a long morning at the lakefront...

Saturday morning:

K & I headed out quite early to Montrose Harbor by Lake Michigan for our Saturday morning CARA marathon training programs. I start at 6am with the 8 minute mile group as a participate and K starts at 6:30am with that session as a pace leader for the 10 minute mile group so she gets in a couple more training miles before her session starts.

This week our second pace leader was present and held us right out of the start area to a strong & consistent pace. For me my running legs finally warmed up after the first 2 miles and I was able to handle the pace comfortably thru our 10 mile scheduled run for the day enough so that I pick-up the pace on the closing mile. I got thru the ten miles in 1:19:16 for a mile pace of 7:56 with an average HR of 136bpm and a max HR with a quarter mile to go at 156bpm. I felt good both during and after the run…

Next step was to get the MT bikes ready for K & I as we pre-planned to do an open water swim in Lake Michigan at the usual triathlete beach entry swim area just north of Navy Pier. So after Kristen returned we headed southbound on the lakefront path for 6 miles via our bikes to the swim area. The path was pretty crowded by now since it was a beautiful morning so our bike pace was very casual because of this which was fine to help flush out the morning run legs…

As we got into our wetsuits and all set-up for the Lake Michigan swim it was sprinkling alittle bit which really didn’t matter at this point. So we headed out into the lake as the water felt nice & cool to me as K thought it felt cold. The reason for that was she has a full-body sleeveless wetsuit as I have a full-body sleeved wetsuit so I could understand what she was referring too. This was Kristen’s first open-water tri-training swim as for me it was my first time back training for a triathlon via swimming in Lake Michigan since 1995! The lake had some rollers (slight swells) to it so that was good experience for Steelhead as we also worked on sighting technique while out there also. We turned around a little bit after the ¼ quarter mile buoy and then focused on swimming with a slight current from the back-left side. So for the swim we covered about 1000 meters distance wise which was enough for the day…

After we got out of the water Kristen said she felt much more comfortable & better swimming in Lake Michigan than the sprint distance tri-swim she did two weeks ago. K actually did really, really well during the whole swim I thought but I always knew she would. I felt really good out there also and I forgot just how much a wetsuit helps with swimming so now I will be able to minimize my leg usage during the tri to save them for the bike & run portion then. The swim was really good for training purposes for both of us :-)

Afterwards we headed back north 6 miles on our MT bikes and got soaked again due to a rain shower…a long morning of quality training

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