Week 1 of Coached Training in Review: Rise of the Borg Queen

Some of you who read my blog may not have gone far enough back in time to know that I am a dork/geek/nerd and like Star Trek. I have the Borg logo (a gift) from Franklin Mint that was given to me years ago. Some day I will have it made into a pin so I can wear it:

Anyway, I got through my first week of Joanna's workouts.

Saturday was a 3-hour ride with a 20-minute run off the bike.  For the ride, there was about 1 hours worth of intervals where I was to "ride at a pace that you would like to be able to hold for 5 hours."  Initially, I thought 22mph, but that has been feeling easy lately, so I decided to go for 24.5-25mph, and did it!  Now, this was on the trainer, so my actual outside pace won't be there yet, but still--neat mental trick to tell me to do what I think I would *like* to do, and voila!  I got in 67 miles in 3 hours, and I wasn't toasted when I finished.

For the run, the objective was to warm up for 5 minutes building to a pace that I "would like to run in my next race, be it a sprint or whatever."  Well, I thought that since I'd effectively done a 1/2 IM ride, that I should shoot for 1/2 IM pace.  And right now where my run fitness is, that puts me at a 9:30 pace, until I prove otherwise.  So I did that, and while I can't say it felt easy, it did not suck bad at all.  I was shocked, considering how hard I'd ridden the bike.

Key in executing this workout was using my custom Infinit, and the fact that I stopped drinking it on the bike with 20 minutes to go, to let my stomach settle.  A week ago when I did a similar workout, I drank right up to the end of the bike, and I felt like crap when I started to run.  My point here is that it's important for me to always be thinking as if I were racing, whenever I am doing race-similar workouts.  I had a flash while running that gee, I might be able to go faster all around this season, and the thought momentarily frightened me.  Or should I say, I had an emotional moment.  There's a lot to be said for the mental aspect of this and letting yourself believe you can really go faster, and this is one of the main reasons having a coach right now is good for me.  I am just doing what I'm told without reference to what I think I should be able to do.  So no holding back!  It is all just numbers, and I love numbers, but numbers do not have emotions, so why should I be afraid of any particular number in training any more, right?

The workout was also aided by listening to some more of my old party mix cassette tapes (before they are converted to MP3), and hey, when you listen to Crack FM, every fucking song is great!  I was laughing that I should have gone hard every time The Clash, David Bowie or XTC came on, but that was pretty regular.  Here is the full playlist of what I listened to--I have left off artist names except where I cleverly put the same song back to back by 2 different artists.

• Money (Stones)
• Money (Flying Lizards)
• Cars 
• Heart of Glass
• Two Swords
• Down in the Cockpit
• Helicopter
• ME-262
• TVC-15
• Numbers
• Walk Away
• Think it Over
• Trampled Underfoot
• What's the Matter With You?
• Shattered
• Being Boiled
• Psycho Killer
• I Dream of Wires (Gary Numan)
• I Dream of Wires (Robert Palmer)
• Clues
• Dominance and Submission
• Respect
• Satisfaction (Stones)
• Satisfaction (Devo)
• Don't Lose Your Temper
• Red
• I See Red
• Under Pressure
• Hit me With Your Rhythm Stick
• Another One Bites the Dust
• Fashion
• Pocket Calculator
• Through Being Cool
• Too Much Pressure
• Clampdown
• Mob Clash
• White Riot
• Rebel Rebel
• Suffragette City
• Call the Uh-Oh Squad
• Chips on my Shoulder
• Pressure Drop
• Down

The music was so good I never turned on the TV!  I sang along whenever I could, and it was a nice change of pace not to be listening to hip hop, which is my typical trainer music.

So Saturday was awesome.  After I finished, I ate lunch, stretched, got waxed, went to Best Buy to pick up a wireless stick for my Blu Ray player, went to Binny's to get some Barolo and Barbaresco (shit Italian reds are still buco expensive), then I was next to a Home Depot, so I figured, what the hell, go in and look at stuff.  Today I will have my contractor come over with carpet, granite (for the bar top), paint (walls) and stain samples (wood trim and cabinets behind bar), but I thought I'd get a head start on that in the store.  I called Jim while I was there to tell him what I was looking at, and we talked about some other stuff, too.  Bonus, I found mini blinds that are copper colored for the windows, which will set off the bar hood nicely.  My bar hood is going to be covered in this copper:

The walls will be painted Almond Cream (I chose that sample and reviewed with Jim), the wood trim and bar cabinets will be medium walnut stain.  I like the granite called Black Galaxy because it has copper flecks in it, but there are some other colors I looked at online that would work too--just have to check availability and cost, although I am spending a bundle on the bar!  The front and side of the bar will be glass block with blue LED lights inside.  It's going to be way cool!

So I ended my Home Depot expedition because I was so fucking hungry and needed to get home and eat some more.  I pounded what I thought to be an appropriate amount of calories to replace what I'd burned (I probably burned 2,000 or so) and fuel up for Sunday.

