{"id":3831,"date":"2013-09-12T17:29:48","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T17:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/?p=3831"},"modified":"2013-09-12T17:29:48","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T17:29:48","slug":"week-34-and-35-recap-little-debbie-downer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/12\/week-34-and-35-recap-little-debbie-downer\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 34 and 35 Recap: Little Debbie (Downer)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The two weeks I’m recapping here have had highs and lows, but actually, a lot more lows.\u00a0 I was kind of in a little hole mood-wise, physiologically, and mentally.\u00a0 Spoiler, things have turned around in a major way for me this week (end of the tunnel, light, and all that), but expect that a lot of this post could be written by Debbie.\u00a0 Debbie downer.\u00a0\u00a0 However, in my attempt to chronicle life as I know it, sometimes you have to wade through the sucky to get to the awesome.<\/p>\n

Week 34: Rebel Tummy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s a recap of how my week went…<\/p>\n

Monday – Wednesday: still incredibly sick.\u00a0 Well enough to get through work, since I have a bathroom nearby, but I was definitely not feeling like myself.\u00a0 Monday, I did get my appetite back halfway through the day, and tried eating a real meal (chicken noodle soup, tiny caesar salad, and a dinner roll – nothing was whole wheat), and woke up in the middle of the night feeling awful and felt terrible the next day.\u00a0 I then realized my tummy just needed some time off, and went on the juice, crackers, and chicken broth diet for 2 days.\u00a0 I finally turned a corner Wednesday and was able to get on the trainer for 30 mins and log 10.25 miles (I skipped both Monday’s swim and Tuesday’s brick day).\u00a0 I made sure, even through the worst of it, to get down at least 1200 calories.\u00a0 Gatorade and ritz crackers are my saviors!<\/p>\n

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Thursday – Friday: feeling a little better, so introduced cheese and some veggies back into my diet, with a little bit of chicken each day.\u00a0 I still didn’t feel completely myself, but I wasn’t doubled over feeling awful, so there was that.\u00a0 I logged 25 miles on the trainer on Thursday and took Friday off as planned.\u00a0 I made sure to eat ~1400-1500 calories to support the fact that I was (lightly) training again.<\/p>\n

Saturday: feeling somewhat like myself, so we paddled around in Lake Pf a bit (1200m) and did an hour bike ride outside (16.6 miles).\u00a0 I ate a whole hamburger and some snacks and salad later, and enjoyed splashing around in a pool for a while – I would say this day I felt about 90% if not a little better and felt confident I could start the race and maybe even finish it decently.<\/p>\n

Sunday: felt better, and I didn’t want my last run before this race to be that disaster 10 miler from last Saturday, so I ran a nice 2.15 miles at around 10:30s.\u00a0 Felt great, if a little hot, but walked half a mile to cool down and made sure to stretch.\u00a0 Then we did packet pickup, and we did it after noon.\u00a0 It was a hike from parking to the hotel, then back to parking, assemble the bikes, walk them to transition, rack, walk down to the swim start, then go back to the car.<\/p>\n

By that point, it was mid-90s, feels like death, and I was feeling a little woozy.\u00a0 We ate lunch, did some errands, and by the time we got home it took me some time to actually get my tri stuff packed because I was pooped and feeling gross and I kept having to rest between the stages of just packing my shit.\u00a0 Not exactly how you want to feel the day before a race.\u00a0 By bedtime I was exhausted and had a terrific headache, so I took some painkillers and hoped for the best.<\/p>\n

We all know how Monday’s race went<\/a>.\u00a0 In retrospect, I am pretty happy with my swim (everyone’s times sucked because of the lake conditions, so a 2 minute PR is actually awesome and probably equal to much more than that), thrilled with my bike and transitions, and the run… oh the run.\u00a0 It’s exhausting to be tough all the time.\u00a0 I was just tired.\u00a0 I had fought through a lot of long, hot, miserable runs over the last few months, I fought through a lot of physical sickness (and let me tell you, it is not mentally relaxing to be sick and hungry but you can’t eat and have no energy) and I just ran out of give a shit and mental toughness halfway through the run.\u00a0 It happens.\u00a0 No need to beat myself up about it.<\/p>\n

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It’s one thing to go into a race healthy and blow up, but significantly PRing every other leg after not even being sure I was going to start 12 hours before and bonking on the run – probably expected when you’ve been on the gatorade and crackers diet most of the week.\u00a0 Should I have gone more conservatively? I’m not sure that would have mattered.\u00a0 Sure, doing the doggie paddle and coasting along at 12 miles and hour MIGHT have set me up for being less fatigued on the run, but I think it was the heat more than anything that did me in, and the temps climbed about 5 degrees in that last 30 mins and just kept getting HOTTER.<\/p>\n

So the TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) for Week 34:<\/em><\/p>\n