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I just wanted to take a moment and recognize Earth Day. I'll admit that I really didn't do much to celebrate, which is unfortunate. But it just didn't fit in my schedule. I had the dogs with me today so I couldn't bike to work. I drove. By myself. Can't get much worse...
At least I did get outside to enjoy this beautiful weather and admire the greenery. I know it's not going to stay green for long, so I'll enjoy it while I can. I had a long run to do today and I had to split it up because I just didn't have a big enough time slice today to do it all at once. So, 8.5 miles this morning and another 8.5 after work. Surprisingly I did them both in about the same time. I was expecting the second one to be much worse. I always run better in the morning, even if it's all Z2. I think it's because I'm not fully awake and therefore don't recognize pain or discomfort. I also had some Z4 which I saved for the afternoon and I'm always dead after these sets. I have to slow down to an 11 min. pace to get my HR to come down. So it kind of kills any average.
But they were good runs. Not much to complain about other than the fact that I had to split them up. But I once read somewhere that the overall benefit is the same. I believe the example they gave was that if you did 6 miles in the AM, another 6 in the PM, and another 6 the next morning, it would yield very similar results as running 18 straight. But there is that whole mental aspect that this doesn't account for. And that's a very important aspect when it comes to Ironman. But, in this particular case, I think there is something to be said for doing long runs after work. I know for me that I start out being mentally drained from work and sometimes just physically tired and I think this is great preparation for Ironman. The run comes late in the day when you're mentally and physically exhausted. So I'm sort of simulating it. I think it's a good exercise to do every now and then.
Complete random comment...I learned today that the word "questionnaire" has two n's. I never would have guessed this and I consider myself to be a good speller. I haven't looked up the reasoning or if there's any rule, but it certainly doesn't apply to "millionaire" so I really don't know what the logic is. And this is probably why English is considered to be so hard to learn. We're so inconsistent...
27 mile ride (hills)
Hopefully this time it will stay. I'm so over winter. Now if I can only do something about the wind...
I was finally able to ride outdoors. Even better, I had to do hills. There's nothing like doing hills after being indoors for weeks to make me feel so out of shape and so unready for the CDA course. There's not really an opportunity for me to feel fast when doing hills, so it really is quite depressing. I'm not sure that I can really find much appreciate from this workout either. I did the back side of Old Stage twice as well as a small stint up Lefthand. Although they were in Z4, they were all really slow and I wouldn't say I felt great. All it really left me with was the feeling that I still have a long way to go before CDA which unfortunately is no longer a long ways away.
My HR seems to be relatively back to normal. It's a little hard to say with the bike since I recently adjusted my zones and brought everything down about 10bpm. My run on the treadmill was normal and the perceived effort was pretty much in line with the numbers, so I guess I'm back on track. Apparently my stress numbers have come back to a more reasonable number (from -40 something to -30 something to -9). I have been making a concerted effort to drink a lot of water. Even if it means getting up to pee 3 times a night. Most likely I'm already getting up to cover Mobi (yes, my very high maintenance dog requires being tucked in at night and several times during the night he'll get up to stretch and shake thereby losing his blanket. He then has to come stand beside me and whine so that I'll get up and cover him again. What better opportunity to take a pee break. Interestingly enough, he does not exhibit the same behavior if I let him sleep on the bed for the whole night. So when I know that I really need sleep, I'll let them up on the bed. Enough digression. Mobi gets enough attention as it is - he doesn't need blog postings in addition.).
So yeah, hydration. I'm trying to stay on top of it.
So, supposedly it's mid-April. You'd never know it by the weather we've had the past few weeks. It seems like we're going backwards in time. Perhaps this is why my training seems to be losing ground.
It was a stabilizer week and I certainly took full advantage. I never really got my long run in for the week. I ended up back on the treadmill on Saturday and I always feel like I have to push a little bit harder on the treadmill since it's kind of cheating. Though it is much more mentally challenging. So maybe it evens out. I did a short swim after the run but I was pretty drained, so I cut it short. Very short.
I was hoping that today would be dry enough to ride outside. Perhaps it was and I was just too lazy or just not up for it. Driving around in the morning, some intersections were still pretty messy. I decided that I just really didn't have it in me to face the outdoors so I'll admit that while it was finally sunny and 60 degrees, I headed back downstairs to the trainer. But I did have Return of the King to get through. This might be my only chance. I will say that I was pretty surprised when I went to do my run off of the bike to discover how warm it really was. My excuse about the slushy roads seemed ridiculous. Oh well. Stablizer week. I promise I'll do all my rides outside this week.
Saturday: 8 mile run, 1500m swim
Sunday: 126 min. trainer, 2 mile run
This picture really doesn't do it justice...I was a sopping mess.
