Week 2 of IMLP Recovery

Things have been going pretty well this week. I haven't had any of the "why am I keeping up training" thoughts that have occurred last year and the year before after the first Ironman. I suppose that's because I have so many things looming in the future that I am not giving myself time to have those thoughts. I do wonder if I will have gotten my recovery right, and won't know for another 3 weeks, right?

I still haven't written my training for the block between Revenge of the PirateMan and Goofy Challenge, but I have sketched out some aspects of it, like how my weekly training pattern changes. I have no idea how my recovery will go after ROTPM. That is something I will play by ear. For sure, at least 3 days of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Then, I will drop my long ride through the North Face Endurance Challenge (the 50-mile run), and instead will be doing 2 long runs on the weekend. I don't mean LONG long as in 15/30, but more like building to maybe one 10/20. This will allow me to sleep in on weekends, and also on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is when I will do rides of up to 1:30. Hopefully I can maintain some semblance of bike fitness on just that! I am going to try and start up my extra strength work in the form of pushups, chinups and jump rope to keep my core extra strong. I am going to keep that Friday long swim, though, at 5,000 plus yards, as I do need to start building towards that big 10,000, eh?

Again, recovering after NF will be a new thing. For sure no running for 1-2 weeks. I can usually pick up swimming right away, even though I may be dog tired doing it. That's one of the things I really like about triathlon--there's usually something you can do. I think a 50-mile long run will be good preparation for Goofy Challenge, and so I won't be doing any "special" training for that. In fact, I will begin my Ultraman training pattern, adding my long ride back in, in fact I will probably go back to the weekly pattern I am doing now. I'm glad I've been used to back-to-back long rides for years now, as that is an Ultraman-specific thing. I'll keep up the Friday long swim, too.

For me, Goofy Challenge will be more about fun than anything else, since I've done it before, since I'll have friends along with me--Shelley and Brad! We are going to cook up something funny for the 1/2 marathon. After Goofy, well things will get very interesting as I try and do "as much as possible" for Ultraman training. I envision lots of time on the trainer on weekends and lots of time on the treadmill during the week. Whereas an Ironman build is typically 12 weeks, I'm thinking for Ultraman it needs to be about double that, which lets me recover from Goofy for a week or so.

It's a lot to think about! Yesterday I had the pleasure to run with a new friend, Amanda, who is an ultrarunner. I tried not to pester her too much with ultrarunning questions. I know that if I can run with her every so often that I will get faster and smarter about this aspect of Ultraman, particularly nutrition. I need to learn to eat more while I'm running. We encountered several other ultrarunners at Waterfall Glen (so popular because of the 9.5-mile loop, soft surface and well, hills). I was more interested in listening to them, but Amanda told them I was an Ironman veteran, and one guy asked me how I fit in all the training. He had made the big "L" loser sign on his head, and I made the hanging myself sign and said, "I have no life!" Well, whatever semblance of life I had before is going to be even less next year! I don't know if I can do all this, but I am sure going to try.

I managed to run for 1:20 yesterday, and that was enough. When I got home, I thought I should try and get a head start on my 6 hours of riding scheduled for Sunday, since it is predicted to be in the mid-90's, and while if we'd had a normal summer, I could deal with that, I don't want to expose my recovering self to both mid-90's and a 100-mile ride. So I took off on Clipless Fuck and rode for 2 hours. My legs were fried, and the trails were wet from the morning rain, so it was slow going, but I didn't care. When I got home, the temperature was only 86. Then I went for a refreshing 1/2-hour swim, where I tried out my new dinosaur fins. I really like them! I had wanted to go to REI (I need to buy a headlamp for ROTPM and NF), but remembered I needed to go grocery shopping and didn't want to spend much more time driving, so I stretched, got groceries, ate dinner, read a little bit and got to bed early.

My appetite has kicked back in to match my training hours, and it seems I have become obsessed with food. In looking back over the last 3 months, I really wasn't treating myself very often (during the winter I was eating a little richly, but that's what happens when I'm cooking for someone else frequently), and on Friday I went to my Italian deli for prosciutto, and found they had fresh figs, so I've been going a little nuts on fig/prosciutto snacks. I also fixed some carbonara with the prosciutto and freshly grated Parmesan, and have contined eating some great salads. I am trying my best to eat a little more real foods so I'm not dipping into the Twinkies and Gummi Bears as much, but it is work.

