Smells like a Breakthrough Workout to Me

I woke up this morning a little earlier than I would have liked, but still got 7.5 hours of sleep, which is about enough for me lately. Muscularly, I felt great, which is awesome considering I put in about 11 hours Monday-Friday, and 10 is the threshold where I start to feel generally tired. But I had a slight headache, and it didn't look like it would get warm enough for me to ride outside until later than I wanted to go (and need to wear a lot of clothes), so I decided to get on the trainer.

I just wasn't looking forward to 3 hours on the trainer, but knew I'd probably get it done anyway. All winter long, I've been watching Ironman races while on the trainer, but today I pulled out an old TDF. I hope that my memory would be correct in that it's better to watch people biking the entire time than the other color crap that is on most of the Ironman coverage.

My original workout called for a 1 hour warmup and then 1:30 of some intervals, which meant I'd need another 1/2 hour of something, and while doing the first hour, I thought about where I wanted to put that extra 1/2 hour. I decided up front, so I'd end the ride on the hard stuff.

Pretty much as soon as I started riding, Mr. Headache left me, and my legs felt pretty darn good. But of course, you can't judge how you feel when you are riding easy. I took a short break at 40' in to do 50 pushups, 50 crunches and 15 pullups so I wouldn't forget to do them later. I decided my extra 1/2 hour would be at 80-85% most of the time. Well, that felt pretty good, too, so then I got to thinking how the original main set would feel and could I do it? Turns out, oh yeah! Here's the full workout I did:

WU: 60' @ 65-70%, 2x(12'@80-85%,3' Easy)
MS: 3 x (18' @ 85-90%, 6' @ FT, 1' @ 105%, 5' Easy)

I ended up with a TSS of 187, which ain't bad considering the first hour was fucking easy.

Next, it was time to run. Last week, I was Ms. Bonk on the run, but it was my own fault. Today I made sure to take in sufficient calories while on the bike that I should be OK. I ran outside, and as soon as I took off (after about a 5' transition), I was like fuck, my legs feel awesome! I was running uphill into a headwind and feeling great! So of course I wondered how long that would last.

I kept running into the wind so I'd have it at my back on the way home, and I never did experience what I like to call "brick suck." You know what I mean--that point in a brick run where you just feel like shit. I thought it would happen today especially since I had ended the ride going pretty hard, but no! I also noticed that I felt very light on my feet which tells me I'm just about at perfect race weight (maybe 111 now which is just fine). I negative split the run by a good amount (which was what I was supposed to do).

I'm sitting here thinking that today showed me several things:

1. I have absorbed a lot of the intense stuff I was doing over the 8-week period where I was doing those 4 sprint races
2. I have ramped up my volume (I'll hit almost 16 hours this week) safely
3. It was a good idea to drop a few pounds
4. I must be taking good care of myself to feel this good

I feel really ready to bust out a solid 60+ mile ride as soon as it's warm enough, hopefully next weekend. And that is when the real fun begins--next week I will also move my long run to Thursday morning (before work--so I'm a little zombie-ish for a few hours afterwards) so that I can get in 2 long rides on the weekend. I should hit almost 17 hours next week, which means, guess what? I'm in an Ironman build, only this one is for Triple T.

I'm optimistic that I will have a good long run tomorrow, too, and since I have no schedule constraints tomorrow, I might just wait until it's warm enough for me so I can avoid the treadmill.

I am always grateful for a workout like today, because much of the time I feel like I suck, and then something like this happens and I think maybe not.

And now I must try and nap before an appointment in a few hours. Happy Saturday!