Mind at Ease

Confidence, I am having more of it after this weekend.

I know I need more run miles to get through this race and not die at the end, and ramp up for the marathon.  I don’t want to make the mistake of ramping up my long run too early like I did in November and then crashed and burned.   However, I definitely could ramp up my miles per week with more runs and more mid-long runs.  First, I started with more shorty runs (adding in an extra 5k or 2 per week).  Now, I’m trying to really get some miles under my feet keeping with  average miles for the early stages of a marathon program, but not running longer than 13 yet.

Two years ago, I would train up for a half marathon, do a few double digit runs, run my half, and then swear off running for a month.  Last winter, I built up and kept a base long run in the double digits for many months, but during the week, I would only do 3-6 or so.  So far, within the last two weeks, I did 2 (race), 12, 9, 3, 10.5, and 13.  It was the product of doing my long run Sunday last week than Saturday this week, I ended up with 35.5 in a week.   May not sound like much to some of you, but it’s HUGE for me.  Really it was 23 last week and 26.5 this week, which I am still thrilled with.

I actually only planned on a 3, a 13, and a 7.  However,  I was looking at my training program and I never do the the half bike and run distances together.  That made me nervous.  I studied the plan and realized that this weekend was really the best one to yoink and do that.  While it’s a little early, I have races or vacations (or vacations with races) almost every weekend between now and taper (really, there are only TWO free).  I wanted to do it now to put my mind at ease.

I played it smart this week.  Monday, I did weights (yay my back felt better) and swam 1200m.  Tuesday, I was supposed to do weights but since I was sorrrrre I skipped it.  Instead,  I nailed a triple brick, with 3 bike segments of 5 miles averaging 20.2 mph, and 3 – 1 mile runs paced at 8:50, 8:44, and 8:43.  Wednesday, I was STILL sore so I just swam another 1000m.  Thursday was long run day, and I was supposed to do 13, and thought it would be fun to do double 13s within a day of each other.  However, my quad started to pull weird so I cut it at 10.5  super easy miles.  I was happy to have finished another double digit run on a weekday and felt pretty good and not dead after, but my quad continued to feel weird so I decided it was rest it and ice it and stretch it and see how things went.

Friday was a rest day, and the plan was to leave work, eat dinner, and go right to bed at 8 and get up at 3:30 to be on the trainer at 4.  Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned at work, and I was there until 9:30.  I had three options – sacrifice sleep, train during the heat, or just bag it.  As we discussed, I didn’t really have another good weekend to do it, and Sunday wasn’t an option as we had major amounts of Saturday night plans.  I checked the weather and each hour I slept in was an extra 5 degrees of “feels like” temps, where high 80s was if I stuck to my plan… so I set my alarm for 3am and promised myself a nice nap.

I woke up a little late and got on the bike at 4:40.  We watched the opening ceremonies and pedaled easy.  At 20 and 40 we got out of the saddle and took a quick break to simulate aid stations (I am still up in the air whether I am just going to attempt to do the bike with or without stops and just use my camelback and my own food).  I felt pretty great after 56 miles.  I ate a jelly bean each mile and had a chew each 5 and jerky when I felt like it.  I felt great and full after without feeling gross so I think that will be the plan.  I did it in 3:11.  A trainer is not the road.  On a trainer, you don’t have hills.  However, you don’t have any coasting breaks.  Kerrville isn’t stupid hilly so I feel like it was a decent approximation of saddle time.  I did ride in my izumi bike shorts, not my tri shorts, and think I may just take the extra 10 seconds in transition and slide them on and off.  I need to try that out of the water to make sure it doesn’t suck, but my ass doesn’t do well with long miles on my tri shorts.  Longest trainer ride by 16 miles, and only my 3rd ride over 50 miles!

We got outside at around 8:20, which was around 1:20 later than I was hoping.  It was already muggy and hot but whatcha gonna do besides get going, so we did just that.  We kept a slow but non-stop run pace of around 12 minute miles through mile 7, where we took our first walk break.  During that time, we tackled the two mile downhill and then the two mile uphill, so it was more tiring than just me running my happy lap.  At 7 it was getting super hot and I had aches and pains, so we walked for half a mile.  After we started running again, I thought I was done, I was going to try and run a mile, walk half, etc, just to get through.  I made it through about another mile and then walked a bit, and then we realized that we were almost out of water, so ran it into the house with about 3.5 to go.  We walked just a bit to get the legs working again, and then made it to about 11.25, and walked the same hill we walked before, and then ran it in for a 2:47 finish for 13.1.  Slow, slow, slow, but that was the point.  The only fuel I had was a little bit of a honey stinger waffle Zliten had.  I felt ok but really think I need to figure out how to get some nutrition in on the run.  Maybe Gatorade or some sort of liquid calories.

I finished out the day with 5:58 of training total, and I was beat.  I downed a milk before anything else, then showered and got a gigantic burger and fries.  Then I went to sleep.   Like right away.  That nap was ah. may. zing.  I need to remember to do that more often on weekends.  I woke up a human again and just in time too, because it was the day of crazy birthday party madness. First of all, 2 hours of a skating party.  I actually wasn’t sure if my legs were going to work after 6 hours of training that morning, but it actually ended up feeling pretty nice working different muscles and I had fun.  Then bowling (and imbibing) began, and I bowled two fairly decent games (104 and 128 – I consider anything over 100 a win these days :D), and then finished out the evening at the bar playing bean bags.

Today, I got up, had yummy brunch, got an awesome massage, bought a sassy red dress and some other stuff for Alaska, and have spent the day watching the Olympics and eating lobster and crab.  Some days it sucks to be me.

And I am going to continue to do that (watch Olympics – I am out of crab :D) and leave you with a less than wordy post (I’m sorry/you’re welcome).  I’ll note that I have a race next weekend which I am not excited about at all (another sprint when I’m ready to go longer, heard rumors that the swim tastes like sulfur, the bike is crappy with cobblestone-like roads, and is stupid hilly, etc).  My goal is to stay mentally in it, and not let the crappy conditions, if there are any, give me excuses to not give it my all.

This weeks plan:

MONDAY: weights + 30 mi trainer
TUESDAY: 7 mi run + 30 mi trainer
WEDNESDAY: 1500m swim + weights
THURSDAY: 7 mi run + 30 mi trainer
FRIDAY: weights + 30 mi traner
SATURDAY: off
SUNDAY: 500m swim, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run

Less run miles at 17, and not much swimming, but more bike miles than I’ve ever done in a week at 134.  This week has been engineered to get maximum trainer time while watching Olympics.  🙂

Also, I took some time and updated my races page with my recaps and results.  Interestingly enough, Kerrville will be race #50.  Fun!  I had fun dramatically reading all my early ones to Zliten over vodka last week.  Some things were just adorable, like “OMG I had to wake up at 6:45 for a race woe is me”.  LOLZ!

*Pictures as proof that after 6 hours of training, we actually made it to both skating and bowling….