Six weeks have passed since IMAZ and over the last two or so I've gotten back into a steady training cadence again.
It really was interesting seeing what the body did in the weeks after Ironman. I've heard people say that they "didn't feel right for a months after an Ironman" and was always skeptical about that or couldn't figure out exactly what it meant. Now I do. It's a subtle thing - but essentially your body will just refuse to do work at some level. I had a week completely off from training, then had some light swimming and spins on the bike. That stuff felt OK but I did notice that if I tried to give it any gas, it just wasn't there. The first day on the bike was pretty sluggish, the second was better. Two weeks after the race I had my first run - 30 minutes easy. I ran along the Kirkland waterfront with Deb and it was all I could do to run her pace - about 10 minutes/mile on that day. Amazing. Similar to the bike, the next run was a little better and it slowly improved from there, but even though I was supposed to be going easy I was still very SLOW. It didn't hurt more, or feel harder, it was just slower. As the weeks went by it started to get better but it really wasn't until the forth week that I felt back to normal again.
The last few weeks have been much better though and it's been nice to get back into training. And even better to get back into it when it's not dark and/or freezing and/or pouring down rain. And/Or Snow. What the hell was I thinking? Anyway, it's been amazing here for the last few weeks. Today was high 70s and between my morning workout and commuting into work, I managed to get almost 3 hours on the bike. Nice!
Running has been going very well - I'm currently running better than I ever have before. Both in terms of health and in terms of fitness, insert Knocking On Wood sound here.
Two weeks ago I went over to Kona for a long weekend. We had an office move at work and so we got two days off out of the deal. I took the opportunity to cruise over to Kona to hang and train with Todd for a few days.
Holy crap is it hot over there. We rode most of the Ironman Hawaii bike course and boy howdy is that a tough bike course. If the fact that it's never flat doesn't get you, then the howling wind will. If you make it through that, you've got the oppressive heat to deal with. Tough, tough stuff. We did some runs out in the lava fields. It started to get better as I acclimated but on the first day it actually felt like the sun had it's thumb pushing on my head. It's stupid hot.
We also swam in the bay. Half of the IMH course is permanently roped off for swimmers. Every morning at 7 or so, you'll find about 30 people swimming in the ocean. One of the days we got just past the 1.2 buoy (e.g. about 3/4 of a mile out and several pods of spinner dolphins showed up. I've heard that this happens and I was really hoping that I'd get a chance to swim with them. They didn't get as close as I'd hoped but it was definitely a great experience. They came our way for a while but I guess we weren't that intersting. My favorite part was going under water and listening to the crackling and buzzing sounds they'd make. Very cool. The only down side is that a few days of rough seas had put a damper on underwater visibility so you could only see them under water from 15 yards or so. Still, very cool.
Good times - looking forward to getting back over there in the new future.