I ended up taking another day off yesterday in the hopes it would cure my high HR woes. Besides, it was rainy and crappy yesterday and it's a little hard to motivate oneself to run. So I saved up my run for this morning. I woke up several times during the night and kept looking at the window. Still no snow. Despite the fact that everyone was claiming 10-24 inches. I was thinking that I might luck out after all - the storm wouldn't come and I'd be able to ride outside this weekend.
No such luck. The alarm went off. Still no snow. But I really didn't want to get out of bed. I decided to reschedule for lunchtime. Since there wasn't any snow, it was pretty unlikely that we'd get all 10-24 inches by noon. It was still raining at 11:30 when I started to psych myself into running. I checked the weather. About 2 miles north of me, there were 20 mph winds from the north. About 2 miles south of me, there were 2 mph winds from the west. Why are there 2 weather zones between north and south Boulder?
My team looked at me like I was nuts. They didn't even want to leave for lunch. I put on all my layers and headed outside. My Garmin could not find a signal and I didn't want to stand out in the wind and rain waiting. Besides, 2 Garmins's ago, I ran in the rain and the whole thing steamed up and started to fill with water. I didn't want to take that chance again (they'd replace it, but I just don't want to waste 2 weeks waiting for the new one). So back inside I went and dropped it off with my clothes. I left the heartrate strap on because it was too many layers to get through to take it off. Finally I was off and just as I started, it turned to snow. I appreciated this. Somehow it just doesn't seem as awful - running in the snow versus running in the rain. I headed south and sure enough, the weather changed. The snowflakes were HUGE and the slush was starting to accumulate. I was kicking up water with every step and could feel it seeping through my shoes. I saw my first partner in insanity around mile 3. Another runner sloshing, slipping, and splashing by. By this time, every step had my foot submerged in slush. I could feel the sloshing in my shoes. But there wasn't much I could do about it at that point. It was really so bad. I wasn't cold, so it was almost a little fun. And then I turned around. I had forgotten the winds from the north thing and was promptly reminded as soon as I turned around. Snow whipped my face, painful at times. It was hard to see and I was starting to get cold. It wasn't so fun on the way back. I only saw 2 other crazies out after the first guy.
Had I been home, I would have weighed my clothes to see how much extra weight I had picked up. I probably also would have wrung my clothes out into a bowl just to have that visual comparison. But I was at work, so I had someone take a picture instead. But it really doesn't capture it. My gloves were so wet at the ends, it was like the tips were weighted with lead. I had to kind of hold my hands up or they would have fallen off. The bottoms of my pants were so full of water that I slung water with each step. All 3 layers were soaked through. My cheeks and chin were red from being pelted by the northerly snow.
But I got almost 7 miles in and at a nice pace (all estimated of course). I have no idea how my HR was behaving but I didn't feel like I was working too hard, so I'm hoping it was back to normal. And because I braved the weather, it made it a whole lot easier to blow off swimming tonight. Especially when it looks like this (it's much nicer to stay inside by the fire and just look at it):
6.5 mile run
27 mile ride
Yesterday was a rest day. So I should have been all refreshed today. I felt fine. Not tired. Everything seemed normal. Until I started running at 6am. It was a Z2 run. It starts going up hill after a mile. It's not a huge hill and not all that steep except for one little section. But as soon as I hit the beginning of the hill, bam! I'm in Z3. I thought it was a little weird. It had only been a mile, half of which was Z1, so it's usually pretty hard for me to get to Z3 without a bit more warmup. Oh well, I just kept going and finished the run in record time for a Z2 run. Maybe there was nothing to worry about after all.
And then...
I went for a ride after work. I was supposed to do 4x1min "Z5" sprints (the ones that I never even come close to reaching) and then a 12 mile TT. I wasn't thrilled about the TT - I just wasn't up for the pain of that much Z4. I started on the Z5 and bam! I'm almost immediately in Z5. Z5! I didn't even hit Z5 the last time I rode up Old Stage. Something was wrong. I did 2 more in Z5 and then stopped thinking it might affect my TT which I started shortly after. It didn't take much to get into Z4 and I probably did about half of it in low Z5. It definitely wasn't Z4 perceived effort. I never reached the point where I start saying to myself "when is this going to be done?" or "am I done yet?" or "how about now?" I never got that burning sensation in my legs and lungs. I ended up not doing the full milage, but mainly because I had to pick the dogs up before daycare closed. But I'm not sure if I would have made it another 12 or so miles that I was supposed to do.
Clearly I'm still tired. Or getting sick. But I otherwise feel fine.
AHEM...
