Day 2 of 5 Days of Riding

I left at 6:45AM today. There was nothing on the radar, but I brought a jacket just in case. I headed to Fermilab, and surprisingly, there was very little wind. The temps were tasty--upper 50's--and so I was wearing not so much.

After 2 loops around Fermilab, the clouds were really building, and it started to sprinkle. I took a detour and headed west towards Wilson Hall, but ended up going further and then I landed for my first rain delay at the Lederman Science Center. I had never been in there, but it's a cool place. I chatted with Dottie who works there, and ended up buying some temporary tattoos that I plan on wearing during IMLP! I'm such a geek--I love the science. After about 1/2 hour, I took off with jacket on, and only made it like 1.5 miles before I had to duck under an awning at another facility. When I looked inside, there was this neon sign telling about the status of things running around in the accelerator ring! It was pretty cool--which is why I'm never bored when I'm in there. I took off, had another rain delay, visited Dottie again, and then finally the skies cleared up.

As always, I had a tasty west tailwind all the way home, and I hammered like a mofo. I knew I'd be close to 90 miles, so of course, I had to do a little extra when near home to hit the nice round number.

I ran for :40 off the bike, and what I didn't realize immediately was that my head was on fire. I mean, I had the sun beating down on me for a good 5 hours, and while the temps weren't that hot, still, I've been spending a lot of time in the sun, and when I was 1.5 miles from home, I was at a ball park and the kids were all soaking their hats in the water fountain, so of course I followed suit. And I felt better right away. I ran pretty well, got home, ate a small sandwich (with awesome deli meats and cheeses on focaccia bread from the Italian deli), downed the Endurox R4, and then started on the beer. I also decided I needed to do some more weeding in my flower beds and spent about 1.5 hours doing that (don't know where I got the energy from), and then I cleaned up Bitchie for tomorrow, and finally ate some spaghetti and meatballs and am drinking wine now.

I'm going to read a bit and then hit the hay. Tomorrow I only need to ride for 3 hours, and I hope I can dodge rain and not have any delays so I can be done with the whole fiesta (including another :40 brick run) by noon, at which point I think I'll be deserving a nap, and then I have some meat to grill and will probably need to wash Bitchie again and LGL needs a cleaning from Triple T and I want to ride her on Monday and man, this stretch is crazy, isn't it?

I'm surviving, though--I rode well today, even while I was doing my "crap." Funny thing was right when I got into Fermilab there was this roadie and we talked a bit for about .5 mile and he asked me what I was training for and I told him, and then he asked if I went to Wisconsin--or at least that's what I thought he said--I guess he asked if I had done Wisconsin, and I said I was going up there next weekend, and he said I said it all nonchalantly, but hey, I've already done 10 Ironman's, so I'm pretty nonchalant about it, and he wished me good luck at IMLP, and I told him I really don't need it I know how to do it. I think he was a bit taken aback--I mean how many women do you know who have done 10 Ironman's? I don't even know any myself, so there you go. He probably didn't understand what I meant when I said "I need to do my crap now," but here's the crap I did:

WU: 30' Easy
MS: 4 x (25' @ 85%,
10' @ FT,
5' Easy),
remainder 70-75%

I'll do the same crap tomorrow just with less of a warmup. I did really well on the first 3 intervals, and felt a bit tired on the last one, but I think it was because of all the stoppage time due to the rain. At least I can say with certainty that I will be able to ride tomorrow, and since it's less than today, I should be good for Monday's easy ride.

Holy crap--I'm a fucking biking machine! Good thing I love riding my bikes!

Good luck to IMCDA peeps tomorrow! Swim like a fish, ride like the wind and run like a gazelle!

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe...Three Four...Fucking Ride 5 Days in a Row!

OK, so I didn't exactly rhyme with the beginning of that nursery rhyme, and I have no idea why it came to me in the first place (maybe because I put the tiny pyramid on my head to cleanse myself just now???).

I made my training plan for the buildup to IMLP in maybe January? I don't really remember when. I'm pretty sure I was just trying to get by without too much structure until then. And then I sort of put something together based on my previous year of training, since I also did Triple T and IMLP in 2007. But starting around mid-January, I wasn't really looking at my big picture too much, and even then, it was more or less one week at a time. I've sort of known when certain rides and events were coming up, but for the most part, I haven't looked much at the training plan except for what I need to do on a particular day and what the weekend looks like.

