The latter part of this week was certainly better than how it began. I was leaving Portugal via a detour in Spain which meant an eight hour road trip to Madrid on Monday, and a marathon 25 hour trip from Madrid to Miami two days later. You can read about THAT here. However, I was told by my Wolfpack Alpha that this weekend began the “real” IronMan weekend training … as opposed to whatever it was we were doing before. I got home on a Wednesday, and on Thursday I was at it like no one’s business.
I feel like all the riding I did in the mountains in Portugal gave me strength which serves me well on the bike and run. However, I fell behind on the swim as I did not have access to a pool and did mostly mile swims in a river. Good, but not enough. So, its time to focus, increase the miles, and slowly teach my body to keep going for a bit longer than its used to. I am weirdly excited about it all …..
I do need to pay attention to nutrition, a topic that I have been avoiding simply because I am totally overwhelmed by it. A lot of my IronMan Florida cohorts are talking about what they use, their strategies, the things they are trying out and I feel I need to pay attention. So far, what I do works: I have Accelerade in my water bottles, and GU Gels everywhere. Nothing else goes into my system and I tend to like it that way. However, I have never been racing for over 14 hours so I am not sure that this is going to be enough to get me to the finish line. And if I don’t cross it because of my nutrition, after all this effort, I will be seriously upset. But just the thought that I need to think about nutrition is already intimidating. Oh boy …
In the meantime … this is how this week went:
Monday: Travel
Tuesday: RUN. I did a short run around Madrid. Can’t really consider it training but it was important for me to show myself that I was still committed and got it done.
Wednesday: Travel, and it was one heck of a trip!
Thursday: BIKE. Slider, my bike, was at Ultrabikex getting some love so I went to an awesome spinning class instead. It was what the doctor ordered to help with my jet lag.
Friday: SWIM. A totally crappy swim where I wasn’t going anywhere fast. About 2,800 meters.
Saturday: RUN. 16 miles with training partner Cynthia. It felt good to catch up with her, and fortunately it was somewhat cloudy giving me a soft re-introduction to hot and humid training.
Sunday: BIKE. 70 miles hot as well but I felt fine. By night, my legs were stiff and sore and I was grateful when I found my foam roller gathering dust under my bed.
I am SO ready for this week. How about you? How’s your training going?
