Surf and Turf

To follow up from my weekend, on Sunday I ran for an hour, but not very fast. I had a bunch of leftover sushi from Saturday (I purposely ordered extra), and had a bunch more for lunch, watched some football, but seemed to be in a perpetual state of hunger the entire day.  I have no idea how many calories I burned on Saturday, but as far as I could tell, I was stuffing my face and still felt constantly hungry.

On Monday, I woke up with non-functioning legs!  I could barely walk, as my calves did not really want to work, and my quads now hurt like motherfuckers.  Going downstairs (I live in a split level), I had to hold the rail and take one step at a time sideways.  I decided I better not try and run on ground, so after I swam (where it hurt a bit to push off the wall), I did a water running workout, and even that was tough on my calves, but it felt just fine aerobically.  Since my legs were trashed, I figured I'd get most of my upper body lifting done, and there were no problems there.

The remainder of the day, I sort of hobbled around wearing compression socks, and slept fitfully, since any contact with my legs was a bit painful.  But I knew I'd get over it.  On Tuesday, I headed to the pool again in the morning for another water run, which felt better than on Monday, did some more lifting, then got on my bike in the afternoon.  I knew I wouldn't be able to work too hard on the bike yet, so I opted to just spin in the small chainring.  This makes me more nuts than blasting out lots of watts, so I quit after 50 minutes, I was SO BORED!  But my calves seemed to be coming around, and also my quads.

Sometime during the middle of last night, I noticed that when I got up to pee I could almost walk normally!  Plus, I ditched the compression socks because too much of that is not good for the muscles, either, based on my experience.  When I finally got up this morning, I walked downstairs in a normal fashion without holding on to the rail!  I was so happy, that I decided to do part land running and part water.

I got to the Y, and got on the treadmill.  The new treadmills they just got have the ability to switch the display to a number of different languages, so today I chose French (Sunday was some sort of Arabic--I'm not sure which country exactly!).  I began warming up easy, and my legs felt GREAT!  There was still some residual soreness in my calves, but nothing like on Sunday, and I was smiling from ear to ear!  I only spent 15 minutes on the treadmill, and when I hit the STOP button and the stats screen came up in French, I noticed that the button which reads EXIT in English now said QUITTER.  AWESOME!!! I laughed my ass off at that.

Next I headed to the track, and I ran 3 1/3 mile repeats, not at top speed, but I just wanted to see what I had.  I did pretty well considering, then I ran another 1/4 mile easy, but it was still a good pace.  I followed that up with a hard 2400 swim and then I did some water running for :32.

I am really pleased at how I chose to recover from the unplanned assault on the stairs, and am pretty confident I will be completely back to normal tomorrow, including hitting the bike hard.  I still need to do a bit more running today, and will do it on my at home treadmill, and some easy biking. 

But now I am REALLY looking forward to being able to do lots and lots of squats tomorrow! Also I have a little indoor sprint triathlon on Sunday, so I'm thinking I should be in decent shape for it.

I love this stuff!

Stair Climbing Fun and Weekly Summary

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 11^th rep (and Jamey’s 10^th), 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 11^th 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!