Somewhere Over(training) the Rainbow

Short and sweet Long and explanatory…bloggy friends… this has been my week

120 miles on the bike trainer this week/152 miles total from 7/30-8/5 (176 from 7/28-8/3)

5 stressful days at work

2 nights of piss poor sleep and elevated resting heart rate

1 smart but mediocre race

=

impromptu recovery week next week

The math is simple friends.  I have often experienced the mental edge of overtraining and pushing my boundaries with ennui about getting out for my training (I don’t WANNA), and have had stressful weeks at work and some temporary degradation in my workout output because of it.   But I always sleep like a champ, and my resting HR is soundly in the athlete-approved 40-50 bpm.

Not this week.  I took my resting hr last night and it was about 120.  Thumpity thump thump.  Friday night I had the same thing but I thought it was just stress.  Last night though, I had taken care of all that and my mind was clear.  All the signs pointed to overtraining.  And since it was my highest mileage week ever, there was no question in the diagnosis.

Don’t get me wrong.   I’m proud as hell of what I accomplished between 7-30 and 8-3.  HUGE HUGE miles.  It really proved to me that I have it in my capability to do this 70.3.  That I’m not a wuss on the bike.  That I can run off  it for 13.1 miles on tired legs.  This week had a PURPOSE with a capital P.  I have no sads that I did it.

However, it did not bode well going into a race.  I was not excited at all, as you can clearly see from my pre-race pic.  I was falling asleep on the way there.  I was making a lot of deals with myself about how hard I would go and how long I would take off after.  My final plan by the time I was in the water was to do what I could.  No pressure.  Race what I could, maintain when I could do nothing else.  3, 2, 1 go.

The water was icky.  Tasted funny.  I normally swim with my mouth open (yummy yummy lake water) and tried to not, but I decided I’d rather breath normally so whatever. I started in the back, and couldn’t find any feet to stay on so I just passed people.  I did have a few incidents with people trying to cuddle (I swam BIGGER) and one lady who apparently thought I was in heat and kept trying to mount me from behind (she got a few nudges from the tootsies), but I swam consistently with brass balls and didn’t let anyone fuck with me.  The only error I made was that I stopped too quick and tried to walk up chest deep which cost me about 30 seconds.  I got out and huffed my way (hello elevated heart rate) to transition.

Swim time: 12:12

T1 was uneventful.  I recovered my sandals from the fence edge and ran up the concrete into the maze of bikes.  I fucked around about 30 seconds longer than normal and wasn’t anywhere near bike out due to assigned racking (lame) so I finished up and clompity clomp clomped my way to mount line and got on with it.

T1 time: 2:56.

On the bike, we got wind that the first hill was the worst.  So, I attacked it because I wanted to get that shit over with.  AVG speed after hill: 15mph.  Awesome.  The first half of the course was uneventful and I built from 15 to 15 to 17 to 17.5.  The last half of the course was supposed to be the easiest they said.  The hills on the front half were the hard part they said.  I was feeling pretty badass at my 17.5 avg even though I had nothing in me to power up the hills like normal.  Then, the rollers came.  I sucked wind and didn’t recover like normal.  I went down back through the 17s and 16s and hit 15.8.  Then, thankfully, the nice downhill mile to transition happened and I coasted back to 16.2 (official results said 15.97 but whatevs).  A different day, I could KILL that bike course.  The only complaint was the first hill and the ~5 miles of really uneven cobblestone-like road.  I think I could have pushed harder on that but it was making my hands numb.

Bike: 51:50 (15.97 MPH)

T2 was also a bit of non-normal futzing around, but only marginally.  I was not really ready to run but all I had was a 5k to freedom, so off I went.

T2: 1:37

The run really showed my true colors of exhaustion and overtraining.  I was able to knock out a decent swim and bike without really trying, but there was no hiding on the run.  I got out of transition, hit 10 and tried to make my way down to the 9s and…um… NOPE.  It wasn’t a dastardly hilly course but there were rollers, and it was road with no shade, and I just settled into doing what I could.  Sometimes it was 9s, sometimes it was more, and sadly I didn’t have anyone like the last few races to latch onto and draft off of – either people were passing me going FAR beyond what I could do, or I was passing them.  So it was just me, myself, and my broken will and brain to try and knock out a decent pace.

I saw Zliten just before the 1 mile mark coming back, so he was about 2.25 miles in.  We were right about even splits at that point.  I picked up the pace a wee bit trying to not get my ass beat.  I then saw our friend Brian and said hi.

*interrupt my tri experience for Zlitens – Brian caught up with him, told him to run faster, and he booked the last half mile stupid fast and almost PR’d his 5k.  He also said he went out of transition keeping up and chatting with someone for about half a mile and noticed he was running 8:30s.  He’s a little wonder sometimes…*

It was getting hot and I was BEAT AS FUCK.  I kept thinking “I have nothing left, I have nothing left” and wanted to walk and say screw it, but somehow I convinced myself to say instead “I have more than nothing left, I have more than nothing left” (I know, a FOUNTAIN of positiveness, but that’s what I had in me right then) and decided I could be unhappy with my time, but I would be jazzed as fuck with not giving up on the run.  I did what I could on the road.  Sometimes it was 12s, sometimes it was 9s, I passed everyone I could, I got passed a few times and fought when I had it in me, and then I finally hit the run around the lake.

