Day 20: Two Workouts - Two Hours

THE SWIM WORKOUT aka Our New Favorite Swim W/O
500 swim
500 pull-buoy
500 pull-buoy w/paddles

Webb: I still love this workout. It will definitely become a regular on the schedule, even as we head into the race season.

Elle: Yup, def my favorite way to spend time in the pool. I love how fast I can go on the 3rd set with both the buoy AND the paddles. Good times, good times.

THE BIKE WORKOUT
Coach Troy's Spinervals Vol. 5 - Ultra Conditioning

Webb: This Spinervals DVD is 1:25:00 of on-bike/off-bike work designed to improve total body conditioning. It utilizes a variety of movements like squats, lunges, crunches and planks to add strength. I was surprised the on-bike work was a lot of high cadence efforts. It worked though. It will definitely make you stronger even if it does not use the same low cadence or massive amount of squat sets to build pure cycling strength like Bending Crank Arms.

Elle: Ok, so I REALLY liked this W/O. And I even went into it angry (due to the loss of our parking spot this year, we started this workout very late, since Webb had to drive around for ONE HOUR to find parking. Ugh, you gotta love living in the city, right?)
So, even though I was tired and frustrated, once the workout started, and Coach Troy was calling out commands, I was in. Granted, I love a good Coach Troy workout, that guy is an amazing athlete and a great coach. And I also love interval training, so getting off and on the bike, and doing strength work, it was great. After about an hour into it, I did get nauseous on some of the bike intervals, but that just confirmed that I was getting in a good session.

Webb: Oh yes. The nausea. I forgot about that. There is a set of threshold intervals that nearly emptied my stomach. I wish I had the same optimistic view that Elle had. Two hours in the books leaves eight more to go for the week.