End of 2010/Beginning of 2011

Yesterday I did my longest swim ever--13,500 yards--to cap off a great 2010:

• PR'ed the marathon plus combined 1/2 plus full at Goofy Challenge in January
• Won my AG at the Midwest Indoor Triathlon Series (all 3 races)
• Finished Ultraman Canada (oldest female finisher!) and therefore qualified for Ultraman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii (racing in 2011). UMC featured my longest ride and run ever!
  
• Did my 4th "full" NothingMan
• Ran another marathon just for fun at Ironman Florida
• Weathered a cornucopia of foot/hip issues--still working it all out--and still managed to race
• Worked through a lot of self-confidence issues en route to UMC

I really can't complain about 2010. Stepping up to the Ultraman distance was the highlight, and not completely blowing myself up in the process was the reward. In retrospect, making the decision back in 2009 to do it was one of the biggest decisions in my life. I still get asked every so often (yesterday being the most recent) how training/racing Ultraman compares to Ironman. IMO the training is much harder not so much because you might be training more than you would for Ironman, but it does test your mental fortitude in a much different way. And the Ultraman race itself gives you 3 straight days of holding it together mentally vs. the single day of Ironman. To me, that is what makes Ultraman the bigger challenge--many people who are capable of a strong Ironman finish might have the physical goods to finish Ultraman, but you can't know of the mental component until you actually try it. Also, whereas with Ironman you can't get by without being a strong cyclist, for Ultraman everything is magnified--each leg is long enough that you can't afford to suck at any of them.

For those of you who are number junkies, below is a calendar year summary of my training for the last 4 years:





As you can see, I did a lot of swimming! My bike and run mileage came down from 2009 a bit, but overall what this shows me is that I can (sort of) sustain around 840 annual training hours. For 2011 and UMWC training, I hope to bring up the biking hours, since UMWC will have a much harder cycling portion than UMC did. I am going to take a chance on my run volume--while it would be nice to sneak in a 50-miler, I'm going to err on the side of biking more. That is the puzzle that is Ultraman--how much of what to do based on your strengths. For me, I know that the stronger I can bike, the better I will run.

Now about that longest swim yesterday. I was for sure going to do at least 10k (11,000 yards), but since I'd gotten ahead of myself on long swim for the prior 3 weeks, I figured I should be good for 12,500, which is just over 7 miles. That would make for a nice, overdistance swim. I can't get more than 3.5 hours of contiguous lap swim time at my Y, so when I want to swim more than that I have to go to Good Samaritan and pay to swim. I don't mind paying for this amount of lap time, since the Good Sam facility is really nice--the pool is always cooler than at the Y (81-82 typically vs. 84-85 for the Y), the lap lanes are never crowded when I go there, and there's a huge hot tub that is awesome for the post-workout relaxation.

Usually I make up how I am going to break up these long swims before I get to the pool, and since I had 12,500 in my head, I figured on 10x1,250, which is odd since I like doing even 100's! But then I thought about my refueling plan, which is to gulp down Infinit every 30 or 40 minutes, so while I was doing the first 1250, I had a bright idea of doing 250 kick or backstroke or drills or something after the straight yardage, and that would bring me to 1500 before I'd need to drink Infinit.

So now in my head I am doing 1500 repeats, and now I'm doing math to get to 12,500. 8x1500 is 12,000. So I settled on 9. Don't ask me my logic! 9x1500 comes out to 13,500, and I began thinking whether I could do this much--last week's long swim was 9800. That's a pretty significant jump, but I've done 11,000 before so I figured that 2500 more would be doable.

I did the first 4 rounds of 1500, then I got bored and decided to do intervals of 250's, which was good mentally, because I could do 5x250 of something and then my 250 of kicking or whatever to give my face a break from the goggles, give my arms a slight break, or whatever I wanted to do for it.

Much of doing this long stuff is about managing those voices in your head--the ones telling you that what you are doing is boring, that it hurts, that you don't really need to do this. You need to be calm and relaxed mentally while working through the pain and boredom issues. Although I don't really experience it as boredom so much as staying in the moment--focusing on the next goal, which is to finish the current repeat or the current set. Then once I finish one piece, instead of focusing on how fucking awesome I am for having gone so far, I forget about that and look to the next goal.

