The Feeling of Very High Fitness

There is a special feeling I get when I know that I am Very Fit. Fit as in I could knock out a decent 1/2 or full Ironman or something longer. It is difficult to describe the feeling, but it's something that strikes seemingly out of nowhere. The feeling is nearly as good as the feeling I get when I finish a race. It means I am performing at a high level. It means I'm ready to race, if that's what I'm aiming for. It means I am absorbing training. It also means I'm just about on that edge where if I push too much further, I might just crack, meaning it's time for some serious recovery time, which if I were racing would mean a formal taper.

It is a bit odd for me to have this feeling right now since I don't have a formal race for another 5 weeks, and you might take that to mean that I have peaked too early. But since I take my training as seriously as my racing, and since I am "gearing up" for a few big things, the feeling is right about on schedule, which means I have constructed a "good" plan and that the upcoming "events" should go quite well.

During training, anyone with high aspirations is keeping track of their fitness levels via power output, actual race paces, training sets and possibly HR measurements, although I personally don't currently use a HR monitor. Since I effectively had an off year, while I came back to a pretty high level of bike fitness over the summer (mostly due to just riding hard whenever I rode with others), I didn't really start working on my running until September, and I didn't seriously start working on my swimming until October, and then I didn't start trying to hit any bike power benchmarks until November. While my top end paces aren't quite there yet, my nearly top end paces are. Maybe it's my personal physiology or maybe it's a function of age or maybe it's a function of the long distance training lifestyle, but I will actually acquire quite a bit of speed-endurance by just adding volume. And that's effectively what I've done for the last 3 months. This goes back to what some coaches espouse as an off-season training diet--lots of moderate pace volume. While all of my training has not been moderate pace (I did a lot of "go as I feel" workouts), much of it has been, so I guess you could say I've been training "old school." But it works for me!

I am always amazed at how quickly my speed-endurance comes back after any sort of break, but that is probably from the years of this level of training I've done. While some people may experience their feeling of Very High Fitness when they are hitting top end speed markers, I tend to feel it when I've got my speed-endurance back. Anyone who's raced with me knows that I have a tendency to not slow down very much, and that is a quality that is to be cultivated for long distance racing. I also think I have a very good idea of what pace I can handle on any given day, and I will tend to go out at that pace and just hold it for whatever amount of time I'm supposed to achieve. This sense of my own ability and matching my pace to it is something that's been honed over many years. It is also due to me being pretty honest with myself, which is not something I see in many athletes.

Aside from the more geeky explanations above, this feeling of Very High Fitness is awesome. It makes colors look brighter, food taste better and I want everyone to be able to feel this way. But of course, that is not how it works. The only reason I feel like this is because I've put in the work. And I've even been scaling back on some of my training plans, as I can (SHOCK!) sometimes go a little crazy. I feel really ready for my next 3 "events," which are a 3-hour swim/5-hour ride end of this week, a 7+mile swim end of the following week, then I kick off the new year with a 60-mile run week. Ideally for Ultraman Hawaii, it would be good to execute these same 3 weeks in, oh, the month before the race, and without looking at my ATP I'm sure I have something like that in there, but I wanted to lay down the fitness base NOW for a couple of reason: 1) I wanted to test whether or not I really have the desire for another Ultraman; 2) I am going to switch into lesser volume/ higher pace mode in January for a few months and 3) I want to be ready to really pile on the bike miles starting late March. So right now the focus is running and swimming, then I switch to balanced speed across all 3 disciplines, add lots of bike volume starting in late March, and this plan gets me through Ironman Canada, after which I start the hellacious 12-week training block to get me through Ultraman Hawaii.

Speaking of Ironman Canada (and I already posted this to Facebook), I suppose it was my feeling of Very High Fitness this weekend that got me thinking that I should establish my race objectives, and so I did and here they are:

Swim: 1:20:00
T1: 4:30
Bike: 6:25:00
T2: 5:30
Run: 5:00
Total: 12:55:00

I know that doesn't look like a fast Ironman time, but I'm 55, and that finishing time actually could place me in top 3 of my AG, depending on who shows up. I did 13:14 at IMLP in 2009, and IMC is an easier course, so I think this is doable. A few people think I can go faster, and maybe I can, but for where I think my fitness is right now, I think I could tweak things just a bit and make those times. I am really looking forward to scaling back on the training for a few months, excited to see how I'll do swimming with 3 speed workouts each week instead of just 2, and super excited to knock out a bunch of biking come springtime!

I am sort of toying with the idea of retaining a coach, but on the one hand I think I know how to get this done, on the other hand I'm also really good at training myself almost into the ground. Stupid high motivation! I almost want to solicit coaches to tell me why they want to coach me, instead of vice versa. I think I would make a novel coachee, considering my age and experience. I'm not directly trying to qualify for Kona, I just want 2 things for next year: 1) an Ironman PR and 2) to be able to finish Ultraman Hawaii. Anything else is gravy!

So if you know any coaches who think they might want to take on the Crackhead, shoot me a message.

I feel like I've really matured (ha ha yes I'm old but still) as an athlete in the last 2 years. I was struggling for a bit with the idea of should I be doing this much at my age, am I living the life I want and all those sort of questions, and the answer is that as long as my body allows me to do this, I will keep it up since I enjoy the hell out of it. Now what happens after next year I have no clue, but I am perfectly OK with that.