More Hills, Please!

It has been three weeks since racing World's in Germany.  I have been pleasantly surprised at my training post race.  I had completed minimal training the week of World's--about 3 hours total.  Now, I did do a lot of walking while being a tourist, but mostly a week of sitting in the car, driving from place to place.

The first surprise is how quickly I feel I recovered.  The day after the race I, again, did no training.  After all, I was sitting on an airplane from Frankfurt to Houston for nearly 11 hours in a window seat two people away from the aisle seat (two people that wanted to sleep the entire way...no one I knew), so how much could I really do.  LA Fitness called me the day I got back and asked me to substitute teach a spin class that evening, so I did.  From there on, I've been pretty much back on schedule.  I did keep my longer workouts not-so-long, but haven't felt the extreme fatigue I expected.  I will mention, the Houston heat has been quite fatiguing, though.

Secondly, I was surprised at how much my speed has picked up.  I've seen about 2-4 second improvement in my 100s in the pool, a nice increase bike speed, and incredible running improvement.  Even in this heat my easy runs have improved by 20 seconds a mile.  I keep wondering if my Garmin has a problem because there has been a heat advisory nearly ever day this month in Houston, and I'm still able to maintain a good running pace.

I could try to analyze and figure it out, but my guess is that it was the massively insane hills on the bike course in Germany that has added to my fitness.  So I'm going to focus more on hills.

Train safe!