I had just about finished 12,000 when a guy I know but haven't seen in about a year showed up. I was unusually lucid at this point in that I recognized him and got a huge grin across my face. A part of me thought I'd done enough and could just stop. After all, 12,000 would have been my longest swim ever. But I got to talking to Shawn a bit and he asked me about my last year and I was wearing the swimsuit that I wore at UMC and also my race swim cap (in retrospect a good idea for these long swims--the race caps don't compress my head as much as my regular swim caps!), and as we got to talking it was fun to see his eyes bug out when I confirmed that yes, I had done Ultraman 5 months ago!

Shawn said he only had time for 1500, and I told him that was "all" I had left, and so off we went. I don't really think I was going to bag that last 1500, but sometimes the universe steps in just to make sure I stay true to my objective. Shawn finished before me (as I expected--I was a bit tired at this point), we chatted a bit more, and went our separate ways.

I don't think it was such a big deal for me to swim that much, although I was very happy at how much stronger I've become in the last year. I won't say that swim was a snap, but it didn't tax me as much as the 10k swim I did a year ago did! I even had visions of maybe doing some sort of ultra swim event, but I know I would need to develop some more speed before I do that. Hmm...now I'm thinking 2012 may be the year I get that swim coaching I've talked about and cut back on the yardage. Funny how these things come to me.

I have no plans to swim longer than I did yesterday during 2011, but I did make a few changes to my training plan and will do another 4.5-5 hour swim (crap maybe I will go longer!) 3 weeks out from UMWC. Now if I can just fit in another marathon someplace...

The thing I've learned about training plans is that it's good to set down your overall plan (ATP), fill in the blanks, and then make adjustments to things based on actual performance along the way. Which might mean going faster or longer at times than initially planned. It makes me feel like I'm not so locked into my original plans. But some of that comes with the years of long distance experience I have, and that is a great thing.

I am going to kick off 2011 training with a 2:15 trainer ride and my first brick run since...NothingMan IV!!!

May your 2011 see you hitting your goals--not just the original ones you made, but the adjusted ones you make along the way!

Christmas Eve 3/3

Every year, if possible, I try and do a big workout the week of Christmas and the following week, since I get a day off of work.

This year I penciled in a 3-hour swim followed by a 3-hour ride. Last year I swam 9100 yards and then rode 90 miles on the trainer, so this years' workout should be a snap, right?

No. It major-ly SUCKS to bike after a really long swim, although I guess it didn't suck so badly at UMC--but I was excited because it was a race.

Last year, I had the day off work before the big workout, but this year not. I did a relatively easy 1-hour trainer ride on Thursday, a 30' easy run, and nearly an hour of heavy lifting. In retrospect, I'm not sure how I fit all that in, but that is true of many of my weekdays.

When I woke up Friday morning, my entire upper body was sore from the lifting, so I figured the swim would be interesting. I had my usual pre-race/pre-big event breakfast of a Power Bar Triple Threat and 400 calories of Ultrafuel. Every time I use Ultrafuel, I'm amazed at how within 5 minutes of drinking it down my nose runs profusely (and I just looked it up this is called Gustatory Rhinorrhea). If I didn't know that this was a normal side effect of ingesting so much sugar in a few gulps, I might think I was sick! I got to the Y before the doors opened at 5AM. They opened the doors a few minutes late, but I was OK with that. I knew I'd have time to swim at least 9,000 yards.

I think I must have stood on deck a few extra minutes because I didn't start swimming until 5:08. Most times I do these really long swims I start to make something up in my head about how I am going to break it up depending on how I feel as soon as I wake up, but I also change the plan while I'm going. I felt like starting out with a nice 2500 straight swim. The water was a nice temperature--just about 85--although I would have liked it to be colder. My arms hurt right away, even though I had stretched before I started and even worked on my forearms. Oh well!

Next I did 500 of something involving fins--I don't remember exactly, but there was some drill work in there and just some kicking on my back so I could stretch out my lats. While doing that, I thought about what I wanted to do next. I decided on doing 250's as 200 free/50 kick at a pretty good clip (for me). Initially, I thought about doing 10 to knock out another 2500, but then since I was able to speed up a little as I went, I extended that to 12, then 14, then 16, knowing that the more of these I did, the less I would have left when I finished them. Each one was done with 20 seconds or so of rest. My arms were not happy, but I needed to press on. After I finished this set, part of me really wanted to just stop swimming, and I could have, as 7,000 yards would have been "enough," but I had the day off and plenty of time to swim at least another 2,000 yards, so it would be stupid to quit.

