OOOOUUUUCCCHHHH!!!!

WEEKLY WORKOUTS
SWIMMING 2:00 (2 days)
BIKING 7:55 (3 days)
RUNNING 4:15 (3 days)
WEIGHTS 1:15 (2 days)

This past week was probably my most challenging so far. I am beat up!!!!!! Seriously, I don't think my body was meant for this type of torture! After doing a 1/2 Ironman and 112 mile bike ride my body surprisingly felt good. And by good, I mean I didn't think I was going to die. Andrew kind of took it easy on me by only having me do 1 set of leg weights 2x this week instead of the 3 sets. I thought I was off to a good start. Mentally I was prepared for what the weekend had in store for me. A 112 mile bike on Saturday and a 2.5 hour run on Sunday (should've been about a 15 mile run). I knew I could do it because dammit this is what I've been training for. In my mind I'm capable and although I might be slow, my body can do it too. Or so I thought...

Friday's swim was a 4000 yard, but in my wetsuit. I've only worn my $500 wetsuit 2x in races. The 1st time was @ St A's and I couldn't tell if it was the wetsuit I didn't like or the waves. Then I wore it in Knoxville and felt pretty good, despite not having a great swim time. Then I swam Macon and had an awesome swim, sans wetsuit. I got into it at the gym Friday night while sweating my ass off. Note to self, don't put on wetsuit while sweating. I'm not really sure what my options are in Atlanta considering this heat and humidity we're dealing with right now. So I somehow manage to get in this wetsuit even though it's not on fitting exactly the way it should. I seriously felt like a stuffed sausage cooking on a hot grill. I get into the water and do a warm up. Hmmm, the body is not feeling right. Maybe after I warm up for a bit I'll feel slightly better. Yeah, not so much. My arms felt sore and tight, even though I stretched. The water felt heavy with every stroke. I couldn't figure out what the issue was. Could it maybe be my wetsuit? CRAP!!! I also start burning up by the time I got to my 1st 1000 yards. I decided to stick it out and just take the wetsuit off after 2000. AHHHH, relief! I felt so much better with that thing off of me. If you talk to anyone that does an Ironman, they'll tell you that a wetsuit is essential (unless of course you're doing one where the water temp is too high to be wetsuit legal). Ok, this might cause a problem for me considering I'm planning to wear this wetsuit in a little over a month. Now I'm not even thinking about my stroke or how I'm swimming. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do to feel more comfortable in this wetsuit. I have a sleeveless one that I might end up resorting to if I don't feel better. I now need to do a swim workout every week in my wetsuit to start getting used to it. At least I better get used to it!

I was kind of psyched to take on a 112 miles again on the bike. I know I can do it, so why not do it 2 weekends in a row? I started off the morning eating a Cliff Bar. Unfortunately I was only able to get 1/2 of it down because I felt a little nauseas. I met a couple of friends (thanks Tim and Patti) for them to do the 1st 48 miles with me. As soon as I got on the bike I started to sweat because the humidity was so high. Luckily I had extra fluids on ice in my car and knew I would need all of that and more. It wasn't too hot 1st thing in the morning, but the humidity plus the prior weekend's activities got to my legs. Around mile 25 I started feeling it and not in a good way. I don't know what was wrong, but my legs had trouble moving. They seriously did not want to go. I was taking in salt pills, liquid nutrition and gel, but it didn't seem like anything was helping. The other issue was every time I burped (and believe me, I burp a lot), I burped up liquid. This means that the nutrition I was taking in, probably wasn't staying in me. Then the heat came out. We finished our 1st loop and I knew it was going to be a long day, especially since my last 64 miles would be by myself. I put more liquids on my bike, drank some more in the parking lot and Tim was nice enough to go to the store and get me some more liquids so I could refill my bottles while I was on the course. I debated whether to do the 66 route or another 48. This played out in my head for quite some time and it wasn't until I got to the turnoff for the 48 that I decided to cut this ride short. My legs weren't getting better. It wasn't getting any cooler out. And I definitely wasn't keeping my nutrition down. No joke, I was whimpering while riding. I felt like a granny, but to be honest, it didn't matter how slow I was going because I was out there doing it. It was a long, hot day for and I could've given up a number of times but I didn't. I was definitely tempted to hitch a ride back to my car. I was scheduled to do a 5 minute run after my bike. I managed to run for 2.5 minutes, walk for 1 minute and run for another 1.5 minutes. I stretched, but I didn't really feel any relief. I made sure I got some chocolate milk in me right away for recovery and bought some ice for an ice bath. The ice bath felt fantastic and I stretched some more. I was completely dehydrated and had a massive headache which lasted into the morning. I tried drinking as much water as I could, but it didn't do the trick.

I woke up the next morning and wanted to get an early start to my 2.5 hour run. The problem with starting earlier is the humidity is worse. The problem with starting later is the temperature is hotter. No matter what decision I made, it was going to suck. I chose earlier. I decided that I would run a mile, walk a minute. That's my plan B for Ironman. Plan A is to run longer then that. By the time I got to my 2nd mile I was already hurting and saw a long morning ahead of me. The humidity and I were in a battle with each other and the humidity won. I stopped to refill my water bottle at Caribou, which was mile 4ish. Luckily it was ice cold, which felt amazing. I wore one of my race belts that has pouches, so I put salt pills and gel in it. What I didn't do was put the salt tabs in a plastic baggie. Big mistake when you're sweating bullets. Luckily a few of them were in decent enough shape that I was able to take them. I should've just gotten salt packets and taken that instead, but I didn't think of that until I just typed it. I was diligent with drinking and taking my nutrition, but I probably needed some Gatorade for the electrolytes. Even with everything I took, I was hurting. My legs didn't want to move. My mind was battling the positive and negative thoughts. I stopped more times then I can count. To add insult to injury, my lower back started killing. Serious pain. I stopped to stretch so many times and it just hurt. It hurt when I walked. It hurt when I ran. No matter what, I was getting my workout in, no matter how bad it sucked. I got to mile 6.92 and turned around, which was 1:18 into my run. I figured I could go a couple minutes over the 1:15 turnaround point and get in close to 14 miles. I thought that I would feel better because the humidity had come down and most of the way back would be downhill. Ok, so positive thinking doesn't always help. It got so much worse. I ended up walking probably 6 of the final miles. Let me tell you, not so much fun walking and I would've rather run more, but my body said no (I think maybe my mind said no a couple of times too). I finally got Gatorade with a couple of miles to go. I pushed myself to run as much of the final stretch as possible. There's a hill at the very end that I allowed myself to walk to, but I the deal was I had to run up it. I don't know where the energy came from, but I ran up it and @ a 9:50 pace.

I got home to find my weekly workouts which included 6 hill repeats @ Mt. Kennesaw. Uh, yeah, no clue how that will happen with the way this body is feeling. I sent Andrew a note about my weekend workouts. He said my body was telling me I needed a break and he adjusted my schedule to be more of a recovery week. I kind of feel like a wimp, but if I was really a wimp, I wouldn't have done a 96 mile ride on Saturday followed by an almost 14 mile run on Sunday. Maybe this was a good thing to happen to me. Sometimes you need some shitty workouts to remind you of the good ones. I've had them and channeling those this week.