DOMS!

I discovered yesterday that sitting in a car for two hours while driving for work does not help the delayed onset muscle soreness (ie. DOMS) from a run the day before. Yesterday, however, that was what I did. My legs have been sore since Tuesday - my hamstrings, groin, hip-flexors, butt, quads. The whole shebang. My engine and everything around it. The only time my legs weren't sore was this morning when I did half an hour of easy running on the treadmill at my hotel. It really is amazing how getting the blood flowing can make sore legs feel so much less sore. I did some yoga after that to stretch things out and it felt so good. I'm hoping to get in another yoga/stretch session today.

I was planning to do my bike testing today, but I think I will put it off until tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully one more day of rest will be all that my legs need to feel 100% again.

Last night I watched the "How to do flip turns" video on the Beginner Triathlete website (thanks to my new triathlete friend Navarra). So I've decided to incorporate flip turns into my workout. I have done them before, but got out of the habit. I think I'm going to try the steps that are suggested in the video because I'm not sure I ever did them properly. I taught myself how to do them. I do think that they are beneficial to a swim workout because they make things easier and force you to hold your breath longer at the ends. They are just kind of difficult. I'm going to incorporate them slowly into my workouts and hopefully soon enough I will be doing them throughout the workout with ease. Project Flip-Turn will start tomorrow morning.

Last night I also did some reading of trifuel's latest newsletter, which you can read about in my Vegan Triathlete Nutrition Blog. I gave away all my secrets of quick vegan meals.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Training In the Dead of Winter in Saskatchewan

After a bout of insomnia last night, I decided to use my lack of sleep and tiredness to get in a good swim this morning. A nice 2000m in 1:15, but I'm not really worried about time right now. I'm focusing on form and just getting back into the pool. It feels pretty good and I'm committed to working on my swim technique right now and my arm strength. I am hoping to get in 3 swim workouts this week, 3 runs and at least one bike workout (2 would be nice).

Yesterday I went for a 35-minute x-country ski, which is a lot considering it was pretty cold. We could have went longer, but my eye lashes were sticking together, so tea was had afterwards. Getting outside in this weather is challenging, at best. However, I'm going to keep getting outside a bit and running on the treadmill or on the track.

Last week I was out of town for most of the week at a very intense training workshop for work. This left me less than motivated to do one workout a day, let alone the two that I was hoping for. So I ran twice on the treadmill for 35 minutes each time and got in a good 4km while watching Canada AM. Treadmills are not my favorite things, but I can sure get my heart-rate up on them. I just dislike feeling like a hamster in a cage. Preferably while I'm running, I'm also seeing beautiful trees, some birds, other people, and feeling the wind. None of that happens while running on a treadmill. However, it's what has to happen occasionally in the dead of winter in Saskatchewan.

This week will be less busy for work and I hope to get in all of my workouts. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Let the Countdown Begin

At 3:30 today, it was at least 30oC (close to 40 with the humidex) and the wind was strong (26 to 37km/hr), but I made sure to get on my bike and get in a ride. Ironman is less than a month away and I know that I should be tapering, but I'm not quite ready. Well, maybe I already am, but it's mostly by accident. There are many things going on with me right now and it is inhibiting my training in a major way. However, I still feel ready for the race and can't wait for August 26th to come.

The ride today was hot and hard. I did an out-and-back ride on a route that I use often. It has some hills and it has great scenery and is relatively close to my house. Going out I averaged about 19 km/hr, which sounds more brutal than it was. In my mind, I pretended that I was climbing the huge hills that will be part of the Ironman ride. The wind definitely helped with this and I used my granniest granny gear more than once. It felt weird to use it as I hadn't in so long, but it was good to know that it's there when I need it. That's why I keep my small chain ring. The ride was so hot that I drank two bottles of gatorade and one bottle of water. I had a gel before I went, but it wasn't enough. I'm pretty much obsessed with my glycogen levels while training. It's probably not necessary to be obsessed, but when I was coming back I felt a pang in my stomach and knew that my glycogen was low. As soon as I got home I had a smoothie with tofu, hemp, frozen strawberries (picked by my own hands), and raspberries from my garden. It was great.

While the ride out was super hard, the ride back was awesome! I was anticipating a great ride back, but this one blew my mind. I got up to 66.7 km/hr on my favorite hill to go down (I actually kind of like going up it too), which is the fastest I've ever went on that hill. I could have went faster, but my gears were tapped and my legs were spinning at about 113 rpm. IT WAS AWESOME!!! Such a rush! I was going 34km/hr on the flats and up to 60 km/hr on the smaller hills. It was great, just great. Felt so good.

I even wore my heart-rate monitor today, which I've been trying to use more lately. It's interesting to know where I'm at, but not necessary. I think that I will wear it for Ironman just so that I can keep track of where I'm at.

