I'm back: training load resuming

This week I slowly ramped-up the training volume and although it was a slow start the overall results for the week are not bad. I had great long bike ride yesterday. Took off in the afternoon in the general direction of one major route that I knew heads to next city. I followed the back roads and enjoyed the colors of autumn that is turning the leaves to all very nice mix of yellow, red and green. After about 20 miles I encountered a huge climb on which I had to stand and was moving up the hill at about 4-7mph while pushing the pedals real hard. It was a tough climb, but I'll be riding that route again. It is a great challenge. I may reverse direction as the other side of the hill looked as challenging as the one I was taking. The rest of the ride was as good and I really enjoyed the time out. I did some fast descends to see if I chicken out after the crash, but nope I can still get going down the hill.

Today was a run and swim day and it was as good as the biking. I ran this morning for about an hour and covered little over 7 miles at fairly relaxing pace - not really slacking pace, but I was not laboring during the run. It was a nice and chilly morning so I really enjoyed the time out while listening to IM Talk podcast discussing predictions for Kona. Well I saw Kona on the web last night and could compare the predictions with reality. They got the women's winner right, but did not almost even talk about Crowie. Well I guess so much for predictions of such a long and unpredictable race. Anyways the run went well and I had really great time out. Then in the afternoon I went to the local pool and swam a good 40 minutes session focusing on the areas Erica pointed out I need to work on. The pool was busy with some kind of party, but almost no-one swam so I had lane to myself and enjoyed my time in the water. I also tested rubber HR belt instead of the Wearlink+ that tends to flood and report weird heart rate - like 18 bpm after a hard 50 yards. The rubber belt worked very well and I did not see even one problem. At times I had little lower HR, but never below 100 which is what I would expect in a swim with fairly short rest intervals. I'm back to training and enjoying every minute of it.