Countdown to Ironman, Week 34: Reflecting on the Un-Season and Getting Down to Business

This week I start my official training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene. I've spent the week looking back on this year's "Un Season", both the bad (broken arm, lack of training) and the good (fun "Un" events like the Amazing Lake Waldo solo trail marathon, and my epic Crossing of Crater Lake with my Masters Swim Group.), not to mention getting my black belt in Karate in March (that seems so long ago!) Although it's been a very unusual year, sometimes it's good to take a step away from your routine and those things that you always do (whether it's a particular race, or a training routine, or even a favorite running route) and do something completely different.

So in that vein, I've decided to go with the Endurance Nation team and throw my hat into the "train Fast then Far" training crowd with one of their Out-Season plans for the winter. That means that instead of leisurely building lots of slow easy runs and trainer rides where I spin while watching movies, I'll instead be doing much shorter intense weeks in the coming months.

The very first workout of their plan was a 40 minute time trial. I decided to go out to the flatlands north of town to the route used by our local cycling club Time Trials in the spring. I've done these TT's before so I had a good idea of my time. The weather was looking decent, and I decided not to include my race wheels or Pointy Helmet of Speed, just use my regular gear. Typically, this route takes me about 40 minutes and change.

I guess I'm a bit demoralized now because it took me 46:30! Yikes, talk about lack of bike fitness. Then again, my Odometer on my bike computer shows a whopping 181 miles ridden this summer. And to be fair, it was very windy and rainy now in late October (the good weather disappeared about when I pulled up and a storm rolled in!), they just chip-sealed the road (which made about a 2 mph difference between that and the small section that still has the smooth pavement), and I didn't have any of my faster wheels and such. So probably the difference would be more like three minutes and not six, I'm trying really hard not to be too depressed.

The main goal of this pain fest was to extract my heart rate, which averaged 155. Honestly though, my legs hurt so freakin bad, I really couldn't push up to a point where heart rate was the limiter. So I guess I'll wait until Wednesday's 5k run (Oh Joy!) to see what that gives me for HR.

I guess I can use that as motivation to plant my butt on the trainer seat and hit the intervals hard this winter in order to be ready for IM CdA's infamous hills come June!

Discouraged

So yesterday's run was supposed to be a 10k time trial. I did my warmups and planned on doing 6 laps + 200m around the 1 mile bark loop trail. Starting off, I took it a little easy at an 8:45 pace, which felt okay. My 2nd loop was about an 8:50, but the 3rd was a 9:07. After that, my legs had nothing left in them at all. Last 3 miles were 9:20, 9:43, and 9:58. Total: 55:37 or a 9:16 average, but it felt like HELL. Just a bit over a month ago, I cheerfully ran an "easy slow" 9 miles at a 9:22 pace and felt great. My last 10k in an Oly triathlon was 50:29 (8:24 pace), and that's after over an hour of biking and some swimming thrown in, not just a running time trial. WTH??

So I'm left wondering what the heck is wrong. I slept well, ate well, I feel healthy and rested. Why is my endurance shot to hell? I'm in my 5th week of the Crossfit Endurance plan, and I was hoping that I would at least be on par with what I was doing beforehand.

I've got a couple of theories going, but only time will tell which is right:

1) It was a fluke, we all have bad days and heaven knows, I've had bad workouts before

2) My body is still adjusting to the much higher intensity of the Crossfit Endurance workouts. Given another month or two, I will have adapted better and will be way faster

3) Intense workouts are great, but my body is really built for endurance, it's what it does best. So I'm short-circuting my natural abilities by focusing on faster work, and that's why I'm now slower.

4) All this short fast stuff has just shot my endurance to hell and my Oly triathlon in August is going to be a death slog of epic proportions.

Needless to say, I'm hopeful that it's #1 or #2. I've committed to this CFE plan until my Oly triathlon on August 23. If I'm wrong, that means I've only got about 3 weeks afterward to try to regain some endurance before my half-Iron in September. It's a gamble. Stay tuned and we'll see how it turns out...

Woooofreakinhoooooo

When you do triathlons, there's usually a nice little grace period in between races that lets you more or less forget about the pain you were in during the race, and remember the nice afterglowy feeling of having completed it successfully. This is more or less the same mechanism that allows humans to have more than one child, because if we didn't forget a lot of childbirth it probably just wouldn't happen.

So all of that is different when you step out of the triathlon world and into a race series like the cycling time trials I've been doing. There's one of them a week, and that's just not enough time to forget how bad it hurt last time. It's also a little strange doing the same course over and over, although I guess the upside is that you get to know it a bit better over the course of time.

This Tuesday was the last race of the time trial series, and to tell the truth I wasn't really looking forward to it. By the time my busy Monday and Tuesday is almost done, it just seemed like one more thing I had to do. Get all the gear together, slog out to the countryside and ride fifteen miles as fast as I could, then check it off the Palm pilot for another day. Fortunately, my hubby and the kids came along this time and that always makes it more fun. Also fortunately I had taken a peek at the rankings going into the last race and knew how close it was, so that was a bit more encouragement to get out there and go hard. The weather cooperated this time and it was balmy and lovely as the sun faded toward the horizon. I got a slot close to the start along with a couple of teammates, so I could look forward to chasing them and being done early.

Although it was a bit windy and I didn't post my fastest time on the course (and in fact, missed 1st place in Cat4 for that race by a measly 4 seconds), I held on enough to get the overall series win in the Cat4 Women's division. Woooofreakinhoooooo! There was only a minute between myself and the next gal over four races, so that was very close. I'm pretty excited, and my hubby has been nodding knowingly because he's been saying for a long time I should try my hand at just cycle racing. It does make me wonder what I could do if I actually got on my bike more than twice a week (I'm sure I will once the weather gets warmer, I don't usually ride this much so early in the year!) I don't know though, it was a cool experience and all but I really discovered something about why I love triathlons so much. It's that you're always doing something different. Every race is different, each course, each transition, even the water in the same lake is never the same twice. This was fun, but my true love remains triathlon.

Now That's Better!

It's TT time again and let's see, what was improved from last week.... rest, nutrition, hydration, warmup, organization, gear... yep, this time I was prepared. And had a terrific ride and if I'm not mistaken a PR on the course. I don't have my official time yet, and as I rode past the timekeeper's stand they called out "Race Number!" - I guess my number wasn't pinned visibly enough - so I didn't get my exact time off of my bike computer in all the confusion. I think it was around 40:40 though (at least that's my hope), which would be a minute and a half better than last time if so.

I do know that I got passed by three people on the course (all men), and I passed three people (two women and a man), so I was even in the count (keeping track of that helps me pass the miles as I push my quadriceps to the bursting point and try to blow up my heart - did I forget to mention that time trials hurt. A lot.) The women were both from the local women's team and they both had disc wheels (which I envied) and both of them had to be at least 1:30 or more ahead of me at the start because the three riders in front of me were all male. So that was pretty cool!

It was a gorgeous evening (sorry, I didn't take time to snap photos with my phone camera) with shining sun, only a light breeze, and enough warmth to go in just jersey and shorts. If I hadn't been busy exploding my heart and quads, it might have been pretty enjoyable out there. We had another nice little brick to cool down (and as much as I'm not really a runner, I do enjoy these because they feel nice after all that hard work on the bike.) All in all a good night for some hard work, and I did my best out there. I'll be curious to see where my time falls, but doing my personal best is what really matters so I'm a happy gal tonight!