Mentally, I'm in a place where I just need to DO IT and not think about it so much. I was pleased on Thursday when I swam that I mostly just thought about swimming and the cool water, but also the fact that I've got only one more week of outdoor swimming, which makes me sad.

Since I got in some riding yesterday, my goal for today is 4 hours or about 80 miles. I figured that since it's going to be so hot (it's almost 80 at 5:30AM), I'll just go out and back for 2 hours from home and then reload bottles and repeat. That saves me driving anyplace and gets me on the road sooner, gets me done sooner, and then maybe I'll still get in that retail therapy later on!

I am already looking forward to dinner tonight--some more pasta carbonara and a couple of glasses of red wine. And then maybe I'll actually read the Sunday paper!

Enjoy your Sunday!

In Other News

If you're on Facebook, you can find me by name (Google me!). Sometimes I post shit there that I don't put on the blog and vice versa. I would LOVE to have all my blog readers linked on Facebook!

I signed up for a 50-mile trail race yesterday. What the fuck was I thinking??? Oh yeah--I am trying to gear up for Ultraman. The link has been added to my races/events sidebar for 10/24/2009. FUCKING YIKES!!! I guess I will need to lean on my ultra friends to tell me what more I need to do to be ready. I would appreciate having a few friends there with me, seeing as how I will be a bit trashola afterwards. Let me know if you are interested!

I seem to have recovered well from last week, since I did no running or biking on Monday (just a 3100 yard swim), although I was pretty much shelled all day/night Monday.

Yesterday, I did an impromptu triathlon, which I have dubbed "WTFMan." It consisted of a 3600 yard swim, 24 mile bike and 4.5 mile run. I swam really easy because I was still tired from last week, but I biked like a mofo at 88% of FTP on an absolutely gorgeous day, and then the run, well, it fucking hurt, which told me that OMG I must have run a bunch of fucking miles last week!

Are you noticing I am laying on the expletives now? This is what happens right about now when I'm in my last build week before Ironman, or in this case, Triple T. My house is a fucking mess, the amount of workout clothes I'm going through is amazing, I always seem to be fixing bottles of something or other, and I have so many things I need to schedule and my training volume isn't decreasing anytime soon! And then the madness begins, first with Triple T, and well, just look on my sidebar it's jam packed with all sorts of fun!

I've been receiving packages of stuff I ordered online, and the boxes just lay around open and stuff is not put away, I have to actually try and get enough calories to keep me going because with all the training and work being very busy, my appetite gets messed up and so I find I need to start stuffing myself at dinner, which isn't optimal (I should just eat more earlier in the day), but tough shit, it's not like I'm going to gain any weight here.

I feel like I'm absolutely the right weight/body comp for racing--although I am very lean and it does impact my swimming, slap a wetsuit on me and that gets corrected...I will be sporting my neoprene on Friday's 3800 yard swim.

I am being "cabin Mama" for Triple T, and I've graciously volunteered to buy groceries for and do some cooking ahead of time and onsite for the 2 dinners for everyone in the cabin and also my bitch, Shelley and her BF. I already have the non-perishables, but Friday night I buy all the other stuff, do the baking of Triple Fudge Brownies and individual Margarita Pies this weekend, and then early next week I'll make the spaghetti sauce and spaghetti salad topping. I just hope I calculated the amount of food we will all need pretty well! I know since I've done this race twice before how much *I* need to eat, and I figure guys will eat more (although they are usually amazed at how much I can stuff into my skinny little body), and then figure some extra. I am also bringing snacks, defizzed Coke and Ultra Violence and coffee. I think my cabin mates will appreciate my effort, and I have requested they each bring an "offering" to the Pirate Zebra Queen!

Normally I say that training isn't hard, and the training itself isn't so much, but at the volume I'm at now, it makes it very difficult to fit in the rest of my life! But I'm trying, and it will be interesting to see how I fare at Triple T, since I want to do more than just survive it. I'm really looking forward to it, though, because it will be bracketed by 2 "just vacation" days in the woods there, and it's so peaceful and beautiful, and I'm looking forward to the time to just sit quietly, which will give me time to ponder the depths of my mind and life and how good it really is and how fortunate I am to have the health and means to do this stuff!