So, back in college, in Rochester, NY, I decided to stay a summer just for the hell of it (that and there was an internship in there). Surprisingly it gets really hot in Rochester in the summer. We paid $750/month for a 5 bedroom/2 bath house (I know, crazy) with all utilities included. Except that it didn't have A/C. And so we set up a line of fans in front of the TV and a small baby pool out front and lived off of those freezer pop tube things (they come in a box of like 200 for $5). For those of you who know what I'm talking about, a strange phenomenon occurs when you eat them. You start coughing. For no aparent reason. The blue ones are the worst - they generate the most coughing. Beware the blue. Anyhow, this phenomenom came to be known as Pop-a-cough-atosis.
It seems that there is a similar phenomenon when you run hard. Hard like lots of Z4 intervals. I forgot how much I hate lots of Z4 intervals. I've decided that shorter Z4 intervals are a lot harder than the longer ones. I've been doing the longer distances (1 to 2 miles) up until today when it was 1000m, 800m, and 600m repeats. I must start out much faster thinking that they are shorter and I don't have to conserve enough. But 1000m is a lot closer to a mile than not. Anyhow, they sucked. And they came after 8x100 uphill "Z5" repeats. Did I mention they sucked? As a result, I ended up with this tickle in my throat that just hasn't gone away leaving me trying to clear my throat every few minutes (I assume) much to the annoyance of those around me.
Today's accomplishments:
7 mile run
2400 meter swim
AHEM...
Friday: 16 mile run, 2000m swimSaturday: 5 mile run, 3900m swimSunday: 3.5hr ride (trainer), 2.5 mile runI took a guess on the weather and I was wrong. As a result, I missed out on my 90 mile ride. I kind of screwed myself. But I blame this winter in April crap weather we've been having as of late.
I ended up taking two days off last week, two days in a row in fact. My stress numbers were getting kind of high (low? they are negative numbers) and the week before was intense, so I figured I could use an extra day. It meant rearranging some things, but I think I got the important stuff in. I couldn't get to my long run until Friday, so maybe it's good that I missed my ride. It would have been tough to do on Saturday with how my legs felt afterwards. I've been running this new route (all of twice) now that I've moved. Teller Farms. It's mostly flat, except for when it's not flat. And when it's not flat, it's really not flat. I FINALLY was able to hit Z5 running. All it takes is running a Z3 set (2.75 miles) starting at mile 7ish and doing it all uphill, including a section with a 7% grade. Yes indeed, that'll get my heart rate up there. I think I hit 165 (my ranges are on the low end of the spectrum). Very exciting indeed. Anyhow, it did take its toll on my legs. I took my second ice bath of the season (ouch!) and then treated myself to a hot bath after that (ahhh!). I love my new tub!
Saturday started out with a visit to the bank for a 2.5 hour discussion with my Financial Advisor. I do not recommend this. Yes it was good to finally get things in order after 10+ years of falling into disarray after a slew of uninvolved FAs. I left our meeting absolutey drained. So what did I do? I headed over to the pool where I felt like I was drowning slowly for 90 minutes. I probably should have just gone home to take a nap. I somehow made it through my swim - it did get better as I got more into it (like after 2000m). I went home, had a quick snack, and then went to bed for that much needed nap. I don't really nap and this was no exception, but I did finally get up feeling more refreshed. But I still struggled to put on running clothes and had to force myself out the door (I kept telling myself that it was the least I could do considering that I was possibly blowing off my long ride). I managed just under 5 miles at my normal pace, which was really surprising considering how much my legs hurt. Downhill was just downright painful. It felt really good to finish.
I awoke Sunday morning to dreariness. Actually, I was awoken Sunday morning by a friend who as going to go ride with me. We discussed the impending rain and decided to reschedule. I made it through 3.5 hours on the trainer before I ran out of movie. I forgot that I had only grabbed the first two LOTR from Adam and had gone through them both over the last two weekends. I gave up - not sure if I could have lasted much longer - and threw on my shoes and headed out in the rain for a small run. I really don't mind running in the rain. But I just can't ride it in. Aside from being absolutely miserable, I also don't feel safe. I finished everything up by 3 and then managed to waste the rest of the day doing who knows what (I did unpack a few boxes...)
I'm beat. And so looking forward to stablizer week.
Here's my question of the day... what is the correlation between thinking and training? It seems like as my training increases, my brain activity decreases. I don't want to go so far as to say that it makes me more stupid (because that would be dumb), but it does make me more absent minded.
For example, Wednesday's is doggy day care day. We've been doing this for almost 3 years now. It's a pretty standard routine. And it's not like I ever forget this, especially because I use it as an excuse most of the time to be able to sleep in a little longer since we don't have to go for a walk. And I don't forget - I have always left the house with them on Wednesday mornings. The problem occurs after we leave. And it's also not that I forget to pick them up. It's somewhere in between. There have been several cases where I've left work knowing that I was going to pick them up and somewhere in between getting into my car and going to get them, I forget to stop. The thing is that day care is probably a 1/2 mile from where I work, so it's not like I have a lot of time to forget, but somewhere in those 2 minutes, I forget to turn off into the parking lot and continue driving. I usually remember just as I pass by the turn, but once I made it most of the way home before realizing.
