Nobody said it was easy

A day late and a workout short, but Week 4 is done enough for me. There was a not-so-subtle change in my workload last week (when it rains, it pours...and it did both figuratively and literally). For the first time, I really FELT that I was ironman training. Sure the workouts were a little longer, but that wasn't the hard part.

First, the basics: 14.3 hours, 9700 yards in the pool, 7.6 hours on the bike, 22 miles of running. Long ride of 4:00, long run of 1:45. So yeah, slightly longer than last week, but that's only part of the story.

The real story is that I worked 40+ hours in four days, got very little sleep, and had to go out of town over the weekend sans bike, sans pool. That means 7 workouts that HAD to be done by Friday, and I HAD to have a rest day. My week went something like this:

• Monday, day off training. Drop girls off at 8:30, work at 9. Meetings all morning, meaning no time to work on my HUGE annual report that was due in January. Yeah, that's right, only 9 months late. Work till 3:30, pick up the girls. Wash dishes, pack lunch, help get the girls to bed at 7. Work until midnight.
  
• Tuesday, up at 5 am, onto the trainer at 5:30 for a 90-minute interval session. Breakfast, shower, take the girls to school. Into work by 9 to bust my butt on the report, sandwiching a meeting about why it's taking so long to get the report out. A meeting that, well, keeps me from working on the report... 1:30, off to the pool. Get in, swim 700 warm-up, then a bogus lightning sighting closes the pool (read now I have three swims to do in 3 days, along with a four-hour bike). Work until 3:30, pick up the girls. Home at 4:45, help with dinner, off to run hill repeats, back home at 7. Work until 12:30--notice a pattern here?
• Wednesday, miss my alarm (not surprising). Girls wake me up at 6. Breakfast, off to work by 7. Bust my butt until noon, report draft DONE! Off to the pool to celebrate (like swimming is a fun way to celebrate...). EXHAUSTED, but I knocked out a great 100-repeat set. My times are already coming back down. Work till 5, and I'm done.
• Thursday, wake up at 5 and IT'S RAINING. Flash flood warnings. Are you freaking kidding me?! This is Tucson. How will I possibly get in my long ride and swim, especially given the hallucination-prone lifeguard. But, a pleasant surprise. It was an AWESOME morning. No lightning, cool, sprinkled on me for half of the ride. Three hours of rest, and then swim. It's still raining, meaning I have 8 lanes of lap pool to myself (plus I get to punish the lifeguards by making them sit out in the rain :) ). Thursday afternoon, report draft is back on my desk. Pick Rylie up at 4, quick visit to TriSports.com, then gymnastics until 6. Girls in bed by 7:30, pack lunch for Rylie, start working on the report. Get it back out by midnight.
• Friday, up at 5:30, off for an Aerobic Deflection Training ride. No breakfast. No ride nutrition. Cup of coffee and out the door. Yeah, two hours of riding with no calories the day after a long ride=PAIN. I felt awesome for 45 minutes, then felt like falling over for the next 1:15. I was happy to make it home. Two hours of recovery, then off for a LONG set in the pool.
  

WOOOHOOO! Workouts for the workweek were done. Off to the River for my mom's birthday and a lot of fun on the water. One hung-over run on Sunday morning (more ouch. when you have two "bouts of GI distress" in four miles, you know it's not a good morning for a run), and a make-up run today (Monday) to knock out my long run.

Highlights and low-lights of the week:

1. Biggest sacrifice: tie between sleep and sanity. My mental state was simply crappy, and the lack of sleep did not help.
2. Most painful ride: Friday no-calorie ride. Long ride the day before, lack of sleep, and poor nutrition, so no surprise there.
3. High point of the week: My rainy swim on Thursday. Yeah, that's right. I actually enjoyed my swim, and had a near-spiritual experience having the pool to myself and watching the rain come down.
4. Take away message for this week: sleep more!
   

So, that's it for Week 4. Thank God for recovery weeks, as I am definitely going to enjoy this one. Looks like I'll probably be back at the river this week for three days of extracurricular activities to include some mountain biking, fishing, swimming (the fun kind), horseshoes, you get the idea. Hopefully I'll come back to town feeling motivated and ready to launch into my next training phase. Thinking of no drinking after this weekend until the race, so we'll see how long that lasts...now off to finish my beer before I go to bed.

Oh, wait, I almost forgot to pack Rylie's lunch.

Tie my handlebars to the stars so I stay on track

Finally getting started on my weekly-ish posts on training for Ironman Arizona. I am going to try to add a new post each Sunday or Monday with basic information on my previous week. The goal is not to brag; I just want to keep track of what I have done, how I am feeling, etc., so that I can look back to see what I have gone through in preparation for the race. Hopefully it'll keep me motivated when I'm feeling down, but we'll see.

So, here goes. Week three is DONE. What happened to weeks 1 and 2? Minnesota vacation. Oops. For week 1, I got in all three bike rides, two of three runs, and no swimming (thanks to my MTB crash). 7.7 total training hours, 13 miles of running. 2:45 long ride, and no long run. For week two, I got in all three runs, one ride, and no swimming again. 6.7 training hours, 23 miles of running. Long ride of 3:15, long run of 1:15.

