Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Week 22: Kryptonite

Training…

In case you were wondering what trainering in the dark while it’s raining out looks like, this is it.  Quix is not impressed.

It was an interesting week.  In deciding that we needed more endurance, we ditched all the quick n easy workouts this week in attempts to cram some long runs, bikes, and bricks in the hopes of furthering the #dontdieBSLT703 cause.  So instead of 3 swims, 3 bikes, 3 runs, and weights, we did 4 runs and 2 bikes totaling about 8.5 hours.  All runs outside, all bikes inside (oops, stupid rain).  We had intended to also do a 1 hour open water swim but haven’t gotten around to that one yet either.  Bah.

We’ll skip swim and weights since I skipped them this week.  I’d be more concerned about the swim, but I swam 4 times a week for most of May, so I’ll give myself a break.

Bike:

I did two long bikes on the trainer.  On Wednesday, my goal was two-fold – to hit 40 miles and to ride in a manner that was not just easy-peasy.  Sunday, we were slated to ride for 2 hours outside but thunderstorms kept us inside.  Both did the same workout, which I feel like leveled up my trainer riding this week – descending pyramid intervals.  5 miles warmup, 5 miles “on” (riding as hard as sustainable, getting the HR up as high as possible), 5 miles “off” (easy), 4 on, 4 off, 3 on, 3 off, 2 on, 2 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 2 cooldown.

Wednesday, I completed this in about 1:45 on resistance 2/5, with a HR AVG about 115.  Sunday, I upped the resistance to 3/5, and did this for the first 40 miles + a steady ride for 15 more at the end ending about 2:27 for a half iron minus 1 trainer ride, HR AVG about 130 (which is a HUGE victory for me, it’s really hard for me to get my heart going on the trainer).  While I’m a little peeved that I wasn’t about to ride outside (stupid thunderstorms), I’m pretty happy with my ride and can’t complain about ~95 bike miles this week, and running off the bike both times.

Run:

It was very, very clear that the #1 thing I need to work on for BSLT is run endurance.  This was my kryptonite this week (but I think I’m well on my way to conquering it).  So, on the docket this week was more mile rampage, plus a run off the bike.  Tuesday, I went out for 7 excruciatingly slow miles (I think it took me almost 1.5 hours :P).  Trying to keep my HR in zone 2 was a HUGE challenge after about mile 3 and in the heat.  Heat acclimation + missing my run fitness + impeding race = not fun.  However, I know that zone 2 is key – I am not going to do myself any good training all fast so I stuck with it.  Thursday, I did 8.25 miles slightly less but still excruciatingly slow (1:42), with slightly less but still a lot of problems keeping my HR down.  It’s like February’s HR frustration all over again but in 80 and humid, so a much higher degree of difficulty. 😛

Sunday’s run was a little better.  Running off 55 trainer miles in the noon heat, I knew there was no way I was going to stay in zone 2 unless I wanted to do a 5k brisk walk, so I just ran with Zliten.  He’s a big jerk and much more HR and heat trained right now so he was cruising along at 11 minute miles and I was huffing, puffing, panting, growling, and hurting through them, but slowing down felt worse and it felt kinda good to push myself.  At the end I was even in the 9s (…and my knee was fine!!!!).  I figured my average HR would be about 200, but it was only 164 – aka – top of zone 3.  Probably about where I’ll race as long as no other factors are in play, so good practice.  Could I have done 10 more miles?  It may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but yeah, I could grasp doing it.

Overall note: 4 sessions instead of 9 = way less workout gear to wash.  That’s kinda nice!

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: 2 Neighborhood Loops 7 mi 01:30
Wednesday: Bike Trainer + Star Wars Episode I 40 mi 01:43, Run: Running Day Brick 1 mi 00:11:33
Thursday: Run: Slow and Low, That Is The Tempo 8.25 mi 01:42
Friday: off
Saturday: off (yard sale)
Sunday: Bike: Trainer Intervals + Star Wars… 55 mi 02:27, Run: Short Neighborhood Loop 3.1 mi 00:35

About 8 hours total.  While in a perfect world there would have been some swims in there, I’m pretty happy with a nice bike/run heavy week.

Food…

I wish I could blame my fail this week on the hungries, and I suppose that was part of it, but I just flat out ate a) too much and b) crap I shouldn’t have more often than I should have.

Monday, I was craving tacos like WOAH and hit up a mexican food restaurant super duper hungry, which meant chips and salsa, plus I ate all the rice and the beans and flour tortillas and if that was it, I probably wouldn’t be whining.  Later there was some ramen as a snack, and a cookie.  Tuesday-Thursday were heavy training days, so though I had more calories than normal, I’ll give those a pass because I don’t usually do 2 hour runs on weekdays, and it was all good food.  Then, Friday, we went out TWICE – for lunch it was pretty good except for the green bean fries appetizer we split.

Then, for dinner, we tried a new chinese buffet… I was out of my mind going out for questionable food twice in one day but a plate full of veggies sounded good and I can usually get that at these types of establishments.  We tried a new spot and, holy crap, I’m still recovering.  It made me shoot up about 5 lbs in weight overnight and felt awful for days.  The food was actually fairly tasty, but must have been loaded with more MSG than I’ve ever had because holy crap… so much bloating and usually I’m just fine with salt overload.  Then Saturday, I forgot to eat vegetables and fruit and filled up on three tortillas, some meats, some cheese, and beer.  Sunday, I had a nice healthy lunch, but dinner involved white bread, half a bottle of wine, and corn cake.  Weekends are my kryptonite here.

