Adjusted Reality

This week, nothing went according to plan and honestly, it worked out really well for my sporty pursuits.

Proof of training, and taper crazies.

I’m somewhat flexible. I typically plan a *little* aggressively in terms of training, so I don’t freak if I miss one of my 10-12 sessions per week that’s just sort of volume filler.  Missing a 2 mile easy run is not going to make or break my race.  Occasionally, it will be something bigger, and if it’s for a good reason, I’ll get over it.  The gauge is typically if I’m willing to eat dinner and go to bed while it’s still light, the relaxation is more important than the training.

However, this week, everything just got kinda fubared with work and life and stuff.  I missed an open water race pace swim.  It was planned for Monday and I could not fit it in the rest of the week, not for lack of at least half-heartedly trying.  I missed said 2 mile run, a weights session, and cut a killer bike workout to a “slightly harder than easy” and shortened it… after already intentionally cutting a bike workout.  The original plan was 9 hours, modified plan 8 hours, and I got in… 6.25 hours.

I’ve been dealing with some major fatigue (see above said crawling into bed before the sun sets… this has happened a handful of times over the last two weeks).  Stress is stress is stress and things aren’t exactly calm around these parts.  I’m still at the point where I’m conquering workouts I can get to, but the amount of eating and sleeping I’m doing to just pretend like I can even right now is not normal.

On Thursday morning, I was able to execute an 8 mile half easy, half race pace run without an issue. When I went to bed Wednesday before sunset, I was not 100% sure if I was going to even start it.  On Saturday, I rode the same course as a month ago, and pulled down more power (10-15W+) and faster speeds (.5 mph+) with way less effort (HR 5-10 bpm lower).  It was about 10 degrees cooler, but still.  It was a pretty significant jump in 4 weeks.

I also had an “intensity TBD” 6 mile run on the plan after the bike. Considering my fatigue lately, I didn’t really want to dig too far down in the pain cave to get this done, but miles 1, 2, and 3 ticked off at 10:30, 10 flat, and 10:22 just concentrating on my cadence, so I stuck with it and finished with a nice 10:12/mile average.  It was warm (feels like almost 90), but not HOT, and I wasn’t completely cooked at the end.  With more fuel, liquid, and the promise of a week off after, I could have probably put another 7 like that together.  I was actually holding my legs back a lot of the time to keep this pace because they just wanted to go.  It felt FUCKING great after months and months of lacking run fitness to just nail this one to the wall.

I am definitely ready for the race that makes me feel like THIS after.  I’m due.  I’m doing everything I can to get myself there open for THIS experience.

While all the studies I’ve read say an exponential taper is not necessarily the best, that’s what happened this time and so far, it’s working out.  The cool thing is that I’m feeling my legs and brain come around a lot quicker, so my confidence is much higher than normal.  With two weeks to go, I’ve usually had at least one nervous breakdown and I’m thinking “how the eff am I going to do a 6 hour race when I feel like shit doing a 30 minute run”?  This time, I’m holding my legs back at race pace.  I’ll take it.

So, the key now, is volume down, and keep the intensity.  Here’s the plan for this week:

• Monday: race pace 2250m (3 quarry loop) swim.
• Tuesday: endurance cycle class
• Wednesday: ~1500m pool swim (with some fast segments) + BSS recovery ride
• Thursday: 5 miles w/3 below race pace
• Saturday: 1 hour cycle, 1 hour run, both easy with race effort segments

It’s not a whole lot (about 6.5 hours), so I’ll be pretty iffy about skipping anything here because there’s not much filler.  If I had to skip anything in terms of not adding much to the training, it’s the BSS recovery ride, but I miss my peeps.  But, it’s the first to go if the fit hits the shan.

Life outside of training might be summed up with “what doesn’t kill you makes you tired”.  I’m eating a lot – negative 1000 calories is the furthest thing from my mind right now.  If I’m hungry, I’m putting food in my face.  I’m doing my best to make it quality food, but let’s be honest, it’s not all veggies and brown rice.  Every 3-5 hour Saturday workout leaves me starving for about 2 days.  Yesterday’s eats were ridiculous.  I ate tons of fruits and veggies and good stuff, but I also ate a churro and two servings of ice cream.

