My Addiction

As I sit here in my insulin coma preparing to ride, I let my mind spin and spin it does. Why? Why do I do this? All the things running through my mind...2 weeks ago was the 3rd anniversary of my Mom's death...Sunday is Mother's Day and I neither have a Mom nor am one...I feel stressed out but at my own doing...I want to analyze the fuck out of my relationships...I want to just flow through every moment...I long to feel appreciated, loved and valued...I want to be strong, so strong that nothing affects me...but it all affects me deeply--so deeply that I can only think of one way to get away from it all--all the thoughts spinning in my head--everything is the analysis I try to impose on it but everything is nothing it is just the thought that I have about it that causes me distress.

It is my self that I need to obliterate over and over again to the point where maybe, some day, it will no longer exist and I won't need to get away from it. Sometimes I intentionally torment myself by indulging in bizarre, irrational thoughts just to know that I can and that at times I do have control over my thoughts, but then I feel trapped in my own mind and all I can think of is that I have to get away from it--have to make it stop--so that I know that there is something besides going through the motions of my existence--serving, consuming, creating, destroying, loving, hating, enjoying, despising, connecting, breaking apart--that I can access.

So again today I will go to that place in (or is it outside of?) my own head where it is just my body doing its thing with my mind on autopilot just being. The only thing I will think of is to keep moving, keep feeding the machine, and while I may appear to be an unthinking, unfeeling machine, I will become my spirit moving through space and time, and maybe I can capture it and hold onto it a little longer.

Recovering, Running, Tapering and Tanning

I knew it would be difficult to recover from Sunday's ride and execute this week's planned training. Monday was pretty rough, so I only swam 1800 yards, but I had a pretty good 7.5 mile run, choosing a course straight uphill into the wind on the way out. It's rollers all the way, and I ran on sidewalk most of the time. I was pretty trashed after that, and slept really well Monday night.

Tuesday morning I still felt trashed, knowing in my head that a normal person would have taken Monday as a rest day, or run maybe on a soft surface, but I'm not normal, so I didn't, and yet I headed to the pool and knocked out 3000 yards, albeit slowly, and decided I'd better run on trail if I wanted to have any legs left at the end of the day. So I headed to Waterfall Glen and decided I'd just do 8 miles out and back. It was yet another gorgeous day to run. Two in a row! I was stoked, and fucking tired.

It was Tuesday that I decided I would begin my taper for Triple T by cutting out all the extra pushups, chinups, crunches and jump rope. I just couldn't see doing all that in addition to a goal of 45 miles of running as part of a 19-20 hour training week. Plus my little stick arms were a bit sore from all the climbing on Sunday. It was hard for me to JUST SAY NO to the extra stuff, and this may be the end of it for the season since I'll start riding my bike to the outdoor pool right after Triple T, and I just don't have the time for 18+ hours of training, :30 of stretching daily, a massage once a week and biking to/from the pool 3 times a week. Oh and manage to feed myself, wash dishes, bottles and laundry, get my yard in shape and keep it maintained, keep up friendships and throw in a few races!

I slept really well again Tuesday night (are we seeing a pattern here?), but still felt like I wasn't fully recovered from Sunday. Ya fucking think??? I was intentionally shelling myself knowing that hey, I've felt way worse in an Ironman or during Triple T's Sunday race or well, just in general--I mean nothing feels as bad as grief or being treated poorly by someone who is or who you thought was close to you.

Wednesday morning I knocked out 3300 yards in the pool, and I was actually swimming at a decent pace, so I could tell I was starting to be recovered (in the bizarre way that I define recovery) from Sunday. But I still needed a can of Ultra Violence to perk me up a bit for my run, and I decided I needed to run flat-ish, so I just headed west from home and ran along a route that I sometimes bike on, so the run served dual duty as reconnaissance. Still, it wasn't completely flat, as that just doesn't exist where I live, and I actually felt hot. I also fucked up a split on my watch (because I had stopped to piss or something), and tried to remember how long ago I had started up again but couldn't figure it out, so I just decided to keep going to some "logical" turn point which happened to be 4.3 miles out, and I turned around and made it back home feeling ultra fucking tired, but I had time to get into the bath tub (for the first time ever in the new bathroom!) and soak my legs in some cold water. I showered, dried off, put on my compression tights and actually thought I might feel ok the next day. I did stretch more in the evening (I've been stretching a little in the sauna after each swim), and thought I was starting to feel human again.

