Week 4: Just in Time

I didn’t realize how much I needed this week until this week.  Recovery came at the mental and physical edge of JUST IN TIME.

I see Crazy People.  Insane crazy, I tell you!

I had been prepared for one more family weekend, but when the in laws decided to leave early… I was ok with it (since we’ll be seeing them again soon anyway). I didn’t realize just HOW stressed I’d been with fitting in work and training and family stuff and just minor shit like having to keep the house clean all the time and errands and downtime and cooking and laundry and FUN all packed into Sundays and having to wake up so early to train mornings and not being on a normal food plan and not spending enough time in the water (two rushed lunch sessions in the pool isn’t enough to make my soul happy) until I found myself just incredibly exhausted and over everything.

I don’t think I could have even unless this was a recovery week.  I also ditched the early alarms as often as I could and just slept until I woke up both weekend days.  I still got in all my training (actually, almost an hour more than planned somehow), but took a lot of stress off myself.

My knees (specifically, my leg muscles around my knees, not the joints themselves) have been tight, and this week definitely helped fix that.  I made sure to stretch 5 out of the 7 days.  I spent a lot of time feet up on the couch.  I had a very pleasant hour recovery run Wednesday night (ahhhh, I missed night running) and an incredibly successful brick on Saturday on the back end of this week.

Besides the fact that I think I was so full up on sleep my body decided the last two nights were more appropriate to be 6 hour nights, not 8, I think I’ve just come out of this first block in a decent state to start the second half of Kerrville training.

I guess someone wanted a ride along?  She got bored once she figured out we were going nowhere fast…

Last week:

• 30 mins – 1500m swimming.  Missed one swim.  Life will go on.  Swimming is more of a priority this month.
• 4.5 hours – 115 miles biking (let’s call this about 80 if it was outside).  Two rides – one pain cave class, one 3 hour trainer ride doing two hard workout videos.  So, last week was really all about the biking.
• 1.75 hours – 10 miles running.  9 easy, 1 hard off the bike.  A little light on running but wanted to give my knee time to recover.
• 2 strength sessions
• 5 stretch and/or rolling sessions
• 20 minutes kayaking and probably almost an hour floating in the lake.

September is the reverse of August.  This week is essentially my last peak week and I’ll slowly decrease the hours over the month (and transfer from more running to more swimming) to prepare for Kerrville.

This week on tap:

• 15 mile/3 hour long run.  Trying to do it as a night run since the last one was pretty successful.  We’ll see how that works out…
• Moar brick work on Saturday.  Feeling very confident about how well I’m running off the bike but I’d like to keep reminding myself how awesome I am, yeah?
• My first 1.2+ mile swim open water this year.  About time!
• 25 miles running, 100 miles biking, 4000m-ish swimming, 2 strength sessions.  Looking at about 11.5 hours total.

On eating and things that are eating at me…

I’ve got a bit of a dilemma.  I’m going to need to get back to weighing once I’m over this TOM bloat, but I am 100% sure I’ve gained weight.  If it’s a few lbs and I’m just crazy sensitive to it, I’ll calm my shit down.  The way I feel though – I’m prepared to see up to 10 lbs up on the scale.  I fell puffy, y’all.

This is not the normal fare, and still a splurge, but only because of all the FAT, not processed CARBS.  BTW – Shake Shack… not worth it.  Get your burger fix elsewhere.

However, I’ve never run a 9 min mile/flat pace off a challenging 3 hour bike in 91 degree heat and felt… frankly, fucking awesome and like I had more in me.  I’m not cruising along at lightning paces every time I go out, but it’s like… the well is deeper.  When I ask my body to give a little more it’s like, yeah, I’ve got this.

It’s been an interesting experiment separating my physical appearance (how I look in my jeans) vs my athletic prowess (how fast those jeans can move).  I’ve always thought that the reason I’m better at things now is that the level of training I have is enough to wear away the attrition of how much slower my potential is at a higher weight.  Eventually I’m going to get to test that theory, but to do that, I’m going to have to step back from focused training and essentially lose some fitness first to do that.

I’ve raced all this year at a higher weight than I’ve seriously raced before, and it was PR after PR.  The worst I did was 5 lbs lighter, after a month trying to cut calories a bit (and it was still a PR, just less of a PR).  I look at my training and racing and I’m happy, but in the mirror I’m not.  I was asked to make a decision and I picked racing, but I didn’t really grasp how terrible I was going to feel in my clothes because of it.

There have been a lot more of these type of “flattering angle” selfies instead of actual full length pictures of me for a reason, kids.

There is definitely something to this style of eating, though.  I feel like I’m back on caffeine now that my carb intake is 3-4x what it used to be (without the caffeine jitters).  So much more energy!  There’s a reason a “balanced breakfast” for kids is OJ, toast, cereal, and some fruit in the mornings back in the day – that’s the kind of fuel appropriate to go play outside all day like we did!

This is the first week I think I really got close to my recommended intake.  Here’s the stats average per day:

• 2667 calories
• 69g fat (a little higher than I’d like but, baby steps)
• 344g carbs
• 102g protein
• 31g fiber

Guys, I still feel like I’m eating straight JUNK FOOD (partly because my brain is warped into thinking stuff like dried mango and flavored greek yogurt is junk), but I got pretty close to hitting my numbers.  I just have to remember that some offseason junk is not necessarily season junk.

This week, I’m going to see if I can get the carbs up and the fat down a bit (400g min and 60g max, respectively), and try to be a little bit more proactive on tracking when I eat things, not a day later when I can’t do anything to fix my ratios.

Now I’m off to eat all the carbs, train hard, get some work done, sleep my face off, and see about getting through the next 3 days until happy fun time holiday weekend starts!