My Own Little Triathlon

by Bryan on 6/20/2008 at 2:21 PM in Health and Fitness

This morning I did my own little impromptu triathlon—backwards. I was scheduled to do a 6 mile run yesterday, with 4 miles of tempo running, but due to my hip soreness, I postponed it until today (hip willing). Well, this morning, the hip felt pretty good, so I decided to take it a mile at a time, and just see how it did. I could feel it the tiniest little bit during my first mile warm up, and into my first mile at tempo pace, but in the second mile, it was much more noticeable, but not nearly as bad as Sunday, Tuesday, or Wednesday—yeah, I know I shouldn’t have run on at least two of those days… Needless to say, I called of the tempo run after 2 miles, and finished up with a 1 mile cool down.

Since I wasn’t able to get in the full run, and was already in workout mode, I decided to head to the gym and hit the stationary bike for 30 minutes. I used a random hill program at level 8, and hammered out 13.5 miles in the 30 minutes. It was hard, but felt good. I was able to stick pretty close to 100 RPM, and even pushed up to 110-120 on some sections. After finishing up the bike, I headed home.

Of course, I couldn’t just stop and call it a day. Since I was already so sweaty, I figured I should go to the pool and swim some laps. I ended up swimming 650 meters (or yards—there’s a difference of opinion on this) in roughly 25 minutes. I rested approximately 20-30 seconds between each 25 meter length. I also tried breathing on my weak side (right side), in addition to breathing on my left side—every 3rd stroke. Breathing every other stroke seemed too frequent, and every fourth stroke was not quite enough. Every third stroke felt pretty good, though it was a little awkward breathing on my right side every other breath.

In the end, I ran 4 miles in around 37 minutes, biked 13.5 miles in 31:30 minutes, and swam 650 meters in 25 minutes. Not too shabby.