New Workout: Running on Water

This is a great workout for working on your foot speed turnover, but I'll warn you it's pretty advanced. You have to really get your legs moving to stay on top of the water. Just kidding, but I thought this pic that hubby took of me at the river this weekend was funny, it looks like I'm running across the water. In actuality, I'm just about to hit the snow-melt cold water and freeze my a** off!

While camping up near the pass, I had an awesome bike workout - intervals on an empty forest service road that was uphill all the way. I did my rest intervals headed downhill, then turned around and hit the uphill for the hard sets. It was a Crossfit Endurance set:

4min on, 3min off
2min on, 30sec off
1min on, 3min off
2min on, 30 sec off
4min on. Done!

Tough!

Then on Sunday I took a great trail run in my Vibram Five Fingers shoes. There's something about trail running that just makes it so much more fun for me than running on the street. It engages my whole brain and nervous system (otherwise you trip over too many roots) and pulls me right into the moment. It is hot, hot, hot here (and even 1,000 feet higher in elevation at the campground it was still roasting) but I'm making myself try to run when it's hotter and get better acclimated to dealing with the heat, so I went around noon. Another ice-bath in the creek and I was done for the day!

Committing To A New Plan

So those of you intrepid readers who actually attempt to follow my meandering thoughts here probably fall into one of two categories. One who are already experiencing, or who are interested in the concept of the new workout experience in my life that is Crossfit. And the others, perhaps dedicated triathletes or other endurance athletes who really could care less to hear about lifting big hunks of iron or throwing medicine balls at walls.

If you're in the second group, you can tune me out about now, because I'm about to throw even more of my training eggs into the Crossfit basket. I'm embarking on full-scale Crossfit Endurance training, replacing any of my LSD (no, even though I live in the hippy holdout capitol of the universe, that doesn't refer to a mind-altering drug, it's Long Slow Distance training) with much more focused, targeted, shorter, more intense triathlon workouts. The reasoning behind this? As the Crossfit Endurance (CFE) website claims:

Studies demonstrate that the adaptations caused by anaerobic training are similar to high volume endurance training, however, this adaptation comes at much lower training volumes

As a very busy homeschooling mom, I'm extremely intrigued by the concept of training for endurance and ultra-endurance events on a much lower time commitment in terms of training hours. I'm willing to up the intensity of the hours I put in if it means more time with the family. But does it work? That's the big question of course. So since I have a good long-standing baseline of my triathlon times in various distances, I'm giving it a go for this summer's Olympic distance triathlon. With several months of CFE training under my belt, as well as my regular Crossfit workouts, I should be able to tell whether I'm: A) At par with my regular performance, B) Blowing my regular performance expectations away on a shortened schedule or C) Whether there really is no substitute for putting in the miles.

Based on the results of my Olympic triathlon, I'll decide whether to add back in some distance work for my September Half-Ironman.

So far I am on Week One of the total commitment to the CFE schedule. So instead of my usual Sunday Long Run (I'm sure you're all familiar with that one), I headed to the marked mile loop to do short time trials at high intensity. I have to say, the feeling afterwards with only 40 minutes of running was similar to last week's 10 miler, so maybe there's something in it after all.

Stay Tuned as the Experiment Continues.....