I didn’t look at my garmin.  I could have been running 13s, I could have been running 8s, but I let the crowd give my utterly spent self one last little wind and sprinted into the finish.  I almost fell over when they took of my chip, and the first thing I did was collapse under a tree, trying not to puke or pass out (feels like temps around then were about ~93).

Run: 32:28 (I know.  Any other day I’d be PISSED but it’s really all I had today)

I was all incoherent babble.  First, it was about watermelon.  Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon.  I had seen someone with it and I NEEDED.  Then, I found an unused patch of grass and sat.  Because I had to.  Then,  we met up with Brian and they were all making proper sentences and I decided I needed back in the water and then that was nice and I felt good.  We got out and again I felt bad.  I shuffled to transition, put my stuff together, then sat on the ground until Zliten got me and I could not manage all my bags so he took one.  Got to the car and BLASTED the AC and ate cheese from the cooler and soon I felt like a person.  Who could say more than one word. Magic!

He wanted to check results so I sat and he took pics.  I was 1:41:05 and he was 1:38:15.  He smoked my ass by almost 3 minutes.  It was all the run + a bit of my dabbling around on transitions.  He won legit.  I give him props.  It’s the end of an era (but I will get him next time).  He had it in him and I just didn’t.

So why was I Deady McDeaderson?  Besides the two nights of bad sleep due to heart rate issues and crazy stress at work:

MONDAY: 30 mi trainer
TUESDAY: 7 mi run + 30 mi trainer
WEDNESDAY: 1050m swim + weights
THURSDAY: 7 mi run + 27 mi trainer
XFRIDAY: 33 mi traner
XSATURDAY: off (and by off I mean 4000000 hours of errands and getting tri stuff together)
SUNDAY: 500m swim, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run

It was a 12 hour training week (and last week was 11.5, week before than was 9, week before was 7.5 – taper for race week, week before was 12.5, week before was 9, so it’s not a fluke), and while I intended all the trainer rides to be stupid easy activity while watching olympics, that didn’t happen.  Also, last Saturday was our 6 hour, 56 mile trainer + 13 mile run so by Friday our 7 day mileage count was 176.  I KNOW.  Crazy.  I was hoping Saturday completely off would fix me but  Friday’s nights crappy sleep + 5 hours of errands + Saturday night’s 4 hours of sleep didn’t do the trick.  I felt icky on Saturday night like I was getting sick and remarkably today I pulled it together, but I’m not chancing it.  Next week is a major stepback week, coach Quix’s orders.

Original stupid plan was:

MONDAY: 2000yd swim + weights
TUESDAY: 50 mile trainer
WEDNESDAY: double bricks (15 mile bike + 2 mile run) + weights
THURSDAY: 14 mile run
FRIDAY: weights
SATURDAY: 2000yd swim + 25 mile bike + 9 mile run
SUNDAY: off

New sane, recovery plan:

MONDAY: off
TUESDAY: 30 min swim, 30 min weights PM
WEDNESDAY: long trainer TBD + weights
THURSDAY: long run TBD
FRIDAY: weights
SATURDAY: 2000yd swim + 40-50 mi bike + 3 mile optional run at Lake Pf
SUNDAY: off

In which long trainer is anything beyond 10 miles and long run is anything beyond 5 miles.  Or not.  I’m accepting that it could be a full week of just swims.  Or sitting on my ass.  Sometimes guinea piggin’ means you have to change plans.  I’m accepting that I’m broken, and going to take this week to fix myself in any way necessary.  I value my sleep and my resting HR too much to keep on keepin on.

So, completely unrelated, I’ve been having major issues trying to find dresses for this wedding in Sept, and I, against my better judgement, ordered something online.  Badbadbad.  I should know better.  At least I was only out 10$ shipping, and returned it at Macy’s, and the clerk let me know a bunch of dresses were on major sale.  I spent 30 minutes and fell in love with 3.  The patterned one is not in contention for bridesmaiding, but I loved it too much to let it go.  They cost me about 140$ for the 3 ( I KNOW – love dress sales) and I’m now needing to stop training so much so I have excuses to wear them all out.  Excuse the horrible mirror shots of them all, but please to consider this my peace offering for no pics of the red one last week (Miz :D) – it’s very similar to the purple one.  Yes, I shop for one and come away with 4.  I am a dress whore.

Green bridesmaids (most likely)

Purple backup bridesmaid dress (also, I’ve always wanted a purple dress)

…and this is not in contention because it’s patterned but OMG LOVE

Also please to excuse the bit of belly, it’s actually MUCH better than it was (thank you, maintaining at ~178 and getting strong as fuck instead of losing weight), but nothing that a control top panty hose or a bit o the spanx can’t take care of, so yay!

Questions of the week: which of the dresses is your fave?  Have you ever had over-training issues?  What did you do about it?