Playing Catch-Up

I have lots of catching up to do. Life has been busy and I just haven't had time to write it all down.

I raced the duathlon last month and LOVED IT. I love to run, so a race where I get to run TWICE is double the fun. There were only 7 females, so for the first (and possibly only) time in my life, I won.

I always wondered what it would feel like to win a race. Although it was exciting, it wasn't very satisfying, as my performance was not my best. I did my best for that day but I'm still quite far behind where I was a year ago as far as speed is concerned. And when I tried to sprint to the finish, there was no extra gear left in my legs. My mind said "GO!" and my legs said "La la la la - We can't hear you!" What a strange feeling!

Ideally, one would want a satisfying performance AND a win. But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd probably choose the strong performance. Well... depending on who I was racing. I don't know. Maybe I'll just have to go after both.

Since the duathlon, I've begun training for my next goal race: The Pinehurst International Triathlon in October. I'm doing another Dave Scott training plan, and as usual, he's kicking my ass. I love it. I'm so glad to be finally working on speed again and to have some structure to my training. I have a few sprints before that race but I'll just treat them as training days.

I raced the Greenville Sprint Triathlon a couple weeks ago. It was my first time doing that race and the course is wonderful. It wasn't an "A" race for me so I decided to experiment with some different things. I swam the swim at an easy pace, walked to my bike in transition, and walked slowly to the mount line for the bike leg. This was intentional, to remind myself that I was not racing. I held back a bit on the bike leg to keep my heartrate under a certain number, but was able to enjoy a game of cat-and-mouse with a 62-year-old man right until we dismounted. I hurried through T2 then ran a steady run, again keeping the heartrate down. It was hard to go do a race where I wasn't trying to go fast, but I got out of it what I needed.

For the past 3 weeks, I've cleaned up my food intake: very little gluten, dairy, sugar, or processed foods. I'm working on gaining muscle and losing fat (I can tell it's working because my quads are growing and my breasts are shrinking) but the added benefits are more energy, better sleep, and clearer lungs.

Speaking of clearer lungs, today I took the last dose of the steroid I've been on for 4 months for my lungs. Now we wait and see if my lungs continue to cooperate. Going into fall allergy season, this will be a challenge, but I'm feeling optimistic, especially because I'm eating well. Food choices seem to have had a moderate impact on my symptoms.

Earlier this week, I had a terrible run. Awful. Just bad, rough, crappy, and not good at all. It was about 12 hours after a tough bike ride with lots of hill reps, and my quads felt pretty shredded. The run was supposed to be at race pace (whatever that is...) but I couldn't hold it more than 2 miles. I haven't had a run that bad in about a year.

I view this as good news, because I believe that a "bad run" always precedes a breakthrough. I think my body is adjusting to the increase in training intensity and will bounce back a little stronger and faster. Progress is imminent!

I also had the worst swim in year. It was my first time in the water in 10 days, and it was as if I had never done freestyle before. Flailing limbs, multiple snorts of water, sloppy drills - nothing went right. Forget how slow I was - it just plain old felt bad. Even when I'm slow, I usually enjoy being in the water, but this was brutal. But rather than signaling a swim breakthrough, it really points to a lack of consistent swim training. I have renewed my commitment to get in the water more often.

There are a few mantras I use to get through these tough patches of training. Usually one or the other gets me back on track:

 

I will do the work and I will be patient and the results will come.
(I enjoy doing the work; it's the being patient that is so damn hard.)

 

This too shall pass.

(Whether it's going well or really sucking, it will change soon.)

 

HTFU

(For when it's not getting better fast enough.)

Feel free to use these as needed. They work well at the office too.

I found my limits.

It has been a difficult week.

You know that saying about only finding your limits by pushing past them? Well, I think I found mine.

It actually started with the end of last week. Sunday, I rode longer than I should have (jumped from 47 miles the previous week to 62 miles last week), and with more intensity at times. If I had done anything else stupid that day, it would've been the Dumb Ass Trifecta. (I'm sure there was something else, I'm just too tired to remember it.) That combo culminated in the worst knee pain yet. This, after the prior week being completely pain-free, really threw me for a loop.

Monday was a rest day. Had it not been, I would've taken the day off from workouts to let the knee rest. I was in a lot of pain, and I started to lose my confidence that I'll be able to complete the training (and thus, the race). All the "what-if" questions filled my head: What if I can't work out this week? What if it gets worse when I try to run or ride again? What if Dr Awesome can't fix this? What if it hurts that badly during the race?

Okay, for that last question, my answer is "HTFU." I don't want to cause injury to my body during training, but when the big day is here, I suppose I will suffer through anything to finish that race, unless it's a life-threatening problem.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm only in Week 9, and I have a long way to go. Half of me is scared I may not even make it to the start line.

Tuesday, my knee began to feel somewhat better, but I began feeling sensations in the soles of my feet, particularly the left one. Sometimes it felt tight, sometimes I felt pins-and-needles, and the most disconcerting of all: sometimes it felt cold. My brilliant, supportive husband suggested that maybe my feet were just... cold. I gave that some consideration, then decided I had a compressed nerve, plantar fasciitis and some sort of weird foot affliction nobody has even heard of yet.

