrot salad we had at the Amadeus a couple weeks ago in Kingston and I found a recipe that sounded like it might work. The dressing included oil, vinegar, honey, orange juice, dill, salt and pepper. I thought it turned out okay, though I think I'll add more carrots and less honey next time. Also, the recipe called for white vinegar but I used red wine vinegar instead, so that may have contributed to it being overly sweet. Live and learn.
After dinner, I went for my fartlek run - 6km with 6x2min intervals. Using the advanced workout feature on my Garmin, I programmed a workout with a 6min warm-up, 6x(2min hard, 2min easy) intervals, and a 6min cooldown, figuring that would get me about 6km. In the end, I managed to get 6.3km in 36 minutes, thanks to some super speedy intervals. I was quite surprised to see that my 5th one was actually my fastest, as normally you would expect your earlier intervals to be faster. The only problem with my run tonight was my back, which started spasming as I was walking home. I put some ice on it as soon as I got in the door and that seemed to help, but I'm going to have to keep an eye on it and maybe try to get in to see the chiropractor this week.
Last but not least, yesterday I registered for the Barrie Waterfront Half-Marathon on Aug. 14! Wahoo!