So in terms of stats, my ride looked like this:
Distance: 42.63 km
Time: 1:46:04
Avg speed: 24.1 km/hr
Max speed: 66.7 km/hr
Average heart rate: 142
Time in zone: 1:44:02

On Friday I went for a 45-minute run in the heat. Basically right now I'm climatizing myself. I am quite afraid of the heat of Penticton and am preparing myself for it to be a hot day and if it's not, I will be just as happy. It was a good run and I was drenched by the end (not really surprising). I forgot to take my stats from my HR monitor before I went for my bike ride, but I would say that I was in the same area for average HR.

I've still be swimming in the outdoor pool Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'm really enjoying it. I think that I'll keep with it just because it's so nice to swim outside. Lately I've been doing some intervals just so that I can remember what it's like to push myself with swimming. I think I'm not really pushing myself because I know that during the race it's just about getting through it. However, it would help the whole race if I felt strong in the swimming, which is why I'm doing the intervals.

My next triathlon is in two weeks and I'm pretty excited for it. This will be my fifth year doing this particular triathlon and it used to be my "A" race. It has an odd bike ride at 63km and a 13km run (usually it's 40km and 10km, respectively) after the 1.5km swim. I'm not really prepared for such a short race, but it'll be fun anyway. I don't really expect to beat my PB that I set last year, but it would be cool to be close. I'll start to taper next week. That's kind of the beauty of putting a race 2 weeks before Ironman: it forces me to taper and recover in the weeks that I need to before the BIG one.

So the countdown begins: Ironman is a mere 4 weeks, as in 28 days, away. Bring it on!

The Earth will keep Revolving Around the Sun despite my Ironman Time

I had a rough night last night and my anxiety levels were very high. This morning I woke up feeling like I had just been hit by a bus, not unlike what Michael Rasmussen must be feeling today as he watches his fellow cyclists leave him behind. I watched the Tour de France this morning, but was vibrating the whole time. My heart-rate was elevated even though I was not spinning my legs on the bike, pumping my arms up a hill, or slicing my arms through the water. I am working on a post about my anxiety and its effect on my training... or maybe it's on my training affecting my anxiety. Either way, they go hand-in-hand these days.

So I took the day off of work and am glad that I did. I did some meditating, some chilling out, I chirped at the birds, and I went swimming. I did 6 x 200m intervals in the water and was worried that I didn't have a stop watch to see what my time was. Then I had a thought... does time really matter? Does it REALLY matter if I shave off a few seconds off of my 200m time? The reason I do intervals is to be faster for the 4000m swim I have to do in exactly one month. Since I am trying really hard not to have any time goals for Ironman, I really shouldn't be worried about times at all. I should be focusing on getting in my long rides/runs/swims and doing intervals the rest of the time. It doesn't matter how long the intervals take me - what is important is that I do them and push myself. Maybe it matters to a pro or even someone trying to win their age category, but it does not matter for me at this time. Realizing this took tons of pressure off of me. So I just pushed through the 200m intervals and tried to get my heart-rate up as much as possible. I tried hard to make my arms feel mushy and pretty much succeeded.

I think I just need to keep realizing what is important and what isn't. Priorites are important at this point.

Rest and Inspiration!

I can't believe it's been over a week since my last update! There are a number of reasons for this: a 4-day weekend with no real training, the heat may have gone to my head, and the Tour de France is so controversial that I can hardly concentrate on anything at all!

Last Tuesday I did my first lane swim in an outdoor pool. It felt quite fabulous and now I'm trying to make my two swims during the week be in the outdoor pool. It takes a lot of planning to take my swimming gear to work, the pool, to work, and back home again. That is probably my biggest challenge right now: planning. Especially when I'm trying to find a way to carry all of my gear for bike riding AND swimming in one day, all based around work. Whew! It's tiring!

That being said, I'm growing ever-more confident that I will, indeed, complete my first Ironman. I feel stronger than I ever have before and I've been training in the heat to prepare my body for the hell that will be Penticton in August. Running in 35oC heat always causes me to have thoughts like, "I have to stop. I can't do this." However, I overcome those thoughts with how it is good training and I can most definitely do this! This mental training is just as important as the physical training that I'm doing.

Last weekend I had a 4-day weekend. There is a wonderful music festival in the boreal forest that feeds my soul with music, food, wonderful people, and lots of dancing. It is the one weekend a year that I leave my running shoes at home. Despite it being an inconvenient time of year, it is very important to me to have this weekend of solace from training. It's important so that I can continue my training with vigour and passion. That being said, it is also kind of difficult to get back into the swing of training once a lull has occurred. So I am taking it slowly but surely. This weekend I'm planning a 6-hour bike ride with a 1/2 hour run afterwards.

