Week 23+24: T-minus 7 days…

Apologies for the combining of weeks here, but it’s been incredibly busy and I did a long race report, so there.

It’s really sinking in that a less week from now, I’ll be in Lubbock.  I’ve gotten less TERRIFIED of it.  The hay is absolutely now all in the barn.  I had hoped to squeeze in a little more early last week, but my body and the weather both said NOPE, so that was my sign from the universe that it’s all good.  Shut down those compulsive urges to get JUST ONE MORE double digit run/brick and work on sleep, recovery, and maintaining.  I have not trained as much as I wanted, but I think I’ve trained as much as I NEED to get through this race.

A metaphor that popped into my head this week (maybe I read it somewhere?) is triathlon is a long conversation with yourself.  I expect BSLT will be a REALLY long conversation with myself, and I hope I am kind enough to be a good companion.  To that end, for the first time in a race, I have zero time goals beyond finishing before the cut off.  I may make some on the course, but as long as they give me a finisher medal and I come through the arch in one piece, it’s all good.  And I mean really, for real.  No time goals.  Would it be nice to beat my Kerrville time on a stupid hard course?  Totally.  But I don’t expect it and it would be the cherry on top of my already super yummy and totally complete hot fudge sundae.

My goals are:

Swim strong.  Don’t hold back too much, but certainly don’t redline.  Enjoy this part of your day without too much thought about the rest of it.

Bike CONSERVATIVELY.  Anytime I think I feel awesome on the bike, eat more.  Bike strong on the flats, ride the uphills like a granny, try not to get too terrified on the downhills, and anytime you feel fatigued SLOW THE FUCK DOWN and recover a bit.

Run smart.  Take some time to get going and settle into a comfortable pace.  Walk the big hill at mile 3.  Remember you’ll be happier with a nice, slow 12 min/mile jog the whole way than a 10 min/mile the first 6 miles and then blowing up.  Eat.  Chompy blocks are your friends.  Powerade is also your friend if chompy blocks don’t set well.  If you feel awesome, pick it up at the ~mile 10 downhill.  Do something awesome at the finish for a picture!

Also, feel good enough after the race to enjoy some champagne and not feel sick for 2 days.

After this race, I’m taking a full week off training (either completely or certainly MOSTLY), and resting up for the second half of the season.

Training:

Again, been a challenge to balance what I know I *should* be doing with what I can do.  My body just needs so much more recovery time right now than it did pre-injury.  I know I should just be happy that it’s allowing me to swim/bike/run, but I’ve only been doing 4 days of training per week when I know I should be doing AT LEAST 5.   The long sessions are taking a lot out of me, but I think I would be even more ill prepared if I wasn’t riding my bike 30, 40, 50 miles or running 7,8,10 instead of splitting up the hours more days per week.

I’m definitely ready for that week of recovery since I haven’t been following the 3 weeks on, 1 week recovery plan since the injury, and then to get back to normal training hours/sessions/life after that.

Week 23:

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode III 10.75 mi 00:30 Run: 10 Mile Brick Run 10 mi 02:01
Wednesday: Swim: Lake Pflugerville Test 70.3 Swim 2000 m 00:44
Thursday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode III 18.13 mi 01:00 Swim: Lake Pf Wave Pool! 1600 m 00:40 Bike: Since I had to… 6.25 mi 00:20
Friday: off
Saturday: off
Sunday: Swim: Lake Pf Tri Swim 500 m 00:11:45 Bike: Lake Pf Tri Bike 14 mi 00:46 Run: Lake Pf Tri Run 3 mi 00:30

About 7 hours  total time.

Week 24:

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode IV 27 mi 01:30
Wednesday: Swim: Pool 900 m 00:19
Thursday: Run: 2 Neighborhood Loops 6.7 mi 01:20
Friday: off
Saturday: Veloway 10 Loops 30.5 mi 01:51
Sunday: off

About 5.5 hours total time.

Food/Scale:

Progress again!  Not as much as I was hoping, but forward momentum is good.  This week saw a few days in the 176s, and even a 174.8 on Saturday!  New low weight by 1 lb.  I’m back to last year’s ‘race weight” (which I attained for approximately 1 week before going on vacation and fucking it all up) and I have a whole half the season to go.  Patience, diligence, and careful attention is working, albiet sloooooowly.  I’ll take it over the alternative.

I don’t have all that much to say about these weeks.  It’s the proverbial 90% good, 10% whatever (refined grains, fried food, sweets, booze, etc).  Solid, steady nutrition work.

Week 23:

Monday: 29 DQ, 1586 calories
Tuesday: 30 DQ, 1893 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1494 calories
Thursday: 31 DQ, 1835 calories
Friday: 24 DQ, 1480 calories
Saturday: 18 DQ, 1682 calories
Sunday: 0 DQ, 2595 calories

Avg calories per day: 1795

Avg DQ per day: 22.7

Weight range: low – 178.0, high 180.8

Week 24:

Monday: 23 DQ, 1512 calories
Tuesday: 29 DQ, 1538 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1607 calories
Thursday: 25 DQ, 1879 calories
Friday: 19 DQ, 1674 calories
Saturday: DQ 3, 2154 calories
Sunday: 21 DQ, 1593 calories

Avg calories per day: 1708

Avg DQ per day: 21

Weight range: low – 174.8, high 179.2

Life:

I’m having thoughts about life feeling stagnant.  Not boring (actually the opposite), it’s not that I’m not enjoying what I do and my life, it’s just… feeling like something’s missing, some new challenge is out there.  Totally abstract and probably just mid-season psychopathy as normal, and most likely either completely caused by or at least incredibly amplified by hormones, but I did have a bit of a meltdown on Friday.  Work stress at 11 this week + BSLT nerves + more = Quix shrieking repeatedly at the top of my lungs on the way home from work to release stress (I’m not a crier).  Sorry Austin.  After work I spent about two hours playing Rockband facemeltingly loud and felt much, much better.  I guess I just wanted to yell at somebody and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault.

I’ve had a nice relaxing weekend and think I may be able to get through this week without killing anyone but my associate is out so anything’s possible.  The good news is my resting heart rate was doing ok Saturday morning, I figured it would be flipping out, but it was solid at around 52 while in the car, which explains the ~5 bpm higher than complete relaxation.  This is probably one of the reasons I haven’t been piling on the training – quite a bit of the stress on my body right now is not coming from swim/bike/run.  It’s a huge scary risk to be resting so much to me but I think it’s the right option right now.  Ask me again in a week.

Fun stuff – We got to start our Savage Worlds campaign (nerdy, tabletop role playing game stuff).  I joined the most interesting man in the world, a Russian scientist, and a extreme survivalist as a sexy, loudmouth, greedy thief in a strange tropical world where we saved a village and stopped at the point where we boarded boats to try to steal a big ship for transport.

I made some killer lasagna – a mix between the traditional beef/italian sausage and veggie, and I went with whole wheat noodles and about half of what I was supposed to use, if not less.  I don’t really miss them.  Also, I have some pretty yummy beef and barley soup in the crockpot I’m looking forward to putting in my face.

And, that’s about all I have.  Watching John Dies at the End, soaking up some couch time, trying to get as much recharge in my bones as possible before tackling this week, and then the trip to Lubbock, and the race itself.  I’ll see y’all on the other side.  Wish me luck!