Full Body Bonk

I haven't felt like I've been undereating the past week--not felt particularly starving upon waking or anything--but I suppose if I look back over the last 6 days, starting with last Saturday, I probably haven't been restocking as well as I should.

After the 112-mile ride/7 mile run last Saturday, I had Endurox R4, the big McDonald's burger and fries, a few beers, some crackers and some candy. I probably should have eaten another meal, so this would have been the start of the downfall.

On Sunday, I had a waffle then rode a few hours, drove home drinking Gatorade (in retrospect I should have had some protein right away, too), got home and made a chicken wrap and I don't remember what I had for dinner, but I'm pretty sure I didn't make up for Saturday or Sunday's calories burned.

I haven't been eating a lot of starch lately--it's been salads or a modest amount of vegetables at dinner time. I guess I've started to taper my eating even though my training isn't really tapered yet. I've been off my usual grocery shopping/restocking schedule, too, which means I'm not on my normal eating routine.

Still, though, like I said, I wasn't feeling famished or anything. Through yesterday, I'd done about 11.5 hours of training since Monday. Now that is unusual, but it came from a little extra riding and a whole lot of swimming. I had about 1/2 lb. of salmon and a little (probably less than one serving) spaghetti with pesto for dinner, 2 beers, and felt good to go. Now that was dinner for a 4-hour training day, which is not something I normally do on a weekday when I'm also working! I really should have eaten a bunch more, but by the time I ate dinner, I was tired and went to sleep.

I slept 10 hours last night, and felt good when I woke up this morning, had my usual breakfast of an English muffin and a hardboiled egg, but around 11AM I was feeling sort of hungry so I dug into my stash of Cheetos and also downed a Coke. This should have let me know that I was in a glycogen hole, because I don't usually crave Cheetos in the morning! Then I went off to the Y because it was raining, planning to do a :40 run and about 1:30 on a stationary bike (I just didn't feel like getting on my trainer and besides I could probably watch TDF replay at the Y).

As I walked into the cardio area, I could tell my legs were telling me I probably should just rest today, so I thought, what the hell, I'll just get on the elliptical trainer. Can't hurt, right? I did the :40 on there and it wasn't bad, but I could tell I was a little tired.

I moseyed on over to the Precor bike, got on, and wasn't worried about intensity, but still was doing a 10-minute ladder of resistance. When I got off the bike about :40 in to change the channel on the TV in front of me to Versus, I thought, gee, my legs feel pretty trashed considering I didn't do much today. Still, I got back on the bike, and thinking I'd still go 1:30, at about 1:10 I finally recognized that I was out of fuel no matter how much Infinit and Gatorade I was drinking.

That is, I was experiencing a grand bonk! Thing is, I'm so trained that I can usually overcome bonking (or not even notice it) that might affect someone else, or I might just miss the signs, but when it finally dawned on me, I realized that I had better get my ass home and eat as quickly as possible.

Still, I had to shower, and when I got home I immediately made myself a big wrap thing, chowed that and drank some Endurox. I figured that should set me up, right? Nope. It wasn't so much hunger that I felt, but my body was screaming for more calories. So I scrounged around and found a Snickers Almond Bar in my freezer, took it out, and after about 5 minutes, I ate that. By this time, I'm starting to notice that I feel really cold, even though it's hot out and I don't have my A/C set too low (maybe 76-78 now), but I am actually shivering, and this tells me that my body is truly fucked up (it's like the same insulin reaction I sometimes get when I down 400 calories of Ultrafuel all at once and my body is valiantly trying to pump all that sugar into my muscles) and needs me to lay down, so I get into bed with all the blankets on, still wearing clothes, and I'm cold but after a few minutes finally my temperature starts to go back up, but I stayed in bed for maybe an hour and even dozed off a few times.

Getting up, I realized I am not "fixed" yet, so I'm going to need to eat up tonight and sleep well and let my body do its thing to get me back to normal. I also realized that whatever I have planned for training this weekend is all optional, so if I'm not feeling peppy tomorrow, I will just rest, because at this point, nothing is really going to make me any faster for IMLP.

I guess I've reached that point in the summer where I'm pretty sick of the starchy carbs, but I will need to get back on some level of them, especially post-IMLP and pre-ROTPM. So I'll start counting my calories. Thankfully, next week is actual full taper, so I don't need to worry about it so much. Some years, I've lost 2-3 lbs. during the last 2 weeks before IM, but I don't think I should lose any more at this point.

So in an odd way, this was all a good thing, to remind me that I am existing on the edge, and that I need to pay more attention to my nutrition.

Have a great weekend!