It’s a good thing I’m a runner and not a mathematician. Because evidently – waaaay back when I first found my training plan – my silly ass miscalculated the number of weeks I had before my sprint triathlon, and I focused on training for 6 weeks when in reality I had 7. I never said I was good at math, guys.

As such, I’ve been totally enjoying my “extra” week of training by building up these muscles even stronger! In the past week I completed not one but two brick workouts, and my confidence levels are nice and high.

Last Thursday I ran a few miles right after work in about 80 degrees and full sun – not my brightest idea, but I rationalized it by thinking if I could run in that weather, I can do anything. The brain is a funny thing, isn’t it?

My time wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t dead by the end of the run, which is important. I’m really trying to increase my endurance by pushing past the half hour/hour mark of my normal workouts, and it’s paying dividends. After the run and a short drive to the gym, I hopped right in the pool for 400m at top speed. To my surprise, the swim felt easy! Sure I was sucking wind at the end of every 100m, and guzzling Nuun like it was my job, but at the end of the workout I walked out of the pool not ready to die. Which is a huge step up from my swimming workouts a few months ago!

Friday I earned my rest day – but I couldn’t help it and ducked down to the office gym for 20 quick minutes of strength training.

Yep, in a skirt. Cause why not?

Saturday I woke to the sound of thunder, and rather than test out my lightning-dodging skills on the bike, I decided to take my next brick workout to the gym, where I [spoiler alert] totally killed my previous treadmill 2-mile PR! I think it had something to do with my new goodies courtesy of Brooks – tee, tank, hat, and new Transcend 2’s!!

I started off on a spin bike – yes, I know it’s nowhere near the same as a normal bike on an outdoor ride, but I just don’t work up a sweat on the regular stationary bikes like I do with the spin bikes. So I set the timer for 40 minutes and told myself to beat my previous outdoor bike 10K in 40:40 and well, as you can see I kind of crushed it. By doubling my distance in less time 🙂

Feeling pretty awesome, I hit the treadmill directly in front of me for 1 mile (as the schedule called for), and found myself flying.

Yes, that says 2 miles in 20:02. That means each mile was 10:01. And YES that annoys me to NO END. Sub-10:00 mile, you will be mine!!!

I was feeling so good, in fact, that I decided to keep going and pushed to 2 miles. After all, I told myself – I’ve got 3 to run on race day, I’d better get used to covering the distance.

I sweat clear through my shirt – and all over the treadmill – but I blew through those 2 miles and desperately wanted to keep going. But I don’t want to push myself too hard, my knees were starting to ache a bit, and I figured I’d give myself a nice thrill next weekend when I can really go for it and enjoy the final brick workout before race day.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – all this cross and strength training must really be doing something, because I’ve never seen running times like, at least not since 2011-ish. I’m feeling like I’ve finally found my fitness balance and I’m excited to see what this will do for me when I start distance running again in about 3 weeks.

How about you: any of you tri-hards find increased stamina when you returned to running? Any tips now that my first sprint is less than two weeks away?