This week was supposed to be another easy-ish week. I still have a bit of running and a short
swim to do today.
My swimming experiment seems to be working. Lots of paddle/pull buoy work is filtering
back into my speed without them. I’m
doing lots of intervals at good paces, leaving me breathless hanging onto the
wall. One of the guards cautioned me
against all the work with paddles, but I reminded him that I’ve done as much as
4,000 yards at a pop with them, so I’m not worried about my shoulders.
Biking is really starting to come around. I am getting glimpses of my decent FTP and
associated power to weight ratio that I had in 2009-2010. I remain optimistic
that I will be a beast out the door in April!
Running is coming around, too, although I still am not doing
any formal pace workouts. But I do what
I feel like on any given day, although I will start seeing actual speed work
soon enough as I begin on the indoor super sprint triathlons next week. This week I did a mix of easy treadmill, ½ mile
repeats on the indoor track and Cybex 750AT (Arc Trainer). The AT is an awesome machine. If you really crank up the resistance, it’s
like you are doing squats AND running uphill at the same time. Seriously, I am not a big fan of anything
resembling an elliptical trainer—not that you can’t get a workout on one—but the
leg motion of many just doesn’t come close to anything “normal.” But I am liking the AT, and think I may just
keep doing some of it at least once a week.
All I can say is I get on there, I get my HR up pretty high and hate
myself. Which means it’s awesome!
Strength work continues to go really well. I’ll be back on heavier weights next week after
taking 5 weeks easier while I did my Ultraman prep madness. I am feeling strong, and that manifests in
how well the SBR is going. Also I can
tell from my physique and I am fairly lean, continuing to weigh in at 113
pounds, although of course I would like to whittle off maybe 2-3 pounds of fat,
but that will happen on its own without me making too much of a concerted
effort.
I am doing pretty good on my diet, although I could drink
less beer, which is always true! I’m pretty sure that if I gave it up, I’d drop
2 lbs. of fat in a hurry, so it’s my own damn fault, right? Aside from that, I
am eating pretty damn clean. Here’s an
example of a typical weekday for me, with the workouts interspersed:
·
Breakfast: hardboiled egg, homemade banana/wheat
germ muffin, coffee with creamer. Yes there is some sugar in the muffin, but
not too much, and the creamer I use has some sugar in it. I could do better here.
·
AM workout: 1 hour swim M/W/F or :45 strength or
run on Tu/Th, with 20 oz. Gatorade
·
AM snack: 1-2 pieces fruit, 1 piece string
cheese
·
Mid-day workout: :45-1:15 run M/W/F or 1:30 bike
Tu/Th with 20-32 oz. Gatorade depending on time. Immediate recovery drink 1 scoop Endurox R4.
·
Lunch: approx. 300-calorie Lean Cuisine. I prefer the ones with rice. Again, I could do better here and have, say,
tuna with vegetables, but this works for me so that I can have it done while I
get back to work.
·
PM snack: small handful of nuts, maybe another
piece of fruit.
·
Dinner: Huge salad of greens, cherry/grape
tomatoes, possibly avocado (it would a whole one sliced), possibly pimiento
stuffed green olives, liberal dousing of olive oil and Cream of Balsamic, with
maybe a sprinkle of grated Parmesan or Romano.
4 oz. chicken breast or fish, occasionally a lamb chop or piece of
steak. This is my usual dinner when I am
training under 15 hours per week. When I
go over that (or sometimes even at 14 hours), the salad goes bye-bye and is
replaced with 1-1.5 cups of rice (usually brown or jasmine made in my rice
cooker) topped with one of my various stir fry concoctions (really heavy on the
vegetables; turkey, beef, chicken or shrimp-based) out of the freezer. I typically drink one beer prior to dinner
while I am stretching.
·
If I am still hungry an hour after dinner, I
will evaluate how much I think I’ve burned vs. eaten for the day, and at that
point I may have 1-2 Fig Newtons, a few Pringles (OH NO!!!), pretzels, a Tiger’s
Milk Bar (I know—no different than candy, what can I say?), more fruit.