So this past Thursday I'm looking, because now I'm getting close to IMLP and I really need to hit the big workouts, and I realize I'm riding Friday through Monday. Yesterday I took the day off from work, swam 4500 meters (and sucked at the 3800 meter TT I was so fucking tired), and then felt like complete and total crap. So what did I do? First, I went and pulled a bunch of weeds out of my back flower beds. 3 yard waste bags full! Now how can there be so many weeds back there? Well, one plant, I wasn't sure whether it was a weed or not, but the verdict was reached yesterday and I declared it a weed. That was 1.5 bags full. Then, there's another plant that got into my back yard when the sidewalk was put in 2 years ago, and a piece of it moved to the back, and it decided it really likes it back there, so it spread all over the hell place, including into the lawn. Well, when a plant behaves like that, there's only one thing to do which is remove it completely. It's actually a nice ground cover thing that gets about 15" tall, but it became invasive, so it's now gone. I'm pretty happy I thinned things out--it will be much better for the remaining plants, and believe me, I have no shortage of them! I still have to go through one more flower bed and pull up weeds. We've received so much rain this year that weeds have proliferated, and it's just dried out enough to be able to go into the beds and pull stuff out, although it did rain hard yesterday and may rain today and tomorrow (FUCK).

After weeding, I looked at my training plan to see how much of a slacker I was going to be. I was supposed to ride 1:30 yesterday, and in looking forward, I realized I am supposed to ride FIVE DAYS STRAIGHT! Holy crap, did I do this last year? I don't remember, and I don't have time to look it up. Just seeing that made me realize that I really needed a nap, since I woke up early (3AM) Thursday and Friday. There were all these other things on a list I had made of stuff to do on my day off, but right at that moment, the most important thing was to try and take a nap. So I popped one Advil PM (I love them), drank a beer for good measure (it was noon, shut the fuck up), and got in bed and read a little bit, got drowsy, and passed out for a good hour.

When I woke up, I was a bit woozy from the Advil, as I expected, but I figured nothing that a little Coke wouldn't fix. Now I was deciding whether or not I should go for that ride. I didn't really need to, but this would be a helluva cycling block to get in if I do all 12.5 hours of it, right? Besides, I only needed to ride easy. Now, you've heard me say that I'm not into the whole recovery workout thing, and normally that's true, but I figured my legs could use a little spinout. So I suited up and got on CF (which guarantees I don't ride too hard, sort of--now that I have clipless pedals I can actually ride pretty well) and tooled around. It had rained (again), but there was little humidity and it was absolutely gorgeous out! I found some new interval road for Bitchie and saw so many people out enjoying a beautiful day! My legs were sort of trashed, but I was careful to keep my effort down.

After I finished, I had a small snack, and then I was motivated to do a mini-Odyssey. I went to the Italian deli, Amici's, to get more of my new addiction--balsamic glaze (concentrated balsamic vinegar with a bit of sugar added--it's heavenly--thanks, Matt, for getting me addicted to it), and some Romano cheese, next to Radio Shack to fulfill my camera warranty and get a new battery (I had tried this 3x before in person, on the Interwebs and by phone without success), next to Walgreen's to see if I could find some nail polish in Bitchie colors for scratch touchups (they didn't have the yellow but I scored the blue and look at the pink sparkles!), fill up my car with gas (even though I'm not driving anywhere for the rest of the weekend!), and finally to my grocery store for weekly supplies. After I got out of Walgreen's, I saw the sky was turning ominous to the west, and I turned on WBBM News Radio (traffic and weather on the 8's), and they didn't say we were getting anything bad, but on my way to the grocery store, it began raining AGAIN, and when I finished shopping, it was pouring rather hard. Spending a lot of time exercising outdoors gives you a different perspective about rain, especially witnessing what Cindy and I did last weekend, and I wasn't bothered by running to my car in the rain but I didn't want the groceries soaked, so I drove my car up to the loading area to put them in.

When I got home, it was still pouring, and a friend, Peter, called me. It was raining too hard to unload my car, so I just left it there in the driveway and talked to him. He got married back in March, and I had sent him a gift card for Smith & Wollensky's, but right after I ordered it online, I realized I left out his apartment number on the order, so I emailed to correct it but never heard back. Well, I figured someone else had nabbed it, but Peter told me it was being held with miscellaneous lost mail in his building and they just got it and were going out to use it! That made me happy--Peter is all apologizing (it wasn't his fault) and then I told him the story and we had a good laugh, I waited for the rain to die down and I unloaded the groceries.

