Road to Kerrville Week 1: Waking Up

Week 1 down, 7 to go.

Training – Waking up the Muscles

I’ve got two different feelings this week and they contradict each other, but that’s where I’m at.

Feeling #1 – behind the curve: I felt this way last year since a 2 month intensive 70.3 “camp” was an unknown.  It ended up working out well, so I shouldn’t be feeling this way, right?

Well, I was only able to eek out 7.5 hours last week instead of the 10.5 I was this week last year.  It was all good quality stuff, but not enough volume, in my opinion.  I really need to be on top of QUANTITY for the next 2 weeks because this is really *it* for the volume building portion of this exercise.  And considering I haven’t raced anything longer than ~2 hours since the marathon, I really NEED some time in water/butt on bike/shoes on pavement.

Feeling #2 – confidence: I know this is a totally weird thing to say after disclosing the fact that I’m freaking out a little… I woke up to my brain saying “aaaargh, not enough time, omg”, this morning, but the work I *am* putting in is showing some promise.

I only swam once last week, but still I’m comfortably able to cover a good portion of the swim distance significantly below my race pace last year.

I biked 35 miles on the same terrain I did last year to train, which is much harder than the bike course.  Even though this was my first ride this year over 2 hours, I was over 1.5 mph faster than this time last year and I was not completely spent.

I ran most of last week stupid easy, but I was able to pull out 2 very hot 10:20-pace miles after the bike when my intent was to go faster than easy (fingers crossed, this would be race pace).

I still haven’t done a 2k swim, a 50 mile ride, or a double digit run, but I’m feeling pretty confident that it won’t take me too long to have those things in my comfort zone again.  It just takes (see #1) putting in the work.

Week 1 Training Stats:

• 1 swim: 1300m in 25 mins (skipped swim #2 for the week)
• 2 bikes: ~32 miles in the pain cave in 1:20, and a long outdoor ride of 35 miles in 2:09.  Quality here, but not quantity.
• 3 runs: 5 miles and 7 miles easy (planned for 8, but I stepped off a curb funny and went home to nurse my foot, which feels fine now – better safe than sorry), 2 mile race pace brick.
• 2 dozen (not 24 :D) strength sets and 1.5 stretch sessions

Total time: 7.5 hours.

This week I’m hoping to hit 10 hours divided up into 20 miles of running, 100 miles of biking, 3000m swimming, and 2 strength and stretch sets.  Cross your fingers for me!

Life – Literally Waking Up Early

The reason it’s been hard to get in the hours is that we have family in town and we’re trying to see them as much as we can.  I thought I had it all sorted when I decided we were going to become morning people and wake up really early to train.

Some problems with that:

1. It’s not in my nature.  I would MUCH rather train other times besides dawn.  It takes some adjustment, and I’m still adjusting.  I’ve been doing BETTER at not throwing the alarm clock across the room and saying fuck it, but really, it just comes from the motivation that I *can’t* reschedule this training and have to salvage something or I’m failing for the day.  Once I have a little more schedule flexibility, I’m sure I’ll be back to my norm of only up super early if I absolutely have to.

2. That time has to come from somewhere.  Waking up early to train is great and all, but then we go to work a full day (and sometimes have another session at lunch), and then by the time we’re home it’s really time for dinner then bed.  It’s hard to communicate the “ok, it’s 8-9pm, I know we’ve only seen you for an hour or two, but we have to kick you out because we need to sleeeeep” message without sounding like we’re rude and full of shit because normal humans don’t go to sleep that early.

3. I was so exhauuuuusted from the week of early alarms I slept in yesterday until 9, and then took a 3 hour nap after lunch.  And still went to bed early enough to get up and run in the morning (but not early enough to get my WHOLE session).  That’s all well and nice that my body got rest, but it really fucked up my plans for the day and made me miss a training session!

However… as frustrating as it is, it’s reality this month.  So I better just get with the program.

Food: Waking up the Appetite

Noodles are cool again!

Last week was my first attempt at fueling like a real, bonafide endurance athlete.  I kind of failed horribly.

The first half of the week, I couldn’t stuff enough calories in my mouth.  I have never walked around so constantly full in my life, and I wasn’t even close to the top range of what I was supposed to be eating.  By the end of the week, I was doing better calorie-wise, but my macros were all off because I didn’t have the right types of foods around.

Here’s my problem: I’ve gotten used to eating very nutritionally dense meals.  My goal right now to hit 100g protein, 25g fiber, 40-60g fat… I’m hitting these in ~1400 calories.  When I try to increase my calories, I’m SIGNIFICANTLY overdoing the fat because I’ve gotten used to jacking up my calories with fat when I need stuff in the tank.

So, basically – if I don’t want to change the way I eat meals, I need to be pushing a TON of snackage that is:

• High calorie
• High carb
• Low fiber
• Low protein

So, yesterday, I did some research, and basically went to all the “lose weight now” sites and made notes of what they said to NOT eat and added about half of them to my grocery list.  Basically instead of carrots and hummus and apples and jerky and cheese which I used to snack on, I’ve got pretzels and cereal and low-fiber fruit this week.

It’s just weird to have to eat LESS (of what society has deemed in 2015 to be) healthy to meet my nutritional needs.  But I always gotta be a special snowflake…

It’s really still too early to tell, but I am feeling ready for all my training sessions, and like I have plenty enough in the tank.  We’ll see how I feel this week when I actually hit normal volume.  It is REALLY novel not to ever feel hungry when I’ve spent the majority of the last… seven? years being hungry.  A lot.

I am ignoring the scale until further notice.  I feel a little bloaty (which my nutritionist said would be normal) but my clothes still fit so that’s that.

Question: what is your favorite snack?