Today I woke up, again after sleeping really deeply and well, and did a short swim of 1900 yards just so I'd hit 10,000 for the week (I may still swim Sat. or Sun. not sure yet). I felt hungry while I was swimming, so I know my metabolism is all jacked up. Running a lot will do that to me. Luckily, my buddy the lifeguard, Vladko (who is the Masters coach), offered me half of a Clif Bar Nectar in a new flavor I hadn't tried--Cherry Pomegranate. It was tasty (I'm going to order a couple of boxes for snacks), and I washed it down with the rest of the coffee I had brought to the pool with me (you know I'm training hard when I forego Gatorade and just go with coffee or Ultra Violence while I swim), headed to the showers where I shaved down and then got in the sauna and stretched a little bit.

I hadn't planned on tapering down my strength training until next week, but since I'm not really tapering swim/bike/run until the week of Triple T, I figured what the hell let's start a strength taper this week. And I felt good enough after swimming this morning (since it was short) that I could knock out some of my weekly strength workout before heading out to run again.

I could tell while lifting that I am really pushing my own envelope. My muscles are pretty gnarly right now, but hey, I'm getting a great tan with all the sunshine while I'm running, so who the fuck cares??? I knocked out :41 of non-stop strength training, and now I'm getting ready to head to Waterfall Glen to knock out another 8 miles of running. As of this minute, I feel pretty good, but I'm trying to decide whether a Coke will do the trick or I need the Ultra Violence again. I'm thinking Ultra Violence since it feels like my tapeworm has taken up residence again and I could use the extra 30 calories and caffeine over Coke. I feel like I'm eating non-stop pretty much from when I wake up until I fall asleep, and yet waking up hungry and feeling hungry even while I'm eating!

I FUCKING LOVE THIS STUFF!!!!

Weekly Workout Totals 04/27/2009-05/02/2009 and Big Bike Week Report

So I took a rest day last Monday. And then in the next 3 days I racked up about 3 hours of training per day. On Friday morning, I swam and did some core stuff and jump rope, and I was thinking about running for an hour, but I felt, well, exhausted. So I didn't do any more training that day, and instead, began watching the weekend weather forecast to see whether I'd drive to Galena on Saturday to ride like 65 miles or go up to Dodgeville, WI on Saturday night to ride 100 on Sunday.

Since both Saturday and Sunday looked good, I decided on Dodgeville, although the prospect of 9,000 feet of climbing in 100 miles this early in the year was a little unnerving. But I figured it would take me about 7 hours and so I wouldn't need to ride on Saturday at all. And a friend of mine said he was going, too, so now I was on the hook for it, but looking forward to it, too.

Saturday morning I woke after a long sleep and thought at first that I felt pretty good, and I was thinking about swimming maybe :45, biking (easy) 1:15 and running (easy) 1:00. That wouldn't kill me the day before a hard 100-mile ride. But as I began moving around, a few things began happening. My nose was running like a faucet and I felt exhausted. I thought, whoops, maybe I am finally cracking! I took some allergy meds, aspirin (I had a pretty good broadband headache, but not sinus), and began drinking a lot of things--soup, Endurox, Gatorade, water, and got back in bed for a few hours. I didn't fall asleep, but I clearly needed some more rest, and after a few hours, I got back up, drank a Coke and headed out into my yard.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and it hadn't rained in 2 days (we broke the record for rainfall in April), so it was nice to get dirty in the yard. I got my front pretty much cleaned up and even made a dent in the back. And I started feeling human again! I think I needed rest, fresh air, and stimulus other than boatloads of training for once.

Got on the road for Dodgeville a little before 6PM and I was finally feeling like I wasn't truly sick and was going to be just fine for the ride. I had made one of my (to me, anyway) famous Italian focaccia sandwiches and we had part of it right after crossing the border into Wisconsin, and then more on the road and also some Perugina chocolate. Since my appetite had returned, I knew I was in good shape.

To the hotel in Dodgeville where I'd stayed once before for Dairyland Dare (a beast of a ride), check in, unload, settle in, get some sleep and wake up and try and decide what to wear to ride. It was only in the low 40's to start, but the ride email said they would collect clothes you wanted to shed at the first rest station and take them back to the start! How nice! We started out conservatively, I guess, although when I am doing all that climbing, I don't even bother looking at the power meter because it is what it is. I just try and remain seated so I don't spike the power too much.

The first loop didn't seem too bad, but there were some tough climbs right away. But it was a bright, sunshiny day, and we were happy to be riding even though we knew it would hurt at some point.

At the second aid station, they also took clothes, which was a pleasant surprise, so off came the tights, under top layer, helmet beanie and arm warmers.

And then the wind picked up. I like hills, I like wind, but I don't really care for them together! Oh well, I felt like I was riding OK, and would finish in a decent amount of time. When we got to the place where you can decide whether to do 85 or 100 miles, a second guy who had joined us for awhile looked like he was flagging, and he said he was bailing on the 100. I had one of those split-second evil brain thoughts of just doing 85 myself, but then my bike magically turned onto the extra loop for the 100-mile, which had black markers, much like a tough ski hill usually is "black diamond."

