This blog exists primarly as a way for me to document this process for myself. I like sharing the experience, but the main idea is to have a permanant record that I can look back upon and remember details that may otherwise get lost in the prism of hindsight. Todd reminded me of this by commenting how much he wishes he had something similar to look back upon for his run up to Ironman Canada last year. If you (the reader) finds something interesting in the process, great. I'm not sure of a better way to capture the journey.
Deb and I were talking about this Ironman experience last week a bit. There is an odd dichotomy I'm finding here. On one hand, this type of hours and committment pushes out almost everything else from your life. It really becomes about sleeping, eating, working, training, and watching LOST or 24. That's pretty much it and it takes up you whole schedule. So it can be frustrating or exhausting that you can't fit in anything else. The flip side is that it serves as an interesting forcing function to simplify your life. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that I used to do more of that I don't have time for now. But I don't miss those things much, which is telling. I'm pretty happy having deeper focus on fewer things. It's simple and almost every day has describable goals and accomplishments. I like that.
My biggest challenge over the last 3 weeks has been this calf/achilles issue that's been bothering me. It's been slow to come around and it doesn't seem to act like a normal injury which makes it a little hard to predict. But this week was definitely better. I used to generate a lot of stress when I'd start getting an injury about how severe it was, what the impact was going to be, etc. Getting stressed about it certainly didn't help the healing process. I'd kind of obsess over it if it didn't heal quickly. Eventually I'd get tired of being stressed and start training again, and it would clear up. It's hard to say exactly what the mechanism is/was, but letting go of the stress seemed to be a factor. I've gotten better about this stuff now. When you put this much load on your body, it's going to give you feedback. So there is rarely a day were something doesn't hurt or seem a little off. It's the nature of the beast and one thing I've learned is to not get emotional about it. Just accept it and trust that it'll run it's course and do what you can to move that along. It'll work itself out. It's a much easier way to manage.
Coming off of the rest week I had a solid week of almost exclusively bike time. One reason was to let the calf rest, the other is because the bike is the primary driver of aerobic endurance gains. So it was well timed. It was weird to have so little swimming and running. I ran on Wednesday and the calf felt fine. I was very excited that I was back in action. Unfortunately, come Friday it started bothering me again. For the long bike, I did the Computrainer (indoor) 2:30 / outdoor 2:30 combo for the long ride which works well. The downside is that it started raining just after I got rolling outside and it was miserable the whole time. I was soaked, freezing, and just caked with sand and grit by the time I got home. The run off the long bike was not very good either, and I was concerned about Sunday. So there's some mystery there. Sunday's run was scheduled for 90 minutes. After about 45 I started wondering if it was a good idea, and by 60 minutes I was starting to walk on-and-off as the calf was pretty sore. I made it home, and got some ice on it and wrapped it before we headed up to a Super Bowl party. It didn't bother me too much. Oh speaking of life changes - we stopped at the outlet mall on the way up there (btw, Super Bowl Sunday is an awesome time to attack an outlet mall that's usually a total zoo!). In years past I would have been checking out the Banana Republic, J Crew, and Kenneth Cole shops. Ha - now I was happy as a clam to go into the Gap to stock up on cargo pants and solid-color tee-shirts.
This week was a bit more traditional, but still very bike focused. I got into a 2nd PT to look at the calf (Shelley Hack - yes you get your shout out) and she did some great work with it. This week had some solid swimming and two key bike sessions during the week, plus a 90 minute run. The calf did much better on the run and my pace was decent. It's still been sore on-and-off all week but in a less concerning way. It's just taking it's time working it's way out. I was very happy to get that run in.
Yesterday was my first truely "Big Day". Big Day Training are stretch-volume days where you're simulating some of the demands of the race, especially around steady state and nutrition. If you can get a few of them in and cause an adaptation, an Ironman will just be the same thing with a longer run at the end. I learned some solid lessons yesteraday that everyone has to learn. I did a pretty good job fueling, but it wasn't quite enough. Deb did a similar workout so we went in to swim at 7, came home, ate some more, then I headed out on the bike on a gorgeous Seattle winter day - near 50 and dry, wow! The main lesson I learned was around pacing on the bike. I went out for the first hour pegging my HR at about 140, doing about 190w. If you do much exercise, this is easy stuff, right? Yeah. OK - first lesson learned. Whatever you think you can hold for 5 hours, you can't. After about 4:30 on the bike, it was like I hit a brick wall. Turning the pedals was a challenge. I was a mess by the time I got home. My schedule said a 30 minute run after the bike, but Scott (coach) and I had talked about stretching that to 60 minutes, which seemed a tall order. Took me about 10 minutes to get changed and have something to eat and drink. What's amazing is that it only took about 5 minutes of running before I was grooving and feeling fine. Ran for 55 minutes, much of it purposely holding back my pace. Could have definitely run another 6 miles at that pace...not so sure about another 20. In any case, that was a big confidence builder. Of course, I was pretty much a lump-on-a-log the rest of the evening. Doing a swim-clinic tonight so this rest day is well-placed. I'm bouncing back.
| Season Totals (10/2/06-2/11/07) |
Time |
Distance |
Units |
| Swim |
49:06 |
142,393 |
yards |
| Run |
58:22 |
417.40 |
miles |
| Bike |
116:22 |
1,903.70 |
miles |
| Weights |
16:30 |
|
|
| Core |
1:15 |
|
|
| Stretch |
3:55 |
|
|
| Total Time |
245:30 |
|
|