Even though I took a nap, I was still plenty tired, and so I put a pot of water on the stove to boil for spaghetti and did some standing stretches, put the meatballs and sauce in the microwave when the spaghetti was about done, and then when I took the sauce out of the microwave, my grip spazzed out and I dropped it all over a chair, the table, the floor, pretty much all over. But I was able to salvage all the meatballs and over half the sauce, so after cleanup duty, I sat down to a good dinner with some salad and a glass of wine.

By this time, it's maybe 7:15 and I know I'm not going to last very long, and TV is fucking boring, so at 7:40 I head upstairs to read a bit and then get to sleep. I fell asleep around 8:30 and woke up just before 5 this morning, so I'm good to go!

Day 2 of 5 days of riding...and I am doing brick runs today and tomorrow. Today I'm going to try and knock out 5 hours, since there is a 50% chance of rain today and tomorrow, so I'll do the bigger ride today, and then if it gets crappy tomorrow, I can do 3 hours on the trainer (I hope I don't need to). I lost my rain jacket last Sunday, so I'll be taking my chances, and I fully expect to get rained on at least a little, but hey that's part of the game, right?

I'm excited to get on Bitchie again, as even though it may rain, the temps are going to be perfectamundo for riding (and tanning, I must say).

Here comes Day 2! Time for my insulin coma!

Another Good Long Run Today and a Cleansing Ceremony

First, you need to go look at the pics of my Tiki Hut and Assorted Other Important Things Cleansing Ceremony! As per the set description, I received the copper pyramid 2 days ago from my friend Susan who lives near Vegas. I knew right away what I needed to do with it, only I didn't have time until this morning (Tiki Hut pics are usually taken quite early in the day).

I had my alarm set for 4:30AM, but I woke up at 3AM and figured I'd just get up and get going, so I had time to cleanse the Tiki Hut and other stuff.

I actually started running around 5:45AM (at Waterfall Glen), and it was nice and cool--maybe 54. I was even a bit chilled as I started out, but this is ideal running weather, so it wasn't long before I was quite comfortable. I ended up doing 2 out-and-backs--the first was a little over 10 miles and the second 4+, for a total of almost 15 miles. My legs were toasted when I started, as I've been hitting it hard for many weeks now. But the coolness helped, and I didn't feel that badly on the first out-and-back. On my way back in on that one, I stopped to talk to a birder, and asked what she was seeing (I had already seen another 2 Indigo Buntings). She told me she's conducting a bird count based on hearing songs and sightings, and she listed off a bunch of birds that are in there. One she mentioned is cuckoo! So now I need to spot one myself.

I saw a couple of deer, about 6 packs of cross country boys and girls (and I was running well whenever they came by, THANK GOD), and a group of 3 runners where I know one of them. I guess I'm just in 100% HTFU mode, because I showed my fist with the HTFU bracelet and yelled at them, "HARDEN THE FUCK UP, PEOPLE!" I was smiling as I said it though, because I was already about 9 miles into my run.

I made today's run harder by running to the Mile 5 marker on my first out-and-back. Mile 5 is a lot of downhill, which means you climb out of this hole on the way back. Yes, it's still hard, no matter when I do it! After that, I noticed that my hamstrings felt pretty shot, but surprisingly, not my quads. Oh well!

Near the end of the run, I saw 2 girls with these fabric things that I thought were flags, but they were draping them over the foliage on the side of the trail. I stopped to ask what they were doing, and they said they were trying to capture ticks! I assumed deer ticks, and they said yes. Deer ticks that carry Lyme disease are quite small--I've seen many regulation dog ticks in there. Speaking of dogs, there were several totally well behaved ones in there that I stopped to pet. Katy, the Irish Setter, and Dupres, the border collie mix. I told the girls that I rather despise ticks, but I do realize the ecological niche they serve.

When I finished, there were two State Police parked right near my car, and I asked one of them to take the picture of me you see. Most people have no qualms about taking pics, but they seemed a little surprised. I told them it was for my blog. Maybe I should have said it was for evidence?

As usual, I drank Coke while I ran, and I guess I'm doing better than I thought I would be by this point in the day, because I've been able to not only stay awake at work, but also get in 55' of lifting! Tomorrow I am taking the day off from work and doing a 3800m TT swim and then a 1:30 ride. Looking at my training schedule, I'm riding Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday! Lots of riding--just the way I like it--also 2 brick runs on the weekend, so this is plenty intense training if you ask me!