The black loop started out innocently enough with some almost flat areas, but then (and I don't remember which road it was on), there was a climb that seemed to last for 2 miles or so. It was either Cty Y, YZ or Z. Anyway, when I finished it, I said to my friend, "That was SICK." We got to enjoy headwind AND climbing.

At the next aid station, which I thought was the last one, I let my friend go on and hammer home (that's what friends do), although truth be told, I think the reason he was able to do that was because I had been riding a good pace to set him up for it ;) Whatever, I took my time and enjoyed some alone time. I'm not really much of a talker on rides--but if I'm with someone, I let them jabber at me as much as they want--just don't expect me to say much, except for when I get some silly thought in my mind, then I get asked what is so funny, and it's probably only funny to me. It was interesting that I wasn't cursing aloud so much on this ride, but in my head I sure was. I remember being on a ridge, climbing, and saw a sign for a tree farm, and in my head I was thinking, "Big fucking deal. Stupid fucking tree farm." Exactly that! I guess I wasn't so amused anymore.

It turned out there was one more aid station, and it was well placed. I was playing a mental game with myself to not check mileage until I was at 6:15 of ride time. Had to find something to keep me motivated! There were about 10 riders hanging out there, and I peed (huge congratulations to me for peeing in actual porta-potties or restrooms throughout the ride! I think that was a first!), grabbed a little more water and got on my way.

I sort of was riding near a group of 2 girls and one guy, and they were all way younger than me, and looked to be good riders, but I was going to ride my own pace now. On some of the climbs, I would get ahead of them and then I would rest a bit and they'd catch up (or should I say, the girls would catch up because clearly the guy was much stronger). The girls chatted me up a bit, which I wasn't really into, which is why I would rather ride alone or with a guy who isn't going to get all girly on me. Anyway, they were nice people and one of the girls commented to me towards the end that I am a strong rider. I was like WHAT? I wasn't feeling that strong towards the end, but hey, I HAD caught them and they were only riding 85 miles, so good on me for that.

I have no idea how many women even completed all 100 miles. It ended up being only 7,800 feet of climbing (yes, I got gypped out of 1200 feet!), and again this ride came through because they had showers for us to clean up which is especially nice if you are driving 3 hours home! They also had good food out.

My total ride time was 6:55, only because I decided I had to walk up one really short hill on Otter Road--but it turned out to be a good move because my legs were totally good after that, even though I did stop halfway through a 2-step climb where it flattened out, and the girls went by me like "why did you stop?" But I got right back on after about 10 seconds and climbed right past them!

The drive back was relaxing in a traffic-y sort of way, I got dropped off and sort of put a few things away, cracked a beer, fixed myself a sandwich, downloaded the power data and then got in bed and read a little before passing out.

I actually set my alarm for 6:30 but woke at 5:10 feeling pretty good, so I did get in a swim this morning. Only 1800 yards, but the cool water felt good, even though I was swimming really, really slow. This week is big running week, so I need to kick that off with a 1-hour run here soon, and then repeat swim and run for the next 4 days--no biking until Saturday--although I am already stalking the weather forecast for the weekend since I want to get in some good riding.

That ride yesterday was fucking awesome. Beautiful countryside, great company, I survived 2 stings already, I felt pretty strong riding, and it was awesome preparation for Triple T, which is now just 3 weeks away!!!! Oh yeah--we saw a bald eagle, too!

I didn't do as much swim or run training as planned last week, but I did accomplish the week's goal, which was a lot of riding, so I will consider it a success! And I guess it counts as a "rest week" since this week I should hit 19-20 hours. So all good, and even as tired as I am, I'm looking forward to running, as long as it's warm and sunny, so I can get rid of the stripes on my arms and legs from yesterday! And I'll be fine with putting LGL away for the week, but hope the weekend brings good weather for riding. There are no organized rides locally this weekend, so maybe I'll haul myself back up to Wisconsin for some more hill fun.

Here's what I did last week:

Weekly Workout Totals	04/27/2009-05/03/2009 This week's totals are sponsored by HILLS!
Swim:	8100 yards (4.6 miles) in 2.93 hours; 17% of weekly workout time; approx. 1027 calories burned Canadian: 7406.64 meters
Bike:	Approx. 162.8 miles in 10.42 hours; 61% of weekly workout time; approx. 5840 calories burned; Total TSS=755 Canadian: 262 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 17.74 miles in 2.63 hours; 15% of weekly workout time; approx. 1183 calories burned Canadian: 28.55 kilometers
Strength:	1.13 hours; 7% of weekly workout time; approx. 283 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 185.14 miles in 17.11 hours; approx. 8333 calories burned Canadian: 297.95 kilometers
Sleep:	7.82 hours avg./night
Stretching:	2 hours. Massage: 1 hours