Ultraman Training is a Full Time Job

Wow, I keep learning things all the time in this adventure.

Once again, I felt trashed after my swim on Friday. I felt just fine doing it, swam pretty well, in fact, but the rest of the day I just wanted to lay down and die. Now, part of this is that it's not customary for me to be doing 2.5 hour workouts before I start my work day...although I work up to long runs that long in the spring and summer that I do before work on Thursdays (but who knows what will happen this spring?). But it is only just about February, so guess I'm not quite ready for that yet.

Now that I review my training, I'm seeing that this phenomenon applies to swims of over 2 hours done on a Friday. When I did the 9,000 or whatever it was and the 11,000, I had a day of rest the day before and didn't work the day of.

Then I read in my handy book on long-distance swimming that I should be drinking 8 oz. of fluid every 15 minutes! So I need to up my fluid intake in these long swims, especially since my pool is usually too hot (85-ish).

So I think what's happening is I'm getting dehydrated and not really taking in enough calories during and right after these big swims. In my head, I'm thinking, "It's just swimming," and that I'm not burning so many calories, but in reality I am.

I felt great Monday-Thursday of this week and during the 7500 swim on Friday, so I think in general I am doing OK on my calorie intake, but need to be extra careful on Fridays, especially since I am also training long on Saturdays and Sundays. Funny thing is when I do the 5+ hour workouts, I am like clockwork in terms of my day before, pre- and during- workout nutrition. It needs to be a daily thing now.

I have to find a way to shove more calories in before my morning workouts, but yet still be able to take them in just an hour before liftoff, because I can't sacrifice sleep.

I think maybe I will set an alarm so that I eat at least 200 calories every 2 hours during my workdays. I just have to stuff in the food! I bought some more fruit at the grocery store today--dates and figs--that pack lots of calories in low volume, so that will help me boost things up. And then I need to get on a rigid schedule of when I do my mid-day workout, because this game is really about eating to train.

So it's wake up, eat breakfast, train, eat a snack, train, eat lunch, eat a snack, stretch, eat dinner, eat another snack and pass out. And that's on Monday-Friday!

I have an indoor triathlon tomorrow and now that I'm feeling a bit better, I'm looking forward to it. But it will just be part of another big training day--I will warm up thoroughly for the 1 hour race, do the race, then run for about 1:20 after. This should be interesting, now that I'm doing the big swims on Fridays.

I always get a kick out of my massage therapist, Mike, telling me about what he notices in my body in terms of my musculature. Most of the time I think he's just being nice to me and giving me these compliments because, hey, that's a nice thing to do. This past Wednesday he said he noticed how "full" my upper back muscles are, and as usual, I thought he was just being nice to me. But today, when I got to the Y to run and I looked in the mirror, well, hell, I could tell that I no longer have the just skinny/cut upper back, but there is some meat back there now. Since I haven't put on any weight, that muscle has to come from somewhere so I guess I am leaner someplace else! Maybe my face!

I am reading "Once a Runner" and getting into it. Even though I don't consider myself a runner, I can relate! Why am I doing this? When I'm in a race, I think, "What the fuck am I doing here?" But it's all good, and on that note, I am going to get some food in me and chill out before tomorrow's big day.