But it's getting worse. This morning I made it all the way to work and was about to pull into the parking lot when I heard some leashes jingling in the back and realized that I had forgotten to drop them off. This is the second time I've done this. A few weeks ago, I actually made it into the parking lot and parked before making this discovery. In fact, it was more than a little embarrassing as someone from my team was pulling in right next to me and there I was with two big dogs in the car, backing out of my parking space.
My short-term memory seems to have all but disappeared. I'll think of something on my way to get water only to have it vanish within seconds. I've found myself repeating things on the way back to my desk (ask X about Y, ask X about Y, ask X about Y) praying the whole time that I don't run into someone and be forced into a conversation that will render my RainMan-esque mantra into oblivion (what was I thinking about? what was I thinking about? what was I thinking about?)
The old fashioned approach of tying a string around a finger is starting to seem reasonable. Except that I then remember the Sesame Street episode with Burt and Ernie and Ernie has strings tied around all of his fingers. Burt asks about each one and each one is a reminder of another finger until he gets to the last one and then can no longer remember what he's supposed to remember. And then I start thinking about Burt and his pigeons and why the hell does he love pigeons. I hate birds. And it goes on and on. And it's really no wonder that I forget...
It dawned on me during my 10 mile run today that I've run 27 miles in the last 3 days. And just under 4 hours (does that count?) So I suppose it's no surprise that my legs are toast right about now. They hurt. I sort of wish I had my massage scheduled for this week rather than last. I think I need it a little more right now. I'm about to curl up with the foam roller - I can't wait! But I hit over 300 on my stress numbers this weekend, which apparently is a big deal to do in a day. I'm still not sure what these numbers mean - I looked it up online and it made sense for the duration of the session, but it has since vanished from memory. But that's what coaches are for.
My hamstring started bothering me a bit today, not that I can really blame it. I went to Teller Farms today since I keep hearing about it and it is so close. I went straight from work which is always sort of iffy. It's hard to run long after a full day of work. But it's sort of like an Ironman, so it's good training. I did 4x300 in "Z5" (ha!) followed by 4x1 miles in Z4. These sprint intervals are a joke for me. If I really take off in a sprint, I make it about 300 feet and I'm about to die and have to stop or slow down. If I take off slower, I barely get to Z3 by the time the interval is over. Fortunately, Teller Farms had some hills for me just as I was starting my intervals. Unfortunately for me, the hills at Teller Farms are not rolling. They are long and not so gradual. I think I did make it to Z4 on the shorter distances. I didn't time things so well and most of my intervals ended up being uphill. In addition, my first mile repeat was in mud. So, not only am I going uphill, I'm sliding all over the place and have about 20 pounds of mud caked to the bottom of my shoes. I almost went down twice. That would have been a sight. The rest of the repeats were a little smoother, but still a lot of hills and I couldn't quite get into Z4 as my legs were starting to talk back to me. Z3.9 was about as good as I could get.
But the weather was nice for a change. Finally! I know it hasn't been that long, but the past few days have been so bad that it's hard to remember the last nice day. There was a bit of wind, but when isn't there wind these days. At least the gusts were only up to 10mph. It was really nice to get outside having felt so cooped up over the weekend. Overall the run was a bit slower than I would have liked, but considering the conditions and the somewhat technical trail, I suppose it wasn't too bad. It's probably good that I got some hills in since my runs from work are pretty flat.
My rest day has officially begun. I don't need to think of training until about 5am on Wednesday. I am so looking forward to it.
Today's accomplishments:
1300 meter swim
10 mile run
I'm so looking forward to going to bed. Training is starting to kick my butt. Last week was about 16 hours. I don't know how I got it all in. I vaguely remember something about getting up at 4:45 for a 15.5 mile run. And then of course, it's impossible to forget the 4.5 hours I spend on the trainer and treadmill yesterday to do my brick. It is so much more mentally exhausting than physically. Especially on the treadmill. I think Adam discovered the trick with the trainer...The Lord of The Rings trilogy. It definitely makes the time go by quickly. Unfortunately I had to go to the gym for the treadmill and there wasn't anything that could keep my attention for more than 3 minutes. What I really wanted to do was close my eyes and really be able to listed to music, but it's a bad idea to close your eyes while on the treadmill.
But now I can sleep...And start it all over again tomorrow.
I just wanted to take a moment and recognize Earth Day. I'll admit that I really didn't do much to celebrate, which is unfortunate. But it just didn't fit in my schedule. I had the dogs with me today so I couldn't bike to work. I drove. By myself. Can't get much worse...
