Time to add new ingredients to weekly routine

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. (Mark Twain) 

Since I arrived in Istanbul, I have been running four days a week. What has stabilized itself as a routine by now is: 10-12 km at pace 5:30 Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 12-15 km on Saturdays, and up to 20 km on Sundays. The longer the run, the slower it is. Since things are going well, I feel that I can do more, but I want to keep Fridays and Mondays run-free to rest and to separate the long weekend runs from the harder efforts of the weekday mornings. I have been wondering whether I should run on Wednesdays, too. Perhaps just a slow and not so long recovery run, but I am cautious and I don't want to get tangled in a new injury due to overuse. To get the recovery benefits of a slow restitution run, without wearing out my legs, I started swimming instead. From now on Wednesdays are swim days!

I have for the first time tested my sports watch for indoor swimming, and it works surprisingly well. You enter the length of the pool (the one of my university is 33m) and then the watch keeps track of the distance, as it detects the change of direction every time you hit the end of the pool. I am a bit slower than I expected. It took me one hour to swim 2000 m. Last summer I swam 1500m in 33 minutes at Bergen Open Water competition, but that was with a wet suit, which really increases speed. And this time it was, after all, supposed to be recovery and not too fast. The first week of my swimming gave actually more swimming than expected. Yesterday I went swimming with Polen, a running friend who is a professional swimmer. She pinpointed a series of things that I can do to improve my swimming. There are several things I have been doing wrong all these years! As soon as she showed me, it all made perfect sense. But to actually put it into practice and coordinate all body parts to work as they should, will take quite a bit of time. So, now my swimming has even a more defined goal than before.

In addition to running and swimming, I am continuing three days of Pilates a week. I like the combination of strength training and stretching it gives. Already after one and a half months I feel that my back is more straight and my right side, which has been very tight and tense since the injury,  is looser and more relaxed. My core is at least as strong as before, as there is a lot of emphasis on the abs, but I might have lost strength at other places, since I am not lifting weights the same way as before. On the other hand, I make sure to get a session of HSR training once a week, to make sure that my injury stays away. The good news is that my hamstrings tendon does not hurt at all anymore when I do these exercises.

All in all, this gives nine workout sessions a week. I try to keep one day completely free of training, but it is not so easy. In fact I should also be doing intervals, but I don't know when. Perhaps I can exchange one of the weekly runs with an interval session. At least, the very earliness of the morning runs is a great benefit to be able to fit all these things into a weekly schedule on top of a full working week and quite a bit of social activities in the evenings and weekends.

It's a busy life...