The winter is passing slowly, and today is yet another day where snow is falling from the sky. I awoke to a balmy 25 degrees and left the house to hit the pool for Masters Swim at 6:00am.

With just 9 weeks to go until race day (Oceanside 70.3 April 2nd), I have officially ended 4 weeks of VO2Max workouts and entered Lactate Threshold phase (also for 4 weeks). What does that mean? Well, VO2Max phase was hard. It was a lot of very difficult workouts consisting of short hard intervals. High wattage efforts on the bike (350w for three and a half minutes), and high speed intervals running (5:45 pace for 3:00). And repeat. And repeat and repeat.

The first week of the month has greeted me with a stomach bug, which basically had me in bed for 5 days straight. Basically on a liquid diet, fatigued and sleeping 12 hrs a day; but I watched about 8 hrs of 24 Season 3. Thank goodness for Netflix streaming. Unrelated to training, but it took it’s toll. As quickly as it set on, it was gone, and I got right back to race preperations.

This week marked the start of Lactate Threshold – which is all about slightly easier efforts, but longer durations… so biking at or above FTP for 10 or so minute intervals, and running mile repeats at or slightly faster than 5km race effort. So much to look forward to.

I have been stuck indoors for most of the workouts, bike and run intervals, long bike efforts on the computrainer; I do try to get out and do my long run outside (last week was a nice 26 degrees but apparently it felt like 9).

I also ordered a Thule 699 bicycle travel case to transport my bike to and from races via air. Full review coming – I expect delivery this week. I got a seemingly great deal on Amazon via a 3rd party retailier. $315 no tax/delivered (vs $342 from amazon, $379 retail). While I don’t trust the review on the Thule site (since the reviewers gripe is against airline fees, not the product itself…) I have heard good things about it on other sites and forums.

Also coming up this week is a race effort simulation of the CA70.3 course on the Computrainer. How does the CT stack up vs real life? We shall see. Hopefully real life will be as fast or faster than the CT effort. Stay tuned for the results of that….