Recovery Week - Oh How I Loved Thee!

Last week was recovery week and I needed it.  I was still working out, but an hour a day, sometimes less.  Good times.

My body is still needing gobs of sleep.  I think that's partly getting older and partly just diggin' my mattress time.  I feel so bad for Steve, because he gets much less sleep than I do.  I'm absolutely the queen of mean when I don't get enough rest.  Workout?  Not unless you count throwing a fit.

With 8 weeks to go, this whole half Ironman thing is starting to seem like a realistic goal.  I could actually do this race within the allowed time frame.  I'm trucking along on the training plan, picking off each workout.  And every workout - even the tough ones - is a confidence builder.  

Me, a Iron Distance Triathlete.  Imagine that.

Bike Week Completed

Put another long training week into the books.  This was bike week.

For several weeks I've been telling Steve there was something wrong with my handle bars since I've had consistent pain in the muscle under my right shoulder blade.  I couldn't figure it out - bars too low, bars uneven?  Steve thought it was probably my posture on the bike.

Steve and I went out for a ride yesterday to check my bike fit.  As we were getting our bikes ready to ride I really looked a handle bars.  My left brake lever/hood was very slightly rotated inward.  Stevie muscled it to the right spot.  Voilà!  No more back pain.  After watching me ride, he also raised my bike seat.  That helped a lot and I'm getting a lot more power on the climbs.

This is recovery week.  Oh, yeah.  I've got a long run on Saturday, but that's my only "all out" workout this week.  I'm very, very excited to have a nice, light training load.

Three Weeks Down, Ten to Go

I'm officially through week 3 of the Half Ironman plan. In the last 21 days, I've been rock solid on training. I did miss the biking section of my workout yesterday, because it was rainy. That's the only miss in the last 3 weeks..

Here is what I've learned so far:

Treat each week as a unit.  I can shift around workouts during the week, but there's no working ahead into next week or carrying over missed workouts. Every Sunday night, I hang the new week's training calendar on the fridge. Every Sunday is a victory and every Monday is a fresh start.

Sunday must be a rest day. I've been trying to use Thursday as my rest day because I need to commute round trip to Burbank. That ends up being a 14 hour workday which starts at 5:30 AM. There's no way I can do a workout on Thursday. Guess what, a 14 hour workday is not restful and recuperative. I need Sunday Funday for my own mental health. I can do a swim or a bike ride with my husband, but I can't do some mega-workout.

Get enough sleep. Right now, I need between 8 and 9 hours of sleep each night. When I'm not in full training I need about 6 or 7 hours. I'm incredibly fortunate that I can telecommute some mornings. I can sleep until 7:45 then immediately start working at 8. When other people take their lunch break, I commute to the office (a whole 3 miles!)

Not everyone can be supportive. No one can always be supportive. And that's okay.

Finishing the Swimming Week

My occasional, nagging worry is that I'm simply not training enough to complete a half Ironman.  How is working out for two hours a day going to prepare me for a seven hour race?

On Sunday, I figured it out.  This training plan works in week long blocks.  For one week you do a specific workout repeatedly without days off for recovery.  Last week it was swimming.  That's fun on Monday and Tuesday.  Then the daily fatigue accumulates and by the end of the week, you're training on some tired muscles.  

On Sunday, I swam the slowest two mile swim in the history of universe.  It took me over an hour. I was swimming every lap almost 12 seconds slower than I swam earlier in the week.  But I completed it and trained through the fatigue.  That's what's getting me prepped for race day.

The swim took so long, that my SPF100 Sport sunscreen washed away.  Now I have a butt like the Coppertone baby.