Week 29: Good Bad Ugly Week

No race for a few weekends means I can actually do a weekly post.  Woohoo!  It was the week of good, bad, and ugly.  Let’s start on the positives and work our way down from there.

The Good – Training

I really nailed this week.  My body took everything I threw at it last week, with my highest volume week yet this year, and was ready for more.  I was really happy with that after dragging it kicking and screaming through the minimal amount of training that seemed halfway reasonable to prepare for BSLT, I’m ready to handle things much better this time.  Instead of the mental fuck which is putting out a training plan, knowing that it is both too little to prepare you for your race and too much for your body to handle, and just trying to hit as much as you can, it’s nice to turn all the boxes green, not have to put in caveats, and say, yep, went as planned.

I had a few days last week where I either mixed up which knee was hurt or realized it was the end of the day and I hadn’t thought about my knee at all.  It’s not 100% twinge free all the time, but this is probably the next step in healing, where it’s just not a factor.  I’m continuing the icing and stretching and all that, but it’s now just as preventative medicine.  I’m really glad about that.

Swim:

While I don’t expect to see much more in the way of gains in the pool this year, I’m really enjoying that I’m cruising in at about 30-33 mins, depending on the day, for 1500m.  In January, it was taking me 30 mins to swim less than 1100.  I’m definitely considering doing a couple weeks of swim focus in the early season next year, because it just seems like when I put myself in the water more and start getting towards that 6-7km per week, my times just drop.

Bike:

Epic biking week over here.  First of all, I did the same volume of training I did last year this week (~135 miles) and instead of crashing and burning, I came out feeling awesome.  I did two long rides – one 50 miler on the trainer, and a 64 miler outside.  The trainer one was just fine, but the outdoor one was GLORIOUS.  I felt amazing through the whole thing, I kept increasing speed (from 15 mph at the beginning to over 16.5 mph at the end), I never got down or felt bad or got too delirious, and for the first time ever, I could fathom going 100 miles.  Piling on the bike miles this month seems to be a good decision.  Also, I’m definitely enjoying doing double bricks and pushing myself fast on the trainer as well.

Run:

Running MILES are taking a backseat this month, but I’m working on intensity.  Another great double brick, where both miles were sub-9s (8:55 and 8:36).  Nice, easy 9 miler, where my HR is finally cooperating.  Not that 11:30s are anything to throw a party over, but the effort in which those 9 miles were done is (decent HR, felt like I could go on forever, even on tired legs).  The mile off the bike on Saturday was great too – 10:30s felt like conversational pace (spent the time yacking with our friend B) and I could have easily run more but B had to go, and then by the time we could have got going again, I was cooled down and we figured we should call it.

Weights:

Back to them.  I’m about at my maintenance weights for the program, not counting the last, heavier set I should be doing.  I’ll probably just stay here for a while – my knee feels stronger because of the lifting, but I don’t want to push it.

By the days…

Monday: Weights: Getting Better + Stretch 01:00, Swim: 50 Laps 1500 m 00:33
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Ep. VI an… 50 mi 02:16 – 22.1mph pace
Wednesday: Bike: Double Brick: Trainer + Music… 20 mi 00:42 – 28.3mph pace, Run: Double Brick: 1 Mile Loop 2 mi 00:18 08:45 pace, Weights: Samesies 01:00, Swim: Little Sprints 1500 m 00:30
Thursday: Run: Normal Loops + 2222 and Back 9.12 mi 01:45 11:30 pace
Friday: off
Saturday: Bike: Magical Unicorn Ride at the V… 63.77 mi 03:51 16.6mph pace, Run: Little brick 1.02 mi 00:10:42 10:29 pace
Sunday: off

12 hours total.  3000m swim, 134 miles bike, 12 miles run, 2 weights sessions.

This week is taper + Jack’s Generic Olympic, so it will be nice to get some rest and recovery, with only 5 hours of training planned (plus the race).  My goals for this race are:

Swim + transition in under 30.  I hope I will WELL surpass that but the beach run in between the loops is definitely making me nervous (long, rocky, ouchie beach).

Bike – beat 18 mph.  I did 18.1 here for the sprint on a hillier course, I just did 16.6 mph on a much. much longer ride, the course is pretty pancake flat minus about ~5 short hills, so I feel like 18 is in my grasp.  I want to really push this and test my bike legs.  18mph is 1:26 for this 25.8 mile course, so I’d like to beat that.

Run – they advertise 6 miles, but I know the course is a few tenths of a mile short.  I want to do this in under an hour.  I want to just make sure to stay with it and try to push as hard as I can off the bike.  However, this race, since I’m definitely more bike focused this month, I think I would rather burn a little more on the bike this race and if it costs me a few seconds on the run, so be it.  I know I can slog around this perfectly flat trail pretty well even on tired legs.

