First Official Training Day

summary:
swam 1+ miles (approx 1 hr)
ran 5 miles (approx 45 min)

Today I attended my first official training event. It wasn't the team's first official event, but it was the first one I attended. Their first event was last Saturday, which I missed because I was working out my quads in some deep Tahoe powder. As it turns out, last Saturday was more of an informational event ("Tri University") which was hours filled with information about swimming drills, bike types, nutrition info, injury prevention info, gear info, Team in Training information, and triathlons in general. They posted all the info on the team web site, which I reviewed during the week and I have no regrets about trading a "death by power point" day for a few days of powder skiing.

Today's training consisted of about 1 hr of swimming and 45 minutes of running. We did a lot of swimming drills (front to back body balance, side body balance, six beat switch, and catch-up) which I enjoyed. I've done a lot of recreational swimming, but I've never done drills or been coached, so I'm looking forward to improving my technique. We swam at Dougherty High School in San Ramon. I would characterize San Ramon and suburban sprawl at it's finest. The HS is brand new and is a huge complex the likes I'd never seen before. In fact, we almost passed by it because it looked like another strip mall from the street. The pool is outdoors and humongous. Maybe 20 lanes? We started around 8:30 am, but luckily the sun was already shining and the pool was heated, so it was a very pleasant swim. Score one for some vitamin D.

update: someone posted some photos from the swim workout. Check them out if you want to get a sense of the workout scene. (I can be seen wearing my Wawa hoodie in the background of the shots of the guy playing guitar.)

swim details:
10 min warm up
5 x (25 yd drill, 25 yd swim)
6 x (25 yd drill, rest :15, 25 yd swim, rest :15)
6 x (25 yd drill, rest :15, 50 yd swim, rest :30)
6 x (25 yd drill, rest :15, 75 yd swim, rest :30)
5 min cool down
... so about 2000 + yards of swimming. Which is more than a mile. (40+ laps)

run:
For the run, we just ran down the sidewalk of the main drag (Bollinger Canyon Rd) that the school was on. It is a main boulevard of 6 lanes of traffic with a planted median.
I didn't care much for pounding my joints on the sidewalk while breathing the exhaust of the cars -- I prefer to run on dirt trails to ease the impact and get away from traffic. But there is something motivating about being part of a team and running with a group. Within the first half mile, I found a running buddy (Elaine) who was at my speed and we chatted the entire run and it made the time go by quickly.
We were supposed to take it fairly easy as we're "building our base" so depending on our current base and our planned event (sprint, olympic or half-iron man distance) we were supposed to run between 2 and 5 miles. Elaine is training for the half-iron and as I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm toying with the idea. So we ran 5 miles and I felt really good. My guts started to revolt and cramped up a bit during the last mile or so. I'm not sure if it was the spicy Thai food I had for dinner last night or the Cliff shot blocks I gobbled between the swim and the run or just the run itself. But having a "buddy" helped me run through the pain rather than stop and walk. Another benefit of group training. When I train solo, I tend to cheat myself or get bored and stop early.