When I am training 15+ hours a week, what usually happens
is that Thursday-Sunday I will either eat more rice, more snacks, and/or have a
pasta-based dinner rather than rice prior to my big training days (3+ hours). When I get around 17+ hours per week, all
bets are off, and I allow myself to have candy (usually Gummi Bears), maybe
even Cheetos. Of course, I eat out every
now and then with my preference being sushi, but on huge training days I allow
myself pizza or whatever I want that same day and leave myself wiggle room the
next day or two. But the longest amount
of time I will ever let myself completely slack on my diet is maybe 3 days
after an Ironman or longer. Otherwise I
will feel like complete and total crap.
Now onto the stair climbing.
I was doing some work on the AT this past week to prepare (sort of) for
the inaugural stair climb right in my town that happened yesterday. The event was not timed, and they said we
could climb up AND down as many times as we liked. I had made plans to do this with my friend
Jamey, and we arbitrarily decided to do 10 repeats of the 17-floor climb (375
stairs per floor). Jamey is formally
training for Hustle Up the Hancock, which I’ve done several times in the past,
so he’s already “in shape” for stair climbing, whereas I just figured I’d go
with my current cardiovascular fitness.
I shouldn’t have to actually train for something like this, right?
I got in one repeat up and down before Jamey arrived. We
settled on doing 10 total reps together at a moderate pace, although somewhere
along the way we did some calculations and decided we should do 11, since, hey,
this thing goes up to 11, plus that would give us at least double the number of
stairs in the Hancock climb. We laughed and talked and I occasionally swore,
but I apologized if I swore near one of the volunteers, and we just cycled up
and down, up and down, with almost no resting at all. There were a few people
who did maybe 2 or 3 reps, but after that, it was just Jamey and me. The volunteers were amazed at us, even though
if we were stupid, we would have gone even longer. We didn’t want to make anyone stay TOO long
just to wait on us.
I decided that for my 11th rep (and Jamey’s 10th),
that it would be NO TALKING and I would go for time. I did the 17 floors in 2:53, which is equivalent
to a time of 16:20 for the Hancock (96 floors), assuming the floors of both
buildings are equivalent, but who knows.
Anyway, I thought that was a pretty good time considering I’d already
done 10 reps, and I hadn’t trained specifically for this. When we reached the top, I ceremoniously
dropped onto the floor. I really didn’t
need to, but I did have jelly legs, and I was laughing hysterically while
laying there.
But I got back up quickly
and we headed down. Jamey was going to do his 11th rep all on his
own, with a goal of going up and down in under 5 minutes. I knew he could, and actually he did it in
3:25! After he quit coughing, I asked
him what he did, and my guess is he went up in around 2:30 but literally flew
down the stairs. He did say he was
almost sliding down!
I wish we had recorded our conversation while we did
this. We were laughing so much and there
were a number of “that’s what SHE said” moments, especially in reference to “going
down.” At one point, I remember asking
us figuratively why we were doing this, and there was something about the
stairs getting lonely and needing someone to use them like whores.
My total time spent climbing up was 37:16 for 187 floors or
4,125 stairs, and I counted this in my training records as running time, and
35:56 going down, which I counted as walking.
Much more than the :20 run which was the original plan in my training
plan for yesterday!
We both had twitchy calves, and that sensation didn’t leave
me for over ½ hour. But when I got home, I needed to do a 2:15 ride. I put on
compression calf sleeves, but after 30 minutes I took them off because they
made me too hot. Let’s just say that the
slowtwitch fibers in my calves seemed to be worn out, and while I could exert
force on the pedals, my typical RPM’s (I will average about 98 most indoor
rides) were nowhere to be found. I was OK with that, and not hitting my target
watts for the day.
This morning, both my calves and quads are not surprisingly
sore, but I am still going to try and run for an hour and then do a ½ hour
swim. The swim will not involve any
kicking! I think it would have been hilarious to try and swim yesterday. It
would have been cramp city!
Last night, I took myself out to eat for sushi, and I
polished off at least 20 assorted pieces along with 2 big Sapporo beers. You would think that would have replenished
me, but fuck no! It still feels like I
have a hole in my stomach or a tapeworm or something, so I guess it’s pound
lots of calories again today, and hopefully I will be back to normal
tomorrow. I should end this week’s
training at 14.5 hours, which is not a lot for me. My metabolism is in ferocious mode now, so I
expect I need to increase my carb intake next week. Tough problem to have, but I’ll manage!
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