From Almost Losing It - To Euphoria

After Sunday's recovery ride and botched attempt at running out side in 40-degree temperatures with an ice cold rain shower thrown in I emailed my coach my week 31 data and basically lost it. I told him I was tired all the time, the week sucked workout-wise and a lack of energy to do workouts, let alone get through them.

He did what a coach should do. He gave me a good pep talk and pointed out the positives this training season:

• huge base miles
• LONG workouts in a difficult time of the season
• the 5-hour trainer ride
• going from not running at all to running half of a 10-mile run at a sub-7:40 pace.

The last may not sound like much, but remember, this is Ironman training, not short (or even long) course training.

The result: Week 32 has started off well and continues to be a good training week.

A Good Ride and an Unscheduled Day Off

I rode to work on Wednesday. This entails getting up at 5am and leaving by 6 in order to get to work at a reasonable time. I got up at 5:15, went through the obligatory "do I really want to do this?" and finally got out of bed closer to 5:25. I still managed to leave before 6 though, so no harm there.

The temperature was 37 and knowing that when I hit the valleys in Westminster and along the Coal Creek bike path, the temperature would drop, I dressed for a cold weather ride: leg warmers, booties, and two long-sleeved layers up top. I got the chance to wear one of my new Castelli cycling tops I scored off of BonkTown. It was awesome and more importantly, didn't prevent me from riding in the aero position.

Thursday, however, I was just too tired to do anything and wound up taking the entire day off - which I know is bad, but I just didn't have the energy.

A Very Much Needed Rest Day

After the 4-day beating my legs took commencing Friday and ending Monday today was a VERY much needed rest day as my body is just flat out exhausted. I'm not really sure how much more I can take of this, but my coach assures me that next week will be very light and the miles will start coming back down.

Until then, this week has 6.5, 8, and 10-mile runs, along with 2 25+ mile rides and a 110-mile ride scheduled. So far, I'm already a mile behind on the running and one of the two shorter rides was done on a trainer so I'm not really sure how that equates realistically over to distance.

A Slow Recovery Week

Up until yesterday my recovery week wasn't anything to write home about, other than my tempo ride on Monday. Tuesday was a rest day and Wednesday was a bunk workout day because I had a meeting at work from 10:30-1:00 and 5 minutes into my run I felt dizzy. I managed to slog through 2.5 miles mixing walking and running because I really just had no energy and bailed on the swim I was supposed to do.

Today, however, was different. Much different. And much better. My mile intervals in my 6-mile run at lunch were awesome even with the gusty wind blowing debris and dust everywhere. My trainer ride was fine on the new saddle but I'll withhold judgment until I can get more rides/time in the new saddle before I declare victory.

An Exhausing Weekend

Saturday saw a 100-mile ride that took over 6 hours because of a 10+ mile headwind the entire way back from Ft. Collins to Boulder. And while I'll be the first to admit I bitch about headwinds (and wind in general) it wasn't the wind that made the ride bad. I was actually mostly ok with the wind. The problem was with my gloves and my seat (and thus, my ass). The weather, overall, was nice. It was bright and sunny but a cold 40 degrees. And windy.

My gloves had no padding in the palms so after trying to ride the first 50+ miles in the aero position as much as practical my palms became really sore. I have padded gloves - one day I'll actually remember to use them.

I had on two layers on my legs which was, in hindsight, too much and made for some stiff riding. Up top, I was fine, but my undershirt, actually a rash guard from Quicksilver meant for surfing, had a seam that ran the length of my arm and somehow managed to position itself right in line with where my forearms rested on my aerobar pads making for some more uncomfortableness when trying to ride in the aero position.

The worst thing, though, had to be my ass. I have a fi'zi:k Arione saddle which is not technically a triathlon saddle. Because it's not a triathlon saddle, one's seat bones slide forward on the saddle and force your crotch to bear the full weight of your torso. After 50-60 miles, this becomes too much (especially if you're a guy) and it starts hurting and makes the last 40 miles of the ride really suck.

I found out today that the Arione was the defacto standard for a while because there were really no triathlon specific saddles out there for the longest time. Times have changed. There's a plethora of saddles out on the market now and I wound up with the Specialized Phenom which is actually a mountain bike saddle according to Specialized's website. I don't care, it was the most comfortable and while it almost never turns out this way, was the most inexpensive.

After Saturday's 100-mile ride, Sunday brought forth another ride, 23 miles, and a swim (I bailed on the 1-mile run I was supposed to do after the ride on Saturday). I thought I'd be tired for the 23-mile ride, and I was, but I didn't suffer through it. I did it on the trainer watching a movie (Blade II) so maybe that helped. I was pretty thoroughly tired by the swim and ended it after 2500m.