But I'm feeling pretty good and I think some of the "cleansing" I did this morning is already working :)

Thanks, Susan!

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This is the Part I Really Like

This is week 8 of high volume training. Here's what they've looked like, including this week through today:

Week Beg: Hours

4/28/2008	20.60
5/5/2008	19.12
5/12/2008	18.88
5/19/2008	20.50
5/26/2008	15.51
6/2/2008	22.08
6/9/2008	20.37
6/16/2008	6.08

That 5/26 week is a little blip trying to recover from Triple T.

I am really, REALLY feeling it this week. I am tired all the time. It's hard to stay awake (or at least vertical) while working. Mail is in piles unprocessed. I'm paying bills but not entering them into my checkbook (thank God for online bill pay). I'm managing to wash clothes and dishes and feed myself and train and work and sleep. That's IT!

I think I'm fat; I think I'm too skinny. I feel invincible; I feel helpless. I feel like I really know why I'm doing this; I feel like I have no idea why I keep doing this. I have a few great workouts; the rest I am so fucking tired maybe I should stop, but I just HTFU and get it done anyway. This is WAY harder than the actual Ironman race.

I absolutely LOVE riding all my bikes even when I'm so fucking tired and my legs are sore. It's summer! You are supposed to ride your bikes whenever you can! I love seeing so many people out riding bikes just to get from Point A to Point B, which is why I love riding my bike to and from the outdoor pool. I rode my bike to the eye doctor. I will ride anywhere I can. Next week I'll start riding a bike to get a massage. Biking is good! I can't do too much of it, can I? Even though I'm scheduled for 11 hours of biking this week, what's wrong with adding a couple more?

I've got this week and then 2 more big weeks and it's time for a taper. Good thing I forget how this part feels...because if I remembered, I might not ever do it again. It's crazy, it makes you feel like you're crazy, but then you know what? There is nothing else I'd rather be doing. NOTHING! All I want to do is workout and enjoy being outdoors and maybe throw a race in there. What could be better? Even when I'm running all tired out like I was today, hey it's a gift that I can run, right? So I should do it!

I smile even when I'm tired, because I love it. Every stinking part of it. I must love it to have done this for 8 years straight, right? I don't know any other way. This is my way.

I know some people are a little frightened or even intimidated by the whole Crackhead thing, but this is who I am. You don't have to like it. I don't need anyone's approval or blessing. I don't need a coach anymore to tell me maybe I'm doing too much because if it actually gets to be too much, I'll slow it down. Until then,

HARDEN THE FUCK UP.
Amen.

And here's something I love listening to to relax. I listened to this the day before IMLP last year and will probably do so again this time around. I can't wait! What can possibly be better than doing what you love with people you love and having fun at the same time? Nothing! And IMLP is really just preparation for the second full NothingMan!

SOOOOO True...

Weekly Workout Totals 06/09/2008-06/15/2008 and Storm Tracker Ride

Cindy arrived Saturday evening around 7:00PM. I was just finishing up grilling a bunch 'o meat for dinner, and we were both ready to eat. As you can see from the pics (click on the post title to get to them), we had a good meal and a ton of laughs. We finished off our meat, rice pilaf and salad (accompanied by a nice Barolo) with some lemon gelato doused in Grand Marnier. Carb loading!!!!

Then, Cindy said she needed to clean her bike, and I helped her do it and showed her some of what I do. Once it was as clean as we could get it, I decided I should go ride it in my flip flops in the dark, of course, slightly drunk. Nice work if you can get it!

Sunday morning we woke up around 4:00AM because we wanted to get riding our 200K by no later than 7:00AM. Driving up north to Burlington, IL, we could see storm clouds building, but they didn't look too bad, and besides, what else were we going to do?

When we arrived at Central High School, we took one look to the west and decided we'd leave the bikes in the car to go down to registration for the Swedish Days Ride sponsored by the Fox Valley Bicycle and Ski Club. I continued snapping pictures of the awesome cloud formation we were seeing as we walked about a block down a hill towards registration.

When we got into the school, there were all these laptops set up with this awesome real-time Doppler radar on the screen, and things looked bad. We began asking about the incoming storm and realized we'd need to wait it out. And we could see exactly when it was going to hit right where we were! The clouds were just magnificent, even though the pictures don't do them justice. Unfortunately, there were some riders who had left and who we knew would be caught in it. They guys manning the Doppler practically counted down "3-2-1" and we were at ground zero. It was pretty exciting--all this awesome weather plus the technology to go along with it. Turns out these guys are ham radio operators/storm trackers. They even had storm tracker cars. We never figured out whether they were there to help us riders or perhaps they just knew about the incoming storm and camped out where we were.