I have also been trying to fit in time to watch the Tour de France and to tend to my garden, both equally important to me. The garden is mostly weeded and I'm feeling better about it. The Tour, however, is a gong show. Doping and controversy hover over the race like a dark cloud and it's discouraging to watch. Rasmussen, the man in the yellow jersey, has just been kicked out of the race by his team. I imagine that his team found out he has been doping or transfusing his blodd and his team wanted to save their ass. As an athlete and a cyclist, it makes me a bit jaded. I understand that these riders are under a lot of pressure, but it hurts the riders, the sport, and the fans who defend them continuously. Not to mention their sponsors. After so many years of the TdF, will people continue to put up with this bullshit? I am not sure. Every year I watch it as much as I can (although this year has been sparse because of so much training and other stuff going on in my life) and I even get cable just to watch it. Perhaps I won't do that next year, I'll just read the cycling news networks to find out who is doping, transfusing, or getting kicked off of his respective team. Or perhaps I'll be a die-hard and just put up with it. At this point, I have to wonder if anybody in the tour ISN'T doping. Oh well, I'll just keep watching so much and hope that a something good happens.

As for the rest of my training, it's all coming along nicely. I'm incorporating more yoga and meditation, which are treating me right. My body feels so good now. I think I could do Ironman right now. It's a great feeling for sure.

Long rides are great!

Friday night I was lame. All of my friends were out dancing and I was at home sulking at the fact that I was getting up at 6am to go riding. I love it and hate it at the same time. On Saturday morning at 6:30am there is almost no traffic, the sun was shining, the air was a little nippy, but it felt good. I did a good 70km at a good pace:
Distance: 69.65km
Time: 2:46:47
Avg speed: 25.1km/hr
Max: 39.9
We had a head- to cross-wind coming back, but I had a ride back to the city which was nice. I used a PowerGel on the ride and it helped a lot. It felt good to ride for such a long time, even though my left foot keeps cramping up and my butt area was kind of sore after that. Small prices to pay, I suppose.

On Friday I had my first swim in many weeks and it felt pretty good. I'm not very worried about the swim, so I just feel like I'm just maintaining right now. I'm just not motivated in that area.

Last Thursday morning I ran the same 4.8km in 33 minutes, which is 2 minutes faster than Tuesday. On Tuesday I did intervals and on Thursday, I just tried to keep up a faster pace to see how it would pan out. It felt better than the intervals, but I think I need to do faster intervals and maybe some hills. Basically I have to get up earlier to fit it all in. That night I climbed hill intervals with my women mountain bike group, which was uber fun. After the hill climbing, one woman and I did a nice half our, fast-paced ride. I got home completely rejuvenated.

On Sunday I did my first mountain bike race of the season. 1:21 of high-paced single-track, hill-climbing, and stellar down-hills. Fun times!

Last night (ie. Monday) I did about an hour of swimming at a pace. I did some 500m intervals and it felt good, but again I was not motivated to move my butt. In total, I did probably around 1800m.

This morning I went running in the windy cold rain and then biked to work. Tonight I'm going to hit the trainer for about an hour while watching Sex and the City. Should be fun!

It's official... marathon #1, here I come!

For the past three or four years, I have wanted to run the Saskatoon marathon. For a mish-mash of reasons, it has not happened. One year I had a stress fracture in my foot, one year I chose mountain biking over running (which I will do most days of the week), and other various reasons. However, I have decided that this is my year. The run of Ironman scares me the most, so I figure why not curb that fear by torturing myself with a marathon first? I mean, so what if it will be my first running race since the 1500m race in grade 8... it'll be fun, right? RIGHT? Whatever. So on May 27th, I will be running 42.2km in Saskatoon. I will be wearing number 107! I love it when I get good numbers; first of all, #7 is my favorite number and second of all, it's my extension number at work! How cool is that?! Well, I am excited.

Last year on marathon day, it was COLD and RAINY. I remember this because I decided to mountain bike in it. While the weather was not ideal for either sport, I would probably have chosen running over mountain biking the sloppy, cold Silverwood race. I remember biking home, almost crying because my hands were frozen, I was covered with mud from head to toe (literally), and I was very hungry because I forgot to bring food and they forgot that I was vegan. I was very happy to be home after that one.

To be honest, I don't feel even close to being prepared. A friend of mine kind of panicked on my the other night when she found out that I wasn't increasing my distances right now. My coach and I have talked about our strategy for training for Ironman and it applies to the marathon as well. We're focusing on doing intervals, zone 4+ training as opposed to training in zone 3. Thus far, I can easily run 10km at a relatively slow pace. Before the marathon, the biggest distance I'm going to run is 20+km (ie. two laps of the Idylwyld-Circle Drive loop). The rest of my training is going to be shorter distance, accumulated over the week, at a higher intensity. Zone 3 is for suckers!

