Week 2 of 20 Ironman Training

Week 2 of Ironman training has come to a close. I got all my workouts in this week and I'm feeling good.  I'm eating good and I got the rest I needed this week. (Rest is essential!)

 

Best Sherpa ever has his "Race Face" on.

I ended this week of training on Saturday with the Pinehurst International triathlon. I thought this might be another rainy race weekend but it turned out beautiful. Pinehurst is a short distance from my home. So it's kind of like my hometown race. 

 

The setting for this race is kind of like something you'd see on a postcard. The swim starts on a white sandy beach. The water was a very chilly 72 degrees. Perfect for a wetsuit. I was able to get in the water before my swim wave and get acclimated to the water temperature. I haven't swam 1500 meters in quite some time. So I really just wanted to get out of the water in under 45 minutes. 

 

 

 

We took off and once I got my goggles situated right I got into a good rhythm. To my surprise I came out of the water in 38 minutes and change and I was pretty surprised and happy with that. The bike leg was longer than a normal international distance it was 29 and a half miles. There were some hills on the course that didn't seem very significant riding in the car but once I got through with the bike course my legs were trashed. I was so glad to get off that bike seat! 

 

 

Now just to run 6.2 miles. The hills around the lake were pretty significant for the run portion. My goal was to do the best I could.  I ran the flats and down the hills and I walked at a good pace up the hills. My competition was a faster swimmer than I was and an equal biker but I was able to pass her on the run portion and stay a little ahead the whole time. This was my slowest 10K to date at an hour and 18 minutes but I was doing all I could with those hills. I was happy to finish in under 4 hours as the time limit was four and a half hours. 

 

 

 

I really got a long bike and a long run in on the same day this weekend. On Sunday I was supposed to do a 15-minute run but I was really tired and I ended up walking the whole thing. I'm thinking about switching my long run to the mid-week next week so that I have a few days in between long run and long bike. Tomorrow starts week 3 of my 20 weeks and I'm looking forward to another week.

Week #1 of 20 - Ironman Training

Week #1 of 20 Ironman Training

Ironman Chattanooga is September 25^th, 2016

Quality over Quantity

(oops, its sideways)

My first week of Ironman training I learned that quality is more important than quantity.  This was how my workout schedule looked at the beginning of the week with 10 hrs and 45 mins of workouts scheduled.  I had worked several long days early in the week and was more tired than normal so I actually took two rest days. (And yes I felt guilty).   Part of my cross training this week was golf.  I had never played before and I got the opportunity and it was a nice change of pace.

At some point, I will figure this picture thing out.

 At the end of the week on Saturday I was able to do a good long bike ride.

Mauricio, my fellow triathlete, had asked me a couple of days earlier if I wanted to do the Assault on Morrow Mountain ride with him.  Neither of us had a clue how hard this ride was going to be. There were 2 ride options.  One was to turn right on Valley Drive and go into the park and go up Morrow Mountain and the other was to skip the mountain and turn left.  We had already decided that this time we would skip the mountain.  It was a beautiful day but it was just a lot of miles.  I had not ridden that far yet this year, so I was pushing myself.   The back half of the ride was hillier than the front half and we were told not to push so much in the first half of the ride that you couldn’t make it back.  So we paced ourselves so that we didn't run out of “umph”. 

My Pastor, D.J. Harry, has talked about hiding God's Word in your heart because they're would be times when you really need it and there were definitely times when I needed it on that ride.  I was able to pull out Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”.  Multiple times on the ride there were huge hills that had you flying down one side in your biggest ring and creeping up the next hill in your granny gear.  Those were the times that I would literally dissect Philippians 4:13 out loud as I was climbing those hills.  There were  times during the end of the ride when I was mentally struggling.  I was tired. We were on our fourth hour and I was really exhausted mentally.  I felt like I was suffering.   I really just wanted to stop and lay my bike down in someone’s front yard and just lay there beside it until someone came to get me.  I prayed for the Lord to give me strength to finish.  I was tired and honestly I just wanted to cry.  I could literally feel the tears about to well up in my eyes.  But I knew that crying was not going to help because then I’d have blurry eyes and wouldn’t be able to see.   I prayed that I needed to feel the His strength and you know it wasn’t long before I could literally feel the Lord give me strength to finish those last 8 - 10 miles.  Once the ride was over, I was so thankful to be done and I just thanked God for keeping us both safe.   I was very thankful.  It was time to eat!

 I ended my workout weekend Sunday with a run which was really a walk/run.  I was tired from the whole weekend from the long ride and I just came to the realization that walk/running was better than nothing at all.  So after a 15 minute warm up, I did 2 minute intervals: 2 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking for the entire hour.  That was a good combination. 

I did practice my fueling on the 4+ hour ride on Saturday.  I had 2 small egg burrito’s for breakfast that morning and I pre-fueled with 2 scoops of UCAN 45 mins before the start of the ride.  I tried the Vanilla cream and really did like it better than the Orange I have been using.  At the 2.5 hour mark I had a LaraBar and some Base Salts. More Base salts 45 mins later and another LaraBar at the 4 hour mark.  I did use sunscreen prior to starting the ride, and reapplied after the 2 hour mark every hour.  The only place I missed was on both hands near my watchband.  Note to self:  Watch it next time.