Compromise.  Delicious, delicious compromise.  Normally the lack of veggies would be a point of contention, but I had already had strawberries, plums, corn, onions, green pepper, and carrots that day and met my fiber goals.

While I’m super not concentrating on losing weight or dieting right now, I am doing these things:

• Easy access to fruits and veggies means I eat more of them.  Literally having to cut up salad or peel a piece of fruit may mean I’ll go “nah” and eat something else sometimes.  The barrier to entry on this stuff needs to be NONE.  Buying bags of baby carrots and snow peas, cut up watermelon, or grab and nom fruit like apples is key.  This is not the time to work on habits.  It’s time to make doing the right thing as brainless as possible.
• Hydration.  I’m getting my daily intake of water and also trying to make sure I interject more electrolytes into the mix because I seem to be running low lately (running and biking in the “feels like 100000” definitely causes this).  When I’m drooling over coconut water or would crime for some watermelon or can actually tolerate nuun in my water bottle at work or start adding salt to pre-packaged foods, I know I need to be doing that stuff until things are too salty and watermelon is just another fruit and not my secret lover.
• Trying the healthy things before the craving.  I was craving pizza so I made pizza bread at home w/turkey pepperoni and lowfat cheese, and the craving was satiated.  I was craving sweets more than normal last week, so first thing I’d try was fruit, or a quest bar, or a protein shake.  Sometimes that would do me.  Sometimes, I still wanted the sweets and I’d indulge.

The plan up until the race is simple and one I’ve been using for a while.  Eat fruits and veggies.  Hit my protein and fiber goals.  Don’t go overboard on the fats.  Let my activity level and appetite dictate the carb intake.

In about a month, I’ll be back to stage one, doing all those normal things.  Weights.  Tracking food.  -1000 calories.  Training less specifically, doing things more things as they sound fun (let’s go ride bikes with people all day Saturday!) and less structured workouts that are super duper business time important for an imminent race (30 miles of intervals w/an hour race pace brick run during the heat of the day when I’ll be racing).  Letting my life dictate what training I have time for, not vice versa.  Probably not sleeping at sunset.  Probably not waking up before sunrise unless there’s a huge twinkle in my eye about what I’m doing in the dark.

For the next two weeks at least, the goal is to treat this stuff like a responsible adult and not a frat boy.

So, it’s taper week two.  Time to continue to walk myself off the ledge of overreaching, store up some of the energy and confidence that comes with not being beaten down and having legs that might be considered *snappy*, and trying to keep from losing my mind over everything.

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It’s amazing the difference a week makes sometimes.

I’m not a morning person.  You know it’s serious business when the headlamp comes out.

This time last week, I was feeling extremely fatigued.  I had no idea how I was going to get through a week involving a 14 mile run (longest run since March 5), and my long brick (55 miles bike/10k), when I felt absolutely flattened on Monday after a day of rest.  I was feeling pretty much the opposite of confident about this whole half ironman training and racing thing.  I’ll finish because that’s what I do, but I felt like I’m not nearly at the form I am at this point in the cycle.

I skipped some training and added a recovery ride on Sunday to do errands, but somehow still ended up with almost 11 hours.  I’ll take it.  This last week, it was about two things:

• Going long
• Gaining confidence/feats of strength

Intentions met.  Besides all the normal supporting workouts, I was able to complete said 14 mile run and long brick within 2 days of each other.  Thursday morning’s long run was an exercise in sheer mental toughness.  I didn’t really enjoy any step of it besides the one I took in the door after finishing.  It was hot, I was tired, I was sore, and the miles went on forever.  And honestly, I’ve had races that felt easier.  However, I finished.  I didn’t walk.  I’ll pull on that one on race day.  If I can do that on a random weekday and then go to work all day, I can do it as the last leg of my race and then sit on my ass for a week.

The brick felt a little less terrible, but still wasn’t a walk in the park.  The bike was actually really pleasant.  We rode with a group of people from our tri team, and I actually kept feeling stronger over the miles, which is normal for me when I’m on bike form, so there’s that.  It was hot when we started running, and silly me picked a really hilly route (there’s more elevation change in one of the miles I ran than the whole 70.3 course), but I was STILL able to maintain race pace for the 10k.  I had no confidence that I was going to be able to keep up the pace at a mile in, but I freaking did it.  It should be much easier on the flat course, with support, *hopefully* on a slightly cooler day.  But even if it isn’t – I’ve conquered it before.