However, I owned up to and tracked all my calories and yep, too much, too much.  ~2400 all weekend and considering two of those days were days off training… yeah, not good.

This week, I have pre-tracked and am ready to tell people no to the junk food and hopefully that will do nice things with how I feel, because sitting here typing this I’m sure my waist has gained about 5 inches and I’ve got a double chin with how my body feels.  Ugh.  I have to remember than one bad meal I can shake off no problem, but 3 days of mostly bad food makes for a miserable next week (or more… I’m still working on sweating it out).

Monday: 17 DQ, 1896 calories
Tuesday: 28 DQ,1674 calories
Wednesday: 25 DQ, 1838 calories
Thursday: 13 DQ, 1895 calories
Friday: 11 DQ, 2301 calories
Saturday: 12 DQ, 2271 calories
Sunday: 14 DQ, 2486 calories

DQ Average: 17 (yuck)

Calorie Average: 2051

Weight: low of 175.8, high of 181.0.  I was thrilled with the 175.8, but this weekend erased all that progress somehow.  Not happy about this upward trend.

Other Stuff…

BSLT Nerves:

I am going between being super confident and ready to kick ass at BSLT, and terrified.  I had convinced myself I was doing well with my training, that I would be ready, and then I read up more detailed accounts of the bike course.  I’m not horrible at rolling hills, but that first climb out of transition looks (and by all race report accounts) is brutal on cold legs.  Also, they throw in a little “fuck you” climb right at the end which by many accounts smashes your legs for the run.

Also, while I’m having frantic visions of being the one lone wuss walking my bike up a too-steep climb, I’m also a little terrified of those climbs the opposite way.  What goes up, must come down.  And being the scaredy biker I am, and reading reports of other, probably less scaredy bikers having to ride their breaks down some of the descents… ieeee.  Total kryptonite.

The swim sounds awesome (a nice spring fed lake), and while the run will be hot and with hills, but this week I proved to myself I can do that.  I’m just scared of getting through the bike alive at this point.

Early Bird:

This week, deciding to do those longer sessions, we had to set much earlier alarms.  Honestly, it wasn’t so bad!  It’s weird, once the heat hits, I’m a lot more ok with wakeups in the dark and/or at sunrise.  I just can’t do it when it’s cold.  Getting on the bike or out to run in the 6am hour wasn’t the death of me, and getting 2+ hours in before work feels good, and means I can have more rest days/not have to do 5 hour long epic weekends/not have to do so many individual sessions.  For this cycle.  For the next, it means I can ramp up the hours a little – this 70.3 is about survival and conquering an injury.  Kerrville (and maybe Austin) will be about chasing down some serious PRs.

Yard Sale:

We spent Saturday morning hawking our wares on the lawn with our next door neighbors, and my parents even brought a table.  We got rid of Zliten’s old bike, a ton of my shoes, two terrariums, our old dvd player, a monitor, and more.  What was left (minus a few things I wasn’t willing to part with for free) got donated.  By doing that, we made 2 rooms much more usable, and with the 150$ we made, we’re going to buy the storage piece we need but didn’t want to spend money on for the workout room, and we can pretty much call that room good.

Also, we got to test the theory that some beers before a training day wouldn’t kill us.  As of right now, our days off training are Friday and Sunday, so we save our funning for Thursday and Saturday nights.  We turn down a lot of plans because of it.  However – what if we lived in a world where a reasonable amount of beers did not impact the ability to get up and train the next day?

The experiment for me consisted of 6 beers (12 for Zliten, but his were weaker) over 8 hours.  During that time, I made sure to eat reasonable amounts of food (no beer for dinner day), hydrate well with lots of water and nuun, and go to sleep very early.  I woke up the next morning feeling just fine, and while I probably wouldn’t have wanted to head straight out the door for a run, I was plenty fine for a long bike ride (and would have also been fine to swim).  After a nice 55 mile warm up, I had a great run.

So, the moral of the story – with some care and attention, I don’t need to be a complete wallflower if plans conflict.  However, we’ll still be alcohol free the week of races (makes the champagne better), which sucks this coming weekend, because I had to turn down about 5 different invites I actually would have liked to attend because of Lake Pflugerville the next day.  Oh well, there will be more parties, but there is only one Pf!

Question of the week: what’s your kryptonite? If I go crazy then will you still call me superman? 🙂

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Lake Pflugerville Triathlon: Unicorn Steaks

5 Comments

  1. YARD SALE!!!! Next time I bring my stuff over, too. I give you .00001% commission on anything you sell for me. Deal?

    • Quix

      As long as those things include corvettes, diamonds, and expensive houses, you got yourself a deal lady! 🙂

  2. Wildflower also starts with a naaaaasty hill out of transition so I’ve done a lot of work in all (two, haha) of my tri seasons practicing for riding a big-ass hill from a dead stop. The best advice I have is put your bike in its lowest gear in transition — really, I mean it, the littlest one, as granny as it gets — and focus on keeping your breathing steady and your legs turning. You don’t have to bomb up it or anything, just give yourself some time to settle in and you’ll be flying down the other side before you know it.

    • oh, and my kryptonite is gummy candy.

    • Quix

      That’s a smart idea. I tend to forget to use the itty bitty gears because I feel so slow on them (like trying to pedal on an itty bitty tricycle or something ;D). I am really, really not THAT horrible of a hill rider, I think it’s just nerves that I haven’t done that many tough ones lately. Thanks for the help keeping me sane! 🙂

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