Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Stitching it all together

Three day weekends are kind of the best.  We didn’t do anything crazy special, but since this one happened to fall over rest week, we got to do a few things above and beyond normal.

And one of these things was cheering like ridiculous people for the marathoners!!!

Saturday is normally for a long ride/run and then dying on the couch.  Instead, this week, we slept in, ran for about 45 minutes to warm up and then do our zones test.  After all this long and slow stuff… running 30 minutes at lactate threshold is ROUGH but I managed about 9:20 pace with my heart rate about 171.  That’s a little lower than expected but good enough for now.  Then, we logged a longer-than-race-distance swim.  Zliten hates the pool with the passion that I hate the treadmill for long efforts, so he went to the lake. 62 degrees is a little too chilly for my blood so I watched the black line for about 90 minutes and was just fine with 172 lengths of the pool.

Sunday, the only activity we did was 2 miles of bike riding down to the Austin Marathon course to play cheerleader.  It was super fun, and somehow I got a TON of steps just walking back and forth in that little area, but the rest of the day was split between batch cooking for the week and flopping on the couch.  It was glorious to have a rest day.

Monday was MY DAY.  I had been waiting for a nice, cool, overcast morning to rock a long run and this was it.  Zliten wasn’t feeling great, so I went out solo and had one of the best runs I’ve had since… maybe October 2015?  The first 15 miles were just me lost in my thoughts.  Around 16 my legs started to tighten up and the last few miles were a little painful, but the weather was amazing and I clocked 19 miles in 3:38.  Nothing amazing pace-wise, but it’s the first run in a LONG while where my mood hasn’t been in the toilet at some point.  I really needed that.

#mfw I finally crush a long run instead of mentally limp through it.  Hopefully next week will go just as well!

Let’s break it down.  Rest week:

  • Swimming: 1500m, 4300m (skipped one due to… rest week.)
  • Cycling: 16 miles commute/social ride, 11.5 miles commuting
  • Running: 12.5 miles (3.2 fast, the rest warmup/commuting)
  • Weights: 1 conference room weights set (skipped one due to scheduling)
  • Random: 10 mins paddleboarding
  • Stretch and roll ALMOST every day (I missed Saturday)

This doesn’t look like much, but it adds up to 7.5 hours.  And it was exactly the break I needed to get back to it this week.  And this week’s plans are:

  • 19 mile run (done)
  • 1500m swim
  • 1 hard ~90 min cycle, 1 commute/hour easy
  • 2 weights sessions
  • long day: 1 hour swim, 5 hour bike, 2 hour run (90 mins rest in between)

This long day is the first of two Ironman test runs.  I’m going to be getting up super early, eating what I plan to eat race morning, swimming at race start, practicing my race nutrition, and all in all, spending the whole day doing triathlon.  It’s a little daunting, but I’m excited.  I feel like I’m ready right now to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112, and run a marathon… separately.  Now it’s time to start stitching them together over the next two months.  Maaaaaybe it would be better to start with a shorter run, but my plan with this one is to run/walk as much as needed.  Time on feet is much more important than pace here.

Life Stuff:

#mfw it’s been super warm all week and the day we plan to ride bikes, it’s freezing and windy all day.  But at least… pizza!

Rest week also allowed some social-ness, which was a refreshing break from ironman work eat sleep.  On Tuesday, we went on a Valentine’s Day ride with our team, Bicycle Sport Shop.  It was actually SUPER cold and windy so we bailed when we got close to our house instead of going back north with everyone, but it was nice to roll with the group again.  Can’t wait for the time change to do more of these!

We also were able to catch up with friends and have a very decadent steak dinner at Austin Land and Cattle on Saturday night.  It was super nice to eat good food, drink French wine, and chat about life.  We were supposed to head to a party after, but we were WAYYYY too food coma’d and enjoyed playing video games on the couch instead.

Last week, I started Chapter 16 – and it was super long and confusing.  I’ve studied up on the triathlon stuff for years, so that was all almost review.  This is 51 pages of business stuff, things I DO NOT know well.  It also seems like it’s organized poorly – good information, but like someone just crammed a bunch of blog posts together and called it a chapter.  Long story short – I’m going to need at LEAST this week to sort through it.

Lots of veggies this week.  That’s a win!

I tracked my calories for 2054 average each day with – 761 deficit.  My ratios were 99g protein, 63g fat, 18g fiber, and 204g carbs per day.  Definitely more of a rest week, with the carbs lower (I didn’t have any really long workouts, so this was totally sufficient).  My appetite was definitely LOWER but not quite matching my training.  As per usual, the weekend really tanked my fiber and raised my fat.  Someday I’ll learn how to eat like a human being 7 days a week but apparently not yet.

My average weight was 187.2, which is 1.1 down from last week.  I didn’t weigh regularly, this was only 3 days average, but it’s still encouraging that it’s going downward.  I had a big swing up today, but that’s to be expected with long run inflammation/rehydration/refueling.  7 lbs to go to 70.3 weight!

Last week I had 19 drinks over 4 days.  I’ll excuse some of this with the fact that it was a rest week and part of that is MENTAL recovery and letting loose a little, but even with that caveat this was a little much.  This week should be MUCH better.

The good news is that hasn’t messed with my rest.  I’m sleeping 9:15 average per night and averaging over 4 hours of deep sleep.  I feel like this is the ONLY way I’m making it through this training, so it’s a good thing!

Last week I did 2 out of 3 things (wouldn’t you know, I didn’t clean out the cars – shocker).  However, Zliten was awesome and made some progress on the workout room while I was out on my long run – we have a computer and monitor hooked up right at treadmill height.  Also, we made it to Costco, and found some of the most WONDERFUL instant pho bowls, which make a perfect snack.

This is a short week, and I expect to have my weekend 100% sucked up by our long day (doing, and then recovering), so I’m taking this week off other goals besides the normal laundry and cooking chores.

…and now, off to conquer the short week.  I’ve got a good head start with all sorts of healthy meals and snacks at the ready, and all my run miles until Saturday done.  Let’s hope I can keep up!

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2 Comments

  1. amazing rest week! still sounds insane but I understand that it’s way less insane than normal. and really glad you had some good feeling moments – a good long run, a good night out with friends and ok, 19 drinks is a wee bit much but REST WEEK 😉
    Renee @pinkypie recently posted…Friday Five + RunfessionsMy Profile

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