Folks, that makes about 3 hours allowing for a few mins at T2, so I’m gunning to be at the finish no later than 11:08am.  Also, I start 6 mins after Zliten, so it’s a toss up whether I’ll catch him in the water depending on the day I have, so I may be the rabbit or I may be the chaser on this one.

The bad – Food/Scale

Going from 9 to 12 hours of training on the same amount of food probably wasn’t realistic, but it was worth a try.  I’m ok with being a little hungry (ok, I’m not, but I can at least pretend), but forces within me actually dragged my butt to the kitchen at time to binge on things that could have been better.  Huge, huge hunger crashes.  Next peak week, I just need to prepare for that and plan lots of better good-for-me food (2000 calories is probably the lowest I should go on training days where I do 2+ hours).

I am making zero progress.  The scale is stuck at 177-179.  I’ve not been diligent about food tracking during peak training, like, ever, so I’m not sure whether it’s that I keep fucking up, or whether my body is just totally being resistant, or what, but it’s frustrating.  July had a lot of social stuff, and that always throws me for a loop nutrition-wise, but August so far just looks like a nice solid block of training and being hermit-like.  And I’m very ok with that.

Best (worst) thing I ate this week: a club sandwich on a fried donut, with homemade potato chips and fried brussel sprouts.

I’d say that could potentially be a reason I’m not making progress, but I feel like one meal like that on a week where I did over 12 hours of training is justified.  The rest of the week was my normal 90/10, but just more calories of it.  All I can do is keep plugging along.  This week’s goal is good food, back to normal levels since I’m training less, and no junk.

Monday: 1448 calories, 27 DQ
Tuesday: 1947 calories, 28 DQ
Wednesday: 2164 calories, 27 DQ
Thursday: 2732 calories, 23 DQ
Friday: 1679 calories, 22 DQ
Saturday: 2729 calories, -2 DQ
Sunday: 2163 calories, 5 DQ

Averages: 2123 calories, 18.5 DQ (wow, that’s really, really terrible for me)

Weight: Low – 176.0, High – 179.6

The quality of the weekend was bad, but if you keep in mind that on Tuesday, I rode 50 miles, Wednesday, I rode 20, ran 2, swam a mile, and did weights, Thursday I ran 9 miles, and Saturday, I rode my bike for 4 hours and then ran, these calorie counts are probably not the end of the world.  I just need to detox from eating 3 different fried foods yesterday, and hopefully I’ll make some progress this week.

The Ugly – EVERYTHING IS BREAKING

While my body is holding together, my things are falling apart.  Here are my tales of woe from the last few weeks:

• Someone backed into my car and left a number.  Too bad it was a fake number – so guess who’s left paying 600$ to fix my bumper.  Yep, it’s this gal.
• My laptop’s broken and we’re waiting on the part.  At least this one is covered by warranty.
• Zliten’s tablet randomly stopped working.  It just won’t charge.
• Zliten’s root canal also is costing about an arm and a leg because of insurance maximums being hit already this year.
• The tree in our neighbor’s yard got hit by lightning.  While this one could have been WAY WAY WAY worse, it knocked out power for 15 hours because it broke the converter (we had porcelain and tree refuse all over our front and back yard), and when the power came back on, we found that the TV in the bedroom was fried.  We just got a new one yesterday, and the 32 inchers looked so tiny, we got a 39 inch, and now it’s like our own movie theatre in the bedroom!
• I would insert bitching about the smartest mouse in the world living in our house that we just can’t catch, but we totally nabbed him at lunch yesterday.  Fucker.  Score one for team human!

I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting things, but it’s been a rough July.  Hopefully August will be better.  I have things I want to buy that are NOT replacing broken stuff and dental work, thank you very much.

The Else – Time to Go Into A Hole

I spent July being pretty social and doing stuff with lots of different people.  For example, last weekend, we hung out with 4 different sets of friends in 2 days.  We got to catch up with a few more the weekend before. It was great, but I’m exhauuuuusted.  Drinking that much beer and eating donut sandwiches is hard work!

I feel pretty fulfilled socially and frankly, I’m ready to go into a little training hole.  If y’all want to hang out, let’s do it on a run, bike, or swim, mmmkay?  Or food after, where I stuff my face with at least twice what’s appropriate in polite company and then go to sleep.  I need to just really focus on getting good rest and recovery because I’m going to be putting myself through a lot in August.  I’m sure in a few weeks, I’ll be wanting to see people again, but for now, I’m really cool with doing stuff around the house for a bit and keeping up with people’s lives through facebook and such.

August is going to be about training and sleeping a lot and eating all the good things.  So much of this.

Question of the week: what’s the best thing you ate last week (best is subjective)?