How ironic that the school we were at has as its mascot a tornado! We were actually hoping we'd see a tornado form in the distance, and the storm trackers did detect rotation, and there's one picture that looked like a tornado wanted to form, but we heard the temperature conditions weren't right. Nonetheless, when the thing rolled over, there were 40mph sustained winds and 70mph gusts! We watched some hapless riders literally get blown back into the school parking lot.

Cindy and I were fine to wait it out, as we had the live Doppler to tell us what was going to happen. Good thing I had made us 500-calorie Ultrafuel that we drank around 5AM, so we had plenty of calories to go on. We ended up not starting to ride until about 9:20AM, and it wasn't until we were about 60 miles in that we knew we'd go ahead and finish 100 miles. Many riders bagged the day altogether, but it actually got quite nice out for riding. Although the winds picked up pretty early on, and it felt like we were always riding into them.

As it turns out, the winds started out from the south and then changed to westerly, so we had the pleasure of riding straight into them for quite awhile. There was a short stretch where we were heading north that we just stopped pedaling, yet we were going well over 20mph! It was so cool that the wind was pushing us like that. But mostly we were into the headwinds due to the route that was mapped out. Below is the wind plot. We pretty much HTFU'ed!







At about 70 something miles, we could see more bad clouds right to our left, and it looked like we were riding right into them and we got worried. Luckily, a SAG car showed up and we asked about our route and the weather, and he said we were riding away from it. We did get rained on briefly, but nothing to get us too wet or anything.

There was one rest stop in a church that I'd been in many times on many different rides. I commented to Cindy about an hour later (after I remembered what I wanted to tell her since I forgot while we were doing storm sprints) that I never said "Fuck" once in the church. I try and curb my enthusiasm when I'm talking with volunteers at events. But while we are out riding, we just let loose.

I got pretty tired the last 10 miles of the ride, but Cindy got way ahead of me, and I didn't care. I guess I'm such a loser! When I got back to our cars (we drove 2 because Cindy thought she'd be going to her sister's who is not far from where the ride started, but her sister wasn't around), wiped down our bikes, and headed back to my house. I had lead foot driving home because I just wanted to be home. There was a good deal of traffic on the way back, and I thought to myself that the driving was harder than the riding. How fucked up is that?

And then we thought we'd go eat sushi, but on the way to the restaurant I wanted to go to, we went by Connie's Pizza, and opted for pizza instead. We were pretty delirious from the hard riding and needing food, and I think we were talking and laughing pretty loud. Good thing they had seated us in the farthest corner of the place!

Beer, pizza, bruschetta, yum...and then home for stretching, one more beer and bedtime. We both slept pretty well (no you pervs we didn't sleep together although I've always said if I turn gay, it would be with Cindy) and woke up to an absolutely gorgeous day. Cindy left to drive home and I went to the eye doctor for my yearly exam. My eye doctor is a triathlete, which is awesome, and he laughed at all my stories from the weekend and just catching up with me for the last year. He dilated my pupils, so I got to ride Clipless Fuck home barely able to see, and I was just laughing.

Now it's more work and I'll swim at lunchtime--that should be interesting--I'm pretty wiped out! It was another good week of training:

Weekly Workout Totals	06/09/2008-06/15/2008 This week's totals are sponsored by the Tornadoes. And I hope I don't see any this year.
Swim:	10400 yards (5.9 miles) in 3.72 hours; 18% of weekly workout time; approx. 1301 calories burned Canadian: 9509.76 meters
Bike:	Approx. 186.77 miles in 10.65 hours; 52% of weekly workout time; approx. 4794 calories burned; Total TSS=525 Canadian: 300.58 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 31.58 miles in 4.89 hours; 24% of weekly workout time; approx. 2215 calories burned Canadian: 50.82 kilometers
Strength:	1.11 hours; 5% of weekly workout time; approx. 278 calories burned Canadian: I lifted many grams
All Sports:	Approx. 224.25 miles in 20.37 hours; approx. 8588 calories burned Canadian: 360.9 kilometers
Sleep:	7.18 hours avg./night Canadian: Do tornadoes have dreams?
Stretching:	2.08 hours. Massage: 2.25 hours