It was nice to take off the goggles for 300 kick after that! It goes without saying that I was pounding down Infinit in between these sets. Many swimmers came and left up to this point. As my calves took turns cramping slightly, I decided the next set would be with the pull buoy. I used to do the pulling part right after my "warmup," but have switched since a few weeks ago to save the pulling for last. Why? Because it fucking sucks. If I can still manage to work my way through the water this way, it should make me stronger. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

Based on the clock time, I knew I'd have time to at least meet last week's 9500 yard swim. I even had designs on hitting 10000 yards, but I wasn't sure whether I was going to be cut off at 8:30 or not. So I just kept going. My next set was 1500 pull. Shortly after I started, another guy got in the lane next to me, and he seemed to be just off my feet. All I could think to myself was, "Hey buddy I've got 7,000 yards on you already and I'm dog tired you should be able to go faster than me considering you're about a foot taller than me!" But he never got out in front of me, and when I stopped after 1500, he did too, and said, "You aren't stopping now, are you?" You can imagine the possible retorts going on inside my head--even though I might not have been counting so well at this point, I tried to maintain a sense of humor here. I told him that was 8800 yards so far and that yes, I was going to keep swimming until we were kicked out. He asked me whether I swam in college! That made me laugh--I mean, I'm slow, and he is slower than me. I told him no way, I've only been swimming for 10 years and that he had better get ready to go a bit faster as I was going to put on the big paddles. I didn't have time for chit chat, so off I went, and he came after me.

I don't remember how long it took me to lap him but it wasn't too long. I got in another 1000 yards before the guards began moving the lane ropes for the water aerobics class. Even though I was slightly disappointed I didn't knock out the 10000 even, hey, 9800 isn't bad for a day's work, is it? And it was more than I'd planned anyway, so all good, right?

I took my time in hoisting myself out of the pool, as I was in no hurry. A man I know asked me if that was my longest swim to which I replied, "Hell no. The Ultraman swim was 10K." For some reason, I guess it never stuck in his head all the times I told him what I'd been training for during the summer, but all is forgiven ;) I honestly don't expect most people to even comprehend what I'm training for. I promptly began babbling about I don't remember what, but I know I was talking at a fast pace. That's what happens when you are done swimming so much.

I took a nice, long, hot shower and then spent some time in the sauna stretching, feeling good that I'd swum that much but not really looking forward to getting on the bike. Still, it had to be done, and I'd brought my biking clothes with me to the Y and changed into them, spent some time catching up with a friend, then headed home to do the riding.

When I finally got on the bike (10:10AM--I fucked around too much in between workouts, but oh well nobody cares but me, right?), guess what was on Universal Sports? SWIMMING! This made me smile. It really is about the little things, I guess. It was the short course world championships from Dubai. Man, those athletes must hate swimming in a 25m pool as much as I hate 25 yards!

That lasted a little while and then downhill skiing was on. This got me more motivated, since I would try and ride a little harder for each run down the hill, and I got mad when a few men crashed--it messed up my rhythm!

My legs felt fine all the while I was riding, but if you've never tried it before, I highly recommend swimming for 2.5-3 hours and then immediately getting on a bike. Please report back how sucky it feels. Although near the end of the 3 hours I finally didn't feel all that bad. After all, I have done this before. The first time you do something like this, it doesn't really feel that bad because of the excitement of the unknown, but after you've done it a few times, you realize just how much it truly sucks, especially when you are going nowhere. Now, I know that when I'm doing this in Kona next November, it will hurt a lot (especially that most excellent fuck-me-in-the-ass 1500 ft. climb right out of the ocean), but at that point I will be going somewhere and the excitement of being back in Kona after not having been there since 2004 when I raced the Ironman should help carry me through.

When I am doing these things, there is this constant voice in my head saying EYES ON THE PRIZE--EYES ON THE PRIZE. And indeed, now my eyes are on my New Year's Eve swim, where I hope to do 12,000 yards as long as I can get enough continuous lap swim time. I'm going to be careful to get all my lifting done by Wednesday so that my upper body is somewhat rested. I know that my upper body will hurt at some point during the swim, but I will welcome the pain.