Weekly Wrap-up 01/12/15

Finally a solid training week.  Been a long time.  Not sick, finally able to run consistently and had several solid swims.

The Numbers:
Swim: 5h07m, 22,150y
Bike: 6h57m, 148mi
Run: 2h12m, 16.9mi
Strength: 5h (I'm including 20' 2x/day for ITB rehab)
TOTAL:19h16m
TSS: 1189

2 major highlights:
1) I ran 5 days this week including a 5mile "long run".  No knee pain.   Just a little tightness, but nothing like I'd been having back in September.   I might finally be over the "hump"... and progressing towards full recovery.  I anticipate it will be another 3-4 months for full recovery.  I think there's some similarities to when I rolled my foot really bad 3 years ago.  There was still tightness for 6-9 months afterwards.  But I'm encouraged and will finally start a plan to very slowly increase my weekly mileage.   My goal is to just get to 35-40mpw and hold by late spring.  If I'm still 100% this summer, I'll ramp up to 50 mpw in each of my last 2 builds before Kona.  
2) After 2 weeks getting over the flu, I hit the pool hard and battled through some swims and was rewarded at the end of the week when I "found my stroke" again.  Just like before, I suddenly dropped 5s/100y and felt great.

I had a solid bike week.  The hours are a little low because I substituted a tempo ride for a long ride.... as I'll do all winter long.  No way I'm riding zone 2 steady for 4 hours indoors.  Shoot me now!  I'm mentally tough... in a race.   But not that tough on a Sunday after a long week of training.

I have finally ordered a new trainer.  My cheap Performance Bike magnetic trainer has been getting a little long-in-the-tooth.  Most accurately, its' difficult to use for sprint intervals and has very low inertia.  On longer rides I really start to feel the less smooth motion as those smaller supporting muscles fatigue that help you "push over" the top and bottom dead sport.   My spin down is probably 7-8 seconds at most.  That's probably similar to hill with a 15-20%.  I chose a Kurt Kinetic.  It has a heavier flywheel than the Cyclops Fluid 2, great reviews, has a predictable power curve if I want to use it with my road bike for virtual power on Trainerroad and otherwise was $20 cheaper.   But the  higher inertia was the biggest sell.  Plus I liked how the prevent leaks using a magnetic coupling.  I remember my old cycleops 1st generation fluid trainer and the constant leaks it had.

This coming week is a recovery and testing week.  Then onto my 3rd and final base period.  It will be interesting to see where my FTP is.  I feel like I've put in some good work on the bike the last few weeks despite the flu derailing me for a bit.