The ride, however, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because my tempo ride on Monday, when I thought my legs would be totally shot (like they were 4 weeks ago when I did my last century) but I'm convinced the 23-mile ride on Sunday really helped flush out the legs and I was able to do 35 minutes in Z4 despite the massive headwind on the last 8-miles of an 11-mile Z4 TT. Speed was good, cadence was good. Workout was good.

The Hardest Week

I believe it's fair to say that the current school of thought when it comes to hard core training of any kind with endurance sports, e.g. running, cycling, triathlon, etc..., is that the body, and thus the athlete, performs better when on a cyclical training schedule. I don't know who is responsible for inventing the concept, but I first noticed it when I used CTS as my coaching provider. I suspect it came from Chris Carmichael's training program with Lance.

Don't consider this a ringing endorsement of CTS as a coaching provider. To be fair, I've had rather mixed results in my tenure there. Turnover is a problem and it felt like the coaches never really had a vested interest in my training or results. Whether that was due to the sheer number of athletes allocated to each coach (I recall once my coach at the time remarked that he had 15 Adam's, so god only knows how many athletes he was actually coaching at the time), or they genuinely didn't care about my results because I was never a rock star.

Anyway, I digress. My training plan is on 3-week cycles, two weeks on, one week "off." And here, "off" does not mean no workouts, it simply means lower volume and lower intensity volume. The theory is that the recovery week allows the body to, well, recover, and get stronger. With my 3-week cycle, and it may be this way for all cyclical training programs, I don't know, my hardest week is always the week prior to the recovery week. It is the week with the most volume and the most intensity. Consider this week: almost 10K meters swimming, 165 miles cycling, and 29 miles running, and my day off was Wednesday when I got a much needed 90-minute massage. There are 5 days of running, 4 of cycling with one being a 96-mile ride, and 3 days of swimming.

I already missed my 7-mile tempo run on Tuesday due to a run and power class the night before, and the legs still recovering from a late brick on Saturday evening. And tonight, I finished 2-hour trainer ride just after 10pm. Tomorrow is relatively easy with only a 3.5 mile run at lunch and Master's swim tomorrow evening.

The training is going well and my running, which has long since been my weakest link, has improved significantly over the last two seasons. I just wish I wasn't tired all the time.

The Perpetual Tired

I'm tired. No seriously, I'm really tired. I still have 4 months to go before Ironman CDA all but 3 weeks of which will be training weeks. I hope I make it.

After tomorrow's tempo run I'll have run 37 miles since last Thursday. After tonight's ride, I've ridden the equivalent of 111 miles since Saturday. After tomorrow night's swim, I'll have swam over 10,000 meters since last Wednesday. My longest ride will be 130 miles, my longest run as part of a brick will be 16-miles (after an 80-mile ride). My longest swim will probably be in the neighborhood of 4000 meters. That's a LOT of training time.

Maybe it's just normal for Ironman athletes to be this way. I wonder if the pros sleep normally and then take mid-day naps between workouts. I just know that working 40+ hours/week along with 13-20 hours training doesn't leave time for much else when you factor in the 60+ hours of sleeping (there's 168 hours in a week).

I have a 90-minute massage on Wednesday...I can't wait.

Recovery Week? Uh, Don't Think So

So the 2.5-mile recovery run at lunch was awesome.  It took longer to get dressed for the run and re-dressed back for work than the run.  What a great way to spend a recovery week....and then I went to Master's swim...

~500m warm up before Wolfgang strolls in fashionably late as he seems wont to do lately.  16x25m blah blah blah....2x[7x100m] (wtf?) first 7 steady on 1:35, second 7 fast on 1:40 (again, wtf?).  More 25s.  6x100m on 1:35 (more ouch).  Some more 25s and pull the cover.

So much for a recovery week.

Today's Workout -Training Tired

Swim (...so...tired...)

22-mile ride (yes, on top of the long-ass one yesterday)

I know, I know, it's usually always the case when you're training twice a day, but there's something to be said for training tired.  Not in a "way to go" kind of way, but in a "I actually managed to workout" way.

Let's face it, motivation is usually low and it's VERY easy to find distractions - say, if the spouse gives you permission to purchase an Apple TV on your quest to set up a media server in the house (even if your ultimate goal is to have two, one for each HDTV).  I am proud to say, however, that I was able to resist the temptation of setting it up until after my swim, but before my ride.  I only swam and rode for 30-minutes each because next week is my recovery week and I still have power class tomorrow night and I need some legs for that class.