I just need to dig on that stuff during race day.  I need to remember that it will not always be this way if it’s bad (if it’s good, I’ll let myself believe it will).  How I feel at mile 1 of the run, even if it’s bad, doesn’t mean I won’t be able to hold pace at mile 12.  Even if every step is painful, I can still do what I need to do because I’ve done it before.  My brain tends to give up before my body so maybe I’ll be able to tell it “not this time”.   Even if I’m not sure I remember the steps sometimes, I’m ready to dance at my party.

Those steps are at a time signature of under 10:30 per mile after a hilly 56 mile bike ride.  Let’s hope I can master them by race day.

And now, it’s officially taper.  The next three weeks are going to be focused on:

• Injury prevention.  My knee is a little tweaky and swollen after yesterday’s “rest” activity of shopping for, cleaning out, and helping replace a fridge, and you KNOW I will be babying it until it feels 100% better.  I’m avoiding some of the evening outdoor riding that involves lights on my bike.  Doing my best to be the right amount of paranoid so I show up to the race in one piece.
• Rest and recovery.  I didn’t do a great job of kicking this off properly because of said fridge replacement at almost midnight last night, but I’ll be making sure that there’s lots of feet up time in the boots and reading in bed to make up for it and I have zero plans to party all night at any point until at least October 31st.
• Eating better.  I’ve done a pretty good job about treating my body like a dumpster at times over the last few peak weeks because I have the calories available.  It’s actually *really* challenging to eat super clean when you need to take in all the calories and carbs without overloading on fiber, and I believe there is totally room for cake and beer in an athlete’s life.  However, I didn’t meet my fiber requirement 3 of the last 7 days, so I’m a little too far on the “junk food” side of things.  Noted.  I’m eating pretty much the whole produce aisle to make up for it today (and will continue this week).
• Staying sharp.  This week goes back to medium – length workouts with little bits of speed.  It just gets shorter from there.  Hoping by race week, my legs will rested and begging for more.

This week’s plan, which can change at any point:

• Runs: 8 mile run w/3 miles below race pace. 10k off the bike, race pace.  2 mile easy.  Intent: settling into race pace.
• Bike: endurance cycle (indoors, safe, but also ass-kicking), 30 mile TT interval ride (before the 10k run). Intent: bringing down distance, bringing up intensity.
• Swim: 2250m race pace swim in lake, 1500m pool swim with some speed.  Intent: sharpening the stick, settling into race pace.
• Weights: 2 sessions.  Intent: stability.  (<- these are the last before I get back to it after the race).

Other than training and work, it was mostly eat and sleep, as a good peak week should be.  And while it was probably a little boring, I actually feel much better mentally, so it works out!  Highlights (and one lowlight) of the week:

• Celebrating our anniversary with tacos and fancy whiskey on a schoolnight (though I actually found my bed pretty early, so it was still in the spirit of resting up!).
• I tracked all my food!  I may have done my weekend tracking today, but I did it!
• KONA!!! While it wasn’t the most exciting Kona ever (repeat champions who were significantly ahead of the second place finishers), it was SUPER inspiring to be watching it 3 weeks out of my race after a long brick instead of after my first long run of marathon season, like every other year.
• Lowlight: as I’ve sort of alluded to above, our fridge started to slowly die this week, to the point where things weren’t REALLY frozen by Sunday.  Not exactly what I wanted to spend my day off dealing with, but we found a fridge that fit (not easy with our space), was under 1k$, and was available to be brought home immediately.  I sacrificed a little sleep and my knee, as I said, is a little cranky, but we didn’t waste any food because we jumped on it.

Instead of a fridge picture, here’s a giant pretzel and shepard’s pie and salad for lunch after the long run.  Considering some of my options, it was decent carbs and protein (dumpster option: fish and chips – I resisted).

I’ll call it a pretty successful week and we can all move forward with our Mondays, shall we?

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