Thursday, April 01, 2010

time to recalibrate

I am getting to near meltdown point and need to make some time to get in tune with my body and mind so I can figure out what is going on. I am very tired and sleepy, nearly at the point of needing to take naps under my desk at work. I am hungry all the time. I feel like my body composition is going in the wrong direction and I am getting soft. I am overwhelmed by my training schedule and don't have mental freshness going into the workouts. It feels like a grind and is more work than fun.

I know this is all part of Ironman training. If all I had to do was train and rest, it wouldn't be so bad, but work also has to fit in the picture. I'm thinking of the 20 week Ironman training plan like a 20 mile run: one week of the plan = one mile of the run. It's mile 8 right now and I am tired, but still have a lot left to go. This is the time to pull out my mental strategies to make it through. Time to recalibrate, refocus, and freshen things up.

Here are a few things I'm doing to help:
1) take a complete day off - no work or training. just rest and fun. that's tomorrow.
2) log my food for a couple of days - find out if i really am off track or just feel like it
3) go to Fredericksburg this weekend for my riding - new scenery, new people
4) do some journaling to get even more clarity on things

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Today:

Run 5 miles easy
[44 minutes]

Yesterday:
Swim 3800yd, 1:10
Main set: 7x300

Strength Session
3 rounds (1 minute each):
Bosu pushups
Single leg step up and press with 15lb med ball
Plank to pushup
Plank side-to-side jumps
--
20 walk out pushup and walk back, to shoulder press
10 V-up and arm row
15 walk out pushup
5 V-up and arm row
2x10 renegade row
3x10 leg press
30 assisted pullups

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

pancakes!

Long run - 15 miles
[2:07 (8:28 pace)]
6am: Town lake trail and campus loop, completely dark, almost full moon. Me: exhausted, working through it, steady pace for the whole run. This run was about getting the work done. I love my long runs but today it took a little more mental strength than usual. My glutes and hamstrings are sore and tight. I felt kind of sick for the rest of the morning - couldn't tell if it was extreme hunger or nausea or both.

I went to Magnolia and had a full stack of gingerbread pancakes with bananas and blueberries (carb overload), then slept for 5 hours. I never eat carbs like that anymore. Today I had a feeling that my body wanted it and I was happy to oblige :)

Monday, March 29, 2010

ok, this was a lot of workouts

I did all my workouts back-to-back today for one mega-session lasting about 3 hours in the evening. There was no way cooking dinner was going to happen after that so I took myself out to dinner at Zen Cafe and had salmon, veggies, and brown rice. Yum.

This training is starting to get relentless. I called today a "half rest day" because I only had to work out in the afternoon and not the morning. I look forward to half rest days. Mo thinks my half rest day idea is funny since they aren't really rest days. I look for rest anywhere I can.

Also, I have started to get to the point where I am hungry all the time. All the time. I eat a full meal and then am hungry for another full meal in 2-3 hours. Honestly I am getting a little tired of all the food. I've started eating more peanut butter because it has lots of calories without being a big deal to eat. I'm limiting my starchy carbs, but paleo and zone are out the window.  I don't know how to sustain them with this amount of training and rampant hunger.
 Pushup Challenge
23-25-20-20-25 = 113 total
Still chipping away at this challenge. Now it's a way of life.

Crossfit WOD
3 rounds for time:
21 KB swings (20lb)
12 pullups (green band)
6 burpees
[6:46]
I bet I could move to the black band for less assistance on those pullups.

Swim 3000yd, 56 minutes
Main set was 2 rounds of:
8x50 hard on 1 minute
400 hard
[round 1: 50s@38-40sec, 400@6:02]
[round 2: 50s@39-41sec, 400@6:06]
Shoulder busters. I stayed fairly consistent. The workout actually called for 3 rounds but by the last round I couldn't hold my pace and started to get foot cramps. I let myself off the hook today.

Bike 60 minutes with intervals:
10 min (4 min rec)
12 min (4 min rec)
16 min (4 min rec)

Run 3.3 miles, trail run
28 minutes
Not too bad. I felt best after 20 minutes into it but then I started to get hungry.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Nelo's and TrevAthlete

Bike 68 miles, 4:10
When the sun came up at 7am, I was out the door on my ride this morning. It's been so windy lately, getting stronger as the day goes on, and I wanted to beat it this time.  There were no cars on the road that early, which made for some nice riding. I took roads that I could never go on because of crazy traffic during normal hours. The route was my house to Liberty Hill (north of Austin) and back via Spicewood and Parmer and Jollyville. The wind was already out when I got to Parmer at 8am and I averaged about 10mph for at least an hour headed north, but as the morning went on the wind got stronger and lucky me got to turn around. On the way home, I had some long stretches where I was going 30mph and didn't have enough gears to go harder. Wheee!


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Nelo's Pro Cycles (http://www.neloscycles.com/) in affiliation with TrevAthlete coaching (http://trevathlete.com/)  is sponsoring me this year. This is my first sponsorship and triathlon team so I'm pretty excited to see what the year has in store.

I discovered Nelo's shop last year when I was looking for an alternative bike shop to get a tune-up and wheel-truing for my road bike. Nelo's was close to my house so I took a chance on a shop that was a bit off the beaten path... it turned out to be the best tune-up I had ever gotten. The shifting was smoother than ever and the wheels were perfectly true. I like that the shop is casual without hype and egos, but caters to serious cyclists. I was never made to feel conscious about being a "girl in a bike shop" by having my bike knowledge questioned or underestimated. I'm happy to help promote Nelo's. I've tried a lot of shops in Austin and they have the best service and fittings around.


Nelo, thanks for the cool jersey and vest! :)