Winter Base Building and Time Off

Whew! I've been off from work for a week now, and it was much needed. Years ago, before triathlon, before I was married, I would take at least a week off every year and just enjoy my regular life. As much as I enjoy traveling, especially to a beach, I've always believed that if you can't be satisfied with your regular life then you aren't truly happy.

I made a list of a bunch of things to do, but my top priorities are getting my yard all put away for the winter, cooking some dishes that take some time and freezing for the months to come, and training and recovering well.

A week ago, I did the Ride 'n Tie race with my friend, Kevin. It's 2-person teams that go for 10 miles switching off one person running and the other on a bike. It's a running race, though, as the objective is to enable each person to run as fast as possible and then maybe recover a bit on the bike. Kevin said we'd finish in like 1:10, which I couldn't believe, even though he's a much faster runner than I am. My running had been going well, but I wasn't exactly doing 200's on a track in the last...um...10 years. Plus I didn't really get how we'd know when to switch. Kevin said like every 150 yards, but that seemed short, and besides I have no sense of yards except when I'm swimming. He started off running and I started on the bike, we managed to get the first switch right, and then he dropped the bike and I couldn't find it. I thought I saw him running ahead but wasn't entirely sure until I caught him and he asked where the bike was and I didn't know. So I fucked up. Kevin ran back and got the bike and caught me, and meanwhile I was dying trying to keep up a sub-5K pace. After that, I "learned" how to communicate better, and by the halfway point, we seemed to be in a good rhythm, and we started picking off other runners. I may not be fast, but I don't slow down much, and I could see runners dying from going out way too hard. When we were close to finishing, Kevin said we'd crack 1:15, but I had no concept of time, so I just kept going, and somehow we finished 1:10:47 I think was the clock time! No matter how I figured it, I had to be running faster than I've ever run at least part of the time. I was sorry to have caused us to lose time by not finding the bike the one time, but aside from that, I had so much fun doing this! You just have no time to think other than RUN AS FAST AS POSSIBLE AND KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR TEAMMATE. What a liberating thing!

Another friend of mine, Jeff, and his teammate, also Jeff, finished in like :50, so I was a slacker compared to that, but hope I can do better next time. I have a little souvenir from the race, which is that I strained my abs. I wasn't sure it was my abs until last Thursday, when I tried doing some crunches on the stability ball and about fell over from the pain! I subbed out elliptical for 2 runs last week, and hoped I wasn't too badly hurt since I'd planned a 1/2 NothingMan for the weekend.

On Thanksgiving Day, I was thinking that if I got motivated to wake up early the next morning, I could fit in a 9,000 yard swim, even though I'd only planned on 7,000. You know you're sick when getting up at 4:15 on a vacation day to swim 3 hours feels like the right thing to do...so I fixed Infinit bottles for that plus a 3-hour trainer ride I'd do on Saturday.

The 9,000 swim actually went quite well, considering I'd only done 6,600 the week before. I even managed to sprint against some others at times, even during my last 1500 with the pull buoy and paddles on. The lifeguard, Andy, commented that my form was pretty good, improved from the last year, and it felt like it.

Well, thank God I didn't have to work after that swim. Something about 3 hours in the pool that really wears me out! But I wasn't dying, and in the early afternoon I got motivated to do a few hours of yard work since it was really nice out.

I'd planned a 1/2 NothingMan for Saturday, but since I'd swum 9,000 on Friday, I didn't really see the point in heading to the Y just to swim a paltry 2100 on Saturday, so it was going to be 3-hour ride and 2-hour (maybe) run. Only I didn't know if I could or should run. I figured that worse case scenario would be 2 hours on the elliptical or some combo of that and rowing machine.

When I began my ride, I could feel the effects of Friday's swim plus the 3-hour workout I'd done on Thursday. I started out in the small chainring and figured I'd hold that for :45, then I switched into the big chainring and did a few ladders up and down the cassette. For the first :45 I averaged 17.5mph, but for the remainder like 21.5, so I finished up 60 miles (which was my goal anyway) in just under 3 hours. I changed shorts since I was so disgusting and put on my running shoes and got on the treadmill. I started out walking for about a minute, then decided if I could run really slowly, I would be OK with that. So I moved to 5mph, which felt like walking still, but was happy that my abs didn't hurt. It really bothered me in a way to run that slow, but it also made me laugh that it was so EASY! Gosh my endurance has come a long way that a 3-hour ride was nothing before. I ended up doing a ladder with maximum speed 6.5mph, and after maybe 1:30, my abs felt a bit uncomfortable, but I felt safe in continuing, and I wanted to get 12 miles in, and it took me 2:07. It was mind-numbing to have run to slowly, but at least I knew my abs were on the mend!

Yesterday I took a full rest day and just grocery shopped, cooked, watched some football and hit the sack early. Today I am going to see how running on the indoor track feels--I'm hoping my abs are much improved, but if I feel them hurt at all, I'll go back to really slow treadmill.

I also finished making a training schedule assuming I do Ultraman Hawaii next year. I am still not sure that I want to do it, as doing a build for that after Ironman Canada will be major suckage to do 6-hour rides in September and October which are historically shitty weather here. But, it would only be 12 weeks of hell training after IMC, and my results at UMH would have to be whatever they are on that level of training. While I will put in a whole helluva lot of training for IMC, and I will consider that my A race, it will be tough to keep going after that for an even longer distance race, but as long as I stay healthy, I can do it. I learned from my UMC training that I really do need those recovery weeks now, and have built them in along the way.

Speaking of which, I know my back still isn't 100% where I want it to be, but I'm feeling really good on the bike again, and apparently I can run like a bat out of hell if need be (and I am blissfully oblivious as to just how fast I am going), so now I need to just keep riding the wave. I have a few more big workouts planned between now and the end of the year (a 9,000 swim/90-mile ride and at least one 10k swim) that will put me in good shape to back off on the volume for about 12 weeks and crank up the intensity, then I'll begin adding volume again in March, but not worrying so much about swimming until June, where I'll begin doing 5K swims on Fridays, and that will have to hold me through IMC, after which I'll have 12 weeks to bump up my swim again (shouldn't be hard now, since I know what it takes and my body understands), stay at high volume of swim and bike and just duke it out to be ready for UMH.

I could post my ATP here but then if I showed it to you I'd have to kill you. Trust me, it is aggressive, but that's how I roll.

Happy training, racing, holidays and LIFE!