Week three was time to get back on track. Mission accomplished! All three swims, bikes, and runs are DONE! :) 12.7 hours, 8300 yards in the pool, 6.7 hours on the bike, 23 miles of running. Long ride of 3:30 (plus 0:20 run), long run of 1:30. I actually feel great. Now that I have real heart rate zones set up (and I'm following them), I feel pretty well-rested and fresh for my workouts. The swims were really tough-not at all surprising after 21 days with no swimming! Some other highlights and lowlights:

• Most enjoyable workout of the week-long trail run at Starr Pass Sunday at sunset. Hot and sticky, but some rain, rainbows, great Tucson views, and some wildlife. I made myself stay in Zone 2, so I felt good pretty much the whole time.
• Least enjoyable workout-Wednesday swim with 100 repeats. Hard workout always, but depressing when you're out of shape. Oh well, I finished.
• Scariest moment of the week-A tie between running through a swarm of bees (hit in the head like five times, and then looked up to see a huge swarm-I'll admit, it freaked me out) and having to high-step a coiled up rattlesnake on my Sunday run. The snake was coiled up right on the trail where my foot was headed, but I saw him at the absolute last moment. No rattling of anything. He didn't even flinch!
• Discovery of the week-Yoga! I finally tried it for the first time. OUCH! Depressing to realize how inflexible I am, but I'm going to keep trying!

That's all for now. Big week this week followed by my first recovery week.

Gitty up, gitty up, let's ride

Just a quick post to mention one of my new discoveries. I don't post much (enough?) product reviews, but I discovered a product that helped me out immediately. And, hey, I didn't know about it, so maybe you didn't either!

I am a heavy, salty sweater. I have always tried to take in as much salt as possible through PowerGels and Camelback Elixir. However, last summer I realized that I still wasn't getting enough (especially during my cramp-plagued Vineman attempt). So, I have been talking electrolyte pills (Endurolytes) every half hour for summer rides and runs. Last year, and up until a month ago, I was simply carrying a "pill dispenser", which actually works okay. However, it can take two hands to get just one pill out (dangerous on the bike!), and if it rains there is little protection from the elements. Last month, I finally read up on the saltstick dispenser. Basically, this is a handy little tube that can slide inside your aerobar extensions (or handlebars depending on the shape) or even just clip on to your race belt. I installed mine in an aerobar extension in about two minutes, and, now, one caplet is available with a twist. Each tube can hold 6 or 7 caplets (=3 hours for me), so I will be adding one in the other extension to get me through the longer rides I have coming up. Here is what it looks like once installed in your extension:




















If you are a salty sweater like me, I HIGHLY recommend this for your bike. You can get the dispenser alone, or get a combo with saltstick caps to save you a few bucks if you want to try their pills. I bought one combo and an extra dispenser. No, these things are not free, but for the convenience and reliability of electrolyte caps at your fingertips, this is an awesome product. Quick video of how it dispenses:

Here we go...

So, here I go. Training for my first ironman. So my hope is to start posting once a week or so about how my training weeks to, so that I can look back and remember how ridiculous it was, and maybe convince myself not to do it again :).

Let's start with some goals. One of the articles I always think about is a response to a letter in Triathlete Magazine where the authors rip someone asking about goals for a first ironman. The response amounted to: your goal should be to finish while remaining employed, married, and without a trip to the med tent. Indeed, these are my goals (although I don't really care if I end up in the med tent). However, at the risk of sounding brash (well, that's just who I am anyway I guess), I have other goals too. I want to go fast without too much risk of crashing and having a miserable day. I would also like to have the chance to do another ironman next year, although there is really only one other ironman that I would current consider doing... Anyway, can't even think about that yet. I know that training for 140.6 is serious business, and will require sacrifices in other parts of my life. It is not something I want to repeatedly put my family through.

Okay, training report to this point. My journey has begun following lots of advice and a training plan (in progress) from Bill Daniell of Grasky Endurance Coaching. 16 weeks leading up to the big day. Well, the hiccups started before the training even began. As I posted before, I took a hard crash on the mountain bike a few weeks ago, and it turns out that I managed to hurt my ribcage. Long story short, swimming was impossible for two weeks. Then, after three days of training, off to Minnesota for family vacation. No bike, no swimming, just running every other day in record heat and 80%+ humidity. Got back in Tucson last Saturday around midnight, then a 3-hour ride in the heat on Sunday. Good stuff. This week, things have gotten back on track. The training load really isn't too bad at this point--three workouts each for swim, bike, and run. Two runs are short but relatively hard (tempo stuff, hill repeats, or intervals), one is long and easy. Bike workouts are either intervals, hill repeats, or long. Swims are, well, swims. Not bad except that I hadn't swam in three weeks. Swimming shape seems to disappear FAST! Basically, halfway through all three workouts this week, I doubted my ability to finish the sets. Oh well, suck it up and get it done. Good stuff.

My plan is to stick to the plan, trust it, and trust my coach. Do the work and hopefully things will go smoothly...or at least I'll finish. Had to swallow my pride for the first time today. I went for my first group ride in a long time with a bunch of triathletes, and not slow ones. My ride was 3.5 hours of Zone 2. So, what happens? Starting on the first hill, the group blows apart. I know I can hang with the guys in the front for three hours, but that's not my workout. Just let them go. The goal is not to keep with the fastest guys on the group ride. The goal is to be ready for Ironman AZ, even if that means I rode by myself for 2:30 before running by myself for three miles. Long-ish run on the schedule for tomorrow afternoon, and week "three" is in the books, if only full week one for me. "Three" (one) down, and 13 to go. Let's get it done!