Sunday's workouts called for a 4,000 yard interval swim and then a 2-hour run.  Fuck, that swim was hard--I won't write the workout here, let's just say it was a mix of 25's, 50's, 100's and a couple 800's, but I swam well, I thought.  Per the Masters coach, I started focusing on not crossing over, and during my warmup guess what?  Faster.  Huh.  This will take a few weeks at least to fix, but I can already see that fixing that alone is going to be huge, as I noticed that my rotation and kick all seem to work better together.  I tried my best to practice that throughout the 4,000 yards, although I did let myself "just swim" for some of it, otherwise I actually screw up my stroke even more.  The point of this is to "just swim" and have it be good form, right?  I can over think this, so I need to be careful of how many things I'm thinking about while I'm trying to get my swim on.  Masters coach also told me to do a better job of finishing the stroke, but I am putting that on hold until I fix the cross over.  Why?  Because I can tell that if I don't cross over, I am doing a better job of finishing!

Speaking of Masters, the coach agreed to work with me 1:1 on Tuesdays at 6:30, but I will "just swim" with the group on Thursdays.  I can't believe how well this is all working out--it's something I should have done years ago, but the Masters coach understands what I am trying to accomplish this year, and I think he's as excited to work with me as I am with him!

OK so back to the workouts.  I finish the swim, and all I can think is when was the last time I swam hard 4,000 and then ran 2 hours? Um...NEVER.  So this should be interesting.  The weather was awesome yesterday, so I suited up to run outdoors at Waterfall Glen, my hilly trail (crushed limestone) not too far from home.  As expected, the parking lot was full, but I got the pole position at the trail head, as someone had just left.  I haven't done a long run outside in several months, let alone a hilly one, so I had no expectations for it.  Plus I did have some residual fatigue from that swim and maybe a little from Saturday.

I forgot to mention I drank Infinit again during the swim, and that's what I loaded into my Fuel Belt for the run.  With the amount of training I'm now doing, anything 2+ hours requires it.  Plus I needed the caffeine ;)

I was shocked at how "not bad" I felt when I began running.  I did walk the hills at miles 1, 2 and 6, because who was I kidding I had not run hills in a long time.  But I did do a few hill intervals on Friday, and (Coach is probably laughing at me) I could tell that the hills just didn't feel that bad.  Also I could tell that my weight is probably perfect, and that I feel super strong.  It's been awhile since I felt fat running uphill, which means time to drop some pounds, but I felt pretty darn light yesterday.  Maybe I was just depleted, LOL!

Anyway, I ran 12.7 miles in 1:57, which is 9:15 pace, even though I walked and kept trying to slow myself down, and felt like I was running through sludge at some points from the cumulative fatigue.  But when I was like 1/4 mile from finishing (I ran one loop which is 9.65 miles, counter-clockwise, then continued on out for 1.something miles and back), I was just so happy to be finishing that I pumped a fist in the air and shouted FUCK YEAH and sprinted it in.

I was on a schedule again yesterday, so no time to stretch and exult in my good run, so I drove home, unloaded my swim and run crap, put LGL and more bike crap into the car, showered, drank a bunch of water, and headed to meet a friend for sushi.  He is such a nice guy that he drove from way up north (Barrington) to meet me for lunch, and he got there ahead of me and the table was laid with sushi goodness when I arrived!  On the way there, I called him to say I'd be maybe 10 minutes late, and when he told me the table was already covered with sushi, I got so excited that I turned left on a red light!  Whoops! See this is why I typically don't talk on the phone while I'm driving.

So we pounded sushi (I did, at least), had a few beers, many laughs and great conversation, then we parted ways and I went to the bike shop to pick up Skull Kingdom and a new aero helmet:

Will that look sweet or what?  But wait...there's more.  I decided I want skulls on it, so I'm ordering these decals, one for each side:

They are reflective.  I printed a pic of it and cut it out and put it on the helmet so I could see what it will look like.

While I was on my way to the bike shop, I realized I could have eaten more, but oh well, when I drove home from the shop, I was starving and all I could think was what do I do first when I get home--take out my contact lenses, put the chicken in the oven, shovel calories?  I opted for guzzling more water, taking out contact lenses, prepping the chicken and putting it in the oven, then I cracked a beer and stretched my brains out, ate some dried apricots and almonds and cheese.  By the time I was done stretching, the giblets were cooked, so I ate those, then made a salad and ate that, and when the chicken was done I had a thigh and drumstick.

You would think I had enough food for the day, but you would be wrong.  I woke up at 1:15 this morning hungry, so I got up, had a piece of string cheese and a 225-calorie Powerbar, went back to sleep, woke up at 4:30 hungry and ate breakfast.

On my online training log for Joanna, I wrote, "I'm tired" on yesterday's run workout notes.  She emailed me back, "Your friends will be pleased."  My response was, "Yes they will be.  But I am like the Borg and adapt quickly and get stronger."  One of my friends used to say I reminded him of Seven of Nine, but I think the Borg Queen is more like it:

I feel pretty good this morning.  All I have to do today is run for an hour and lift maybe :45.  All good.  As long as I keep up with my calories, I'm all good.  Here's a sampling of what I bought at the grocery store on Saturday (I shopped before I hopped on the bike):

Oh, and I'm SO glad we switched to DST.  Now I wake up at 4:30 instead of 3:30, which is great!  I knew that the time change would start to get me back on track, AND I slept 9 hours last night, so since I'm almost done designing for the remodel job, I won't be waking up thinking about 10 million things I have to do!