Week 2 of IMLP Recovery

Things have been going pretty well this week. I haven't had any of the "why am I keeping up training" thoughts that have occurred last year and the year before after the first Ironman. I suppose that's because I have so many things looming in the future that I am not giving myself time to have those thoughts. I do wonder if I will have gotten my recovery right, and won't know for another 3 weeks, right?

I still haven't written my training for the block between Revenge of the PirateMan and Goofy Challenge, but I have sketched out some aspects of it, like how my weekly training pattern changes. I have no idea how my recovery will go after ROTPM. That is something I will play by ear. For sure, at least 3 days of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Then, I will drop my long ride through the North Face Endurance Challenge (the 50-mile run), and instead will be doing 2 long runs on the weekend. I don't mean LONG long as in 15/30, but more like building to maybe one 10/20. This will allow me to sleep in on weekends, and also on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is when I will do rides of up to 1:30. Hopefully I can maintain some semblance of bike fitness on just that! I am going to try and start up my extra strength work in the form of pushups, chinups and jump rope to keep my core extra strong. I am going to keep that Friday long swim, though, at 5,000 plus yards, as I do need to start building towards that big 10,000, eh?

Again, recovering after NF will be a new thing. For sure no running for 1-2 weeks. I can usually pick up swimming right away, even though I may be dog tired doing it. That's one of the things I really like about triathlon--there's usually something you can do. I think a 50-mile long run will be good preparation for Goofy Challenge, and so I won't be doing any "special" training for that. In fact, I will begin my Ultraman training pattern, adding my long ride back in, in fact I will probably go back to the weekly pattern I am doing now. I'm glad I've been used to back-to-back long rides for years now, as that is an Ultraman-specific thing. I'll keep up the Friday long swim, too.

For me, Goofy Challenge will be more about fun than anything else, since I've done it before, since I'll have friends along with me--Shelley and Brad! We are going to cook up something funny for the 1/2 marathon. After Goofy, well things will get very interesting as I try and do "as much as possible" for Ultraman training. I envision lots of time on the trainer on weekends and lots of time on the treadmill during the week. Whereas an Ironman build is typically 12 weeks, I'm thinking for Ultraman it needs to be about double that, which lets me recover from Goofy for a week or so.

It's a lot to think about! Yesterday I had the pleasure to run with a new friend, Amanda, who is an ultrarunner. I tried not to pester her too much with ultrarunning questions. I know that if I can run with her every so often that I will get faster and smarter about this aspect of Ultraman, particularly nutrition. I need to learn to eat more while I'm running. We encountered several other ultrarunners at Waterfall Glen (so popular because of the 9.5-mile loop, soft surface and well, hills). I was more interested in listening to them, but Amanda told them I was an Ironman veteran, and one guy asked me how I fit in all the training. He had made the big "L" loser sign on his head, and I made the hanging myself sign and said, "I have no life!" Well, whatever semblance of life I had before is going to be even less next year! I don't know if I can do all this, but I am sure going to try.

I managed to run for 1:20 yesterday, and that was enough. When I got home, I thought I should try and get a head start on my 6 hours of riding scheduled for Sunday, since it is predicted to be in the mid-90's, and while if we'd had a normal summer, I could deal with that, I don't want to expose my recovering self to both mid-90's and a 100-mile ride. So I took off on Clipless Fuck and rode for 2 hours. My legs were fried, and the trails were wet from the morning rain, so it was slow going, but I didn't care. When I got home, the temperature was only 86. Then I went for a refreshing 1/2-hour swim, where I tried out my new dinosaur fins. I really like them! I had wanted to go to REI (I need to buy a headlamp for ROTPM and NF), but remembered I needed to go grocery shopping and didn't want to spend much more time driving, so I stretched, got groceries, ate dinner, read a little bit and got to bed early.

My appetite has kicked back in to match my training hours, and it seems I have become obsessed with food. In looking back over the last 3 months, I really wasn't treating myself very often (during the winter I was eating a little richly, but that's what happens when I'm cooking for someone else frequently), and on Friday I went to my Italian deli for prosciutto, and found they had fresh figs, so I've been going a little nuts on fig/prosciutto snacks. I also fixed some carbonara with the prosciutto and freshly grated Parmesan, and have contined eating some great salads. I am trying my best to eat a little more real foods so I'm not dipping into the Twinkies and Gummi Bears as much, but it is work.

Mentally, I'm in a place where I just need to DO IT and not think about it so much. I was pleased on Thursday when I swam that I mostly just thought about swimming and the cool water, but also the fact that I've got only one more week of outdoor swimming, which makes me sad.

Since I got in some riding yesterday, my goal for today is 4 hours or about 80 miles. I figured that since it's going to be so hot (it's almost 80 at 5:30AM), I'll just go out and back for 2 hours from home and then reload bottles and repeat. That saves me driving anyplace and gets me on the road sooner, gets me done sooner, and then maybe I'll still get in that retail therapy later on!

I am already looking forward to dinner tonight--some more pasta carbonara and a couple of glasses of red wine. And then maybe I'll actually read the Sunday paper!

Enjoy your Sunday!