I may have freaked out a little. Yeah, a little. Okay, a lot. I would compare it to Taper Madness in intensity of fear. UGH!

I wasn't sure which of my workouts this week, IF ANY, I would be able to do. So, what do I do when faced with uncertainty? I make a plan. I would try swimming. If it hurt my knee to kick in the pool, I would swim with the pull buoy (a hard styrofoam floaty device you put between your legs to make your lower half float while you swim with just your arms). I'm pleased to report that I had NO pain swimming, so swim workouts were off the chopping block.

Next: Biking. I had an hour-long trainer ride planned for Tuesday evening. I told myself I'd start easy and just see how I felt. I'd increase speed/resistance very slowly, and at the first hint of pain, I would stop and stretch. If it still hurt when I started again, I would quit the workout. One trainer ride does not mean much in the grand scheme of things; I'm not going to risk injury for one ride.

Luckily, the bike ride went much better than I had anticipated. I had no pain, just some slight discomfort. I was aware of my knee, but it didn't hurt. I was able to complete the workout.

Finally: Running. Wednesday is my weekly long run. Despite not having any knee pain at all during the day, I was not optimistic that I'd be able to complete the run pain-free. I had 10.6 miles scheduled, and with bad weather blowing in, I did it on the treadmill. Again, I told myself that if I had any pain, I would stop. I STILL cannot believe that I had NOT ONE IOTA of pain or discomfort in that knee. Sure, other things ached, as you would expect on a two-hour slow run on a treadmill, but otherwise, I felt great. I stopped often to do my Dr Awesome stretches. Sometimes it's frustrating to have to take the time to stretch that often; it makes an hour and forty-five minute run last over two hours. But I'd rather take that time to stretch than be injured and not get to run at all.

Thursday's trainer ride was pain-free, discomfort-free, and downright unremarkable. I started to relax and believe the crazy was over. But then - DUHN DUHN DUHNNNNNN..... I had my Dr Awesome appointment Friday morning.

He worked on the usual gang of suspects (knee/ITB/adductors/hip flexors). Then he spent some time on my feet. Guess what? I got some MORE stretches to do! Yee-haaaw! He agrees that we are ahead of any "injury" right now, but I need to stay on top of it before it turns into plantar fasciitis.

So, that's where I am right now: physically on the edge, and mentally (sometimes) over the edge. I oscillate between relaxed/confident and scared shitless/crazy. I've made a slight amendment to my mantra:

I will stick to the plan but adjust when necessary.
I will do the work.
I will be patient.
The results will come.

LTHR Test

I had a crappy run this morning. It was the worst workout of my entire training cycle thus far. It was the heartrate zone test for the run (to determine my lactate threshhold heartrate, or LTHR; this number is used to determine training zones for workouts). I only had to run for an hour, but the middle 30 minutes were to be at a steady, hard pace, as if I were racing.

I slept until 9:30, which meant I ended up running at noon. The temp was up in the 70s already. I didn't mentally prepare for that.

Another problem with running at noon is that you're not supposed to have caffeine before the heartrate zone test, so it was 1pm before I had my first caffeine of the day. Cue headache...

I did a decent warm-up with some pick-ups. I was feeling sluggish physically, and mentally I was not on my game today. I kept telling myself to just do it anyway. At least it would be good mental practice for the low moments of the Ironman.

When I started the first hard interval, I noticed my heartrate dropping. Five beats, ten beats, thirty beats... SHIT. I stopped to adjust my heartrate strap and re-wet the electrodes. No luck. I tried again - still nothing. My heartrate was reading 92 while running at an effort level of 7. C-3P0, you really let me down today. (I think it was the Body Glide I had slathered on, interfering with the electrodes; unfortunately, the glide didn't even keep me from chafing. Double fail.)

Time for plan B. I decided to take my pulse manually at the end of each 10 minute interval. This got the job done, but I can't help but feel it's not as accurate as with the monitor. The numbers I came up with were consistent during the test, but I really wanted to see them in black and white to believe them. Oh well.

The next problem was that I was mentally weak today. I walked a handful of times (which sheds much doubt on the validity of the test results). I don't have any problem with the idea of walk breaks in general, but if I haven't planned to walk, then I shouldn't walk. I haven't taken an unplanned walk break during a run in ages. This was a huge mental blow.

And that brings me to my biggest problem with today's run: I have gotten SLOW. I worked so hard last year to get faster, and was very happy with my progress. But I have lost all that speed and then some. Yes, I understand that I'm training for an endurance event, and that speed is not the priority right now. I'm just worried that when the Ironman is over and I go back to short races, I won't be able to get back to where I was before by the end of the season. I can't worry about that now; I'm committed to training properly for Texas. But let it be known that I am NOT happy about my speed situation.

The good news is, my LTHR seems to be about what I predicted it would be. I have a fairly good idea of my max, so I had done some calculations based on my max, my resting rate, and the rates I've observed at various effort levels. Compared to today's test results, I was off by only about 3 bpm. (I also did the heartrate zone test on the bike this week, and that number was close to my prediction as well.) Now, I just have to use these numbers and force myself to stay in the proper zones. I'll be repeating these tests in about 5 weeks.

Repeat after me: I will follow the plan and I will do the work and I will be patient and the results will come.