To get back to my training update, last week I did one run while I was in North Battleford for a conference. However, the weekend was a black hole. The only real exercise I did was dancing, helping Luke move, and some extended walking. I wonder if they would let me dance the Ironman?

Monday I was back in the pool and it felt so good! I was a little pouty on Monday morning because I was late and I sat on the deck outside with my bike helmet on, my stuff packed, and looked at Luke like the 3-year-old defiant child I used to be and said, "I don't WANT to go swimming! I want to go back to BED!" Of course, being an adult, I knew that I didn't HAVE to do anything I didn't want to and Luke echoed this sentiment. While I was still quite sour on the whole idea of spending so much energy in the pool so early in the morning, I always love the first push off the wall and feeling like a dolphin as I do the dolphin kick underwater halfway to the other side. The swim turned out to be great. I had the lane to myself (it's paper time for students) and my coach let me use the flippers for the butterfly. "I'm a TRIATHLETE - what do I need to do the butterfly for?" is what I used to think, but I've changed my sentiment to "Swimming is fun and keeping freestyle and swimming fun is to try new things and learn." I find there is so much to learn about swimming. I've been lane swimming for the past 7 years or so and I still feel like I have so much to learn. I get water up my nose when I do flip turns, my pull for freestyle definitely has to be worked on (it would help if I had some biceps), and I always have to work on my breathing.

Life has been settling down a bit and I'm starting to find my training rhythm and I'm biking to work 4 out of 5 days. Last night I wanted to make some phone calls so I got on my trainer and dialed away. I only got in one short call with my brother and one with a friend that I don't talk to enough, but that meant I spent 45 minutes on my trainer. Tonight I'm hoping to get in over an hour because tomorrow is REST DAY!!!! At lunch, I hit the treadmill and did 2.11 miles in 25 minutes and burned 218 calories (like I care how many calories I burned). Life of training is good right now.

I just felt like running

Tuesday I was out of town for work, so I knew that I had to get a workout in before we left at 7:30am. I woke up at 6:09 and was out the door by 6:15. It wasn't the best for my performance, but I just wanted to get it in. I got in a good 30 minute workout. It felt great to be out in the fresh air and I'm glad I did because the weather has taken a turn to being really wet. Wet rain and snow has been coming down since last night. I didn't get home until 7:00 last night, so I was way too tired and hungry to do a workout before the 10:00 bedtime I've been trying to adhere to.

Today, being Wednesday, is my day off and I'm glad. So I'm enjoying being inside, watching the wet drops come down and I can know that I'm not missing any workouts due to weather. Work is busy and I'm on out of town on Thursday and Friday. I guess my running shoes will be used while I'm away and I might be able to get in a swim on Friday afternoon somewhere. I kind of miss the pool... I never thought I'd say that!

Like a dolphin!

Last night I had an event for work, which included supper. The staff did "all right" accommodating for me. However, think of this scenario:
A room full of "the good ol' boys" club of agrologists (ie. fairly conservative farms who all have trucks and absolutely LOVE their Canadian beef) mingling with alcohol and talk of the disappearing family farm. The announcer then asks the TWO people who requested vegan or vegetarian meals to please raise their hands. I am not usually meek about my diet, but I did not want to raise my hand. I'm not sure if lynching is outlawed for herbivores! So I felt a little silly after that, having had everyone judge me based on my choice of diet. However, I went on as if nothing happened and I got my food first.

The staff then brought out this TINY bit of couscous with some tofu on top of it. I have to admit the tofu was very tasty (apparently much more tasty than the salmon that everyone else ate), but there just wasn't enough. I even loaded up on salad and veggies from the buffet. Plain and simply there was not enough protein to fuel my ever-increasing training. However, there was not much I could do about it. I got home after 9:30 from the boring-ass meeting and bedtime these days is 10:00 in order to easily facilitate the 6:00 wake-up time.

So I went to bed hungry and got up hungry. I didn't eat until after swimming, which is probably why I felt so sluggish in the pool. Actually, sluggish doesn't quite describe it. It was more like I felt completely unmotivated to keep up with my lane-mates. So I lagged behind and barely pushed hard enough to breathe hard at the end of a lap. I did slug out about 2900m, but I didn't even feel like I had worked out by the end of it. It could also be that my muscles just aren't where my lungs are, in terms of endurance.

Tomorrow is my first race of the season - a short indoor triathlon. The weather is supposed to be beautiful so I can't help but feel tempted to just skip it and do my own duathlon outside, but I helped to organize it so I can't really bail even if I wanted to. It should be fun anyway. It's always a nice reunion of the triathlon community. I am going to eat so much food tonight! Here I come with carbo-loading and lots of protein!