Refocus on my training...and what cartoon character are you related to?

With all my running injuries (feels like shin splints and plantar fascitis (sp?) and IT band issues all rolled up into one) I have come to terms with what my Ironman run is going to look like...a 26.2 mile walk, with some jogging interspersed here and there. So I am going to start walking as much as possible to get used to the feel and to get extra miles in. Today I had a good excuse, my roommate's car wouldn't start so I let her use my truck and I walked to work, about 3.5 miles. Tonight I'll take the long way home and try to make it 9 or 10 miles for the day.

I feel that if I traced my lineage back I would find Popeye somewhere in my bloodline. Every time I start ramping up my swim volume my forearms become more noticably massive. Not something cool like my shoulders or biceps, but my forearms. Are women attracted to big forearms? Now all I need is an anchor tattoo and a corncob pipe...

My body is falling apart

I guess I've been lucky for the past 18 months or so...I've had the ability to work out hard and not really feel the effects the next day, which would allow me to train again. Lately it seems like I feel the effects of a workout days later...and not necessarily a hard workout. I guess old age is catching up to me. Anyway all this stems from 3 runs I had last week:

Wednesday: ran 5 miles at a fairly fast pace (for me)

Thursday: was only able to do 4 miles at track (including warm-up and cool-down), ankles and shins were bothering me

Saturday: I went for a "run"at Kit Carson Park, which degenerated into something that resembled a 1-minute run/3 minute walk. I had nothing in me, plus my legs were still smarting from Wednesday.

So I need to change up my Ironman plan. I need to start walking A LOT.

Speaking of old age, Jen Ferkins threw me a birthday party and it was awesome! Ate some tacos, ate some cake, watched an episode of the Office, tequila, more food, and Brian in a gold bikini...all in all it was a good time.

Below is last week's effort. It was a recovery week and fairly light.

Slowly improving...but is it enough?

Biked for an hour today. I ended up doing 67% of my assigned workouts this week. I guess in the grand scheme of things I might not be able to finish this Ironman in November but I at least got in 10 solid hours of training, which in theory is keeping me healthier.

Back to feeling lousy

After giving my friend Amanda a swim lesson in the ocean, I went off for a bike and run. My training schedule said a 6-hour bike, but my goal was to just get out and do as much as possible. I ended up riding 2 hours and running 25 minutes. I think a lot of this was due to boredom, I need to start riding with other people so I have someone to talk to.
Also the good feeling I had last night didn't last, I am back to feeling lousy.

Felt good...for 1 day out of the last 7 months

Tonight I forced myself to go to LA Fitness and get in an hour spin class. Once that was out of the way, I decided that since I was already there and since I was way behind on my swim volume for the week that I would get in a quick 1000y. I finished all that and I when I got out of the pool, I realized that I actually felt GOOD. No pressure in the back of the head, no sleepyness, and I actually felt like I had some energy. I couldn't remember the last time I felt this close to normalcy. If I could feel like this all the time I'd have no problem dropping weight and being able to finish the Ironman in November.

Anatomy of a missed workout

The good news: I ran my 2 hours on Wednesday without making my blisters worse. I just took it slow and threw in a bunch of walking. 9.25 miles total. I would have liked to go further but I'm not going to beat myself up for that.

The bad news: I missed my Thursday night track workout. I see a definite pattern with these missed workouts. Here's how it went down yesterday:
8am-noon: looking forward to the workout
Noon: start getting a headache and feeling tired
Noon-4pm: headache gets worse. I feel like someone is stabbing me in the back of the eyes.
4pm: go home and lie down, fall asleep until 7:30
7:30-wake up still feeling headachy and groggy. I try to gather the energy to go swim but it never happens.
So then since I took a nap I'm unable to fall asleep until about 4am. Ugh.

Feet don't fail me now

Yesterday's (Tuesday's) effort started off with a spin class at lunch. I was all jazzed about meeting Breakaway at Fiesta Island after work for a speed brick, but as 5:00 approached it was obvious I wasn't going to get out of work on time-I generally need to leave a little before 5 to get to Fiesta or La Jolla by 5:45. So I left work around 5:40 (visualize shoulders slumped, head down, with sad Charlie Brown music playing in the background). As I stepped outside the weather was so beautiful that I just pulled my bike out of the back of the truck and hopped on...I didn't worry about fuel, water, sunscreen, or the fact that my clothes reeked from me accidentally leaving them in the gym bag overnight with my wet swim towel and suit. So with my keys and gus jammed into my aero bottle (no bento box or pockets) I did a quick ride the the end of the 56 bike path and back, about 15 miles.
Once back I decided to complete the brick and go for a run, but not too far because I was wearing a brand new pair of Sauconys that hadn't been broken in. I ran for 20 minutes and felt fine, but last night I realized there were 2 spots on my right foot where the shoes rubbed the skin right off. Ugh.
Tonight's effort is a 2-hour run. I am putting band aids all over my feet and hopefully I'll be able to put in a good effort without injuring myself.
FYI yesterday's effort = 1:55 on the bike, 0:20 on the run

Disclaimer about last weeks effort...

One reason why my training volume was down-I had an epic dentist appointment Tuesday; 1/2 of a deep cleaning and a filling replaced. 2 hours of skull-vibrating goodness. So I sure wasn't in the mood to work out that day! I think Wednesday's effort was poor too.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Am I back? Nah

I am slowly getting in more and more training. I wouldn't say I am back 100%, as last week's training log had 18.3 hours to do and I only finished 10.25...or about 55%...but each week I am putting in a little more than the prior week. Any motivational/inspirational words would help! Here is last week's volume...

Last night I was supposed to swim 3600 yards. I made it to 1500 (0:40) before I had to stop...my stomach was on fire (forgot to take a Zantac), and my sinuses were clogged for several hours afterwards. Maybe I need to invest in some nose plugs and see if that stops the problem.

America's Finest City half-marathon 8/17/08

This is just a quick update as I am trying to get caught up with my blogging. I thought this race was great! This was my first official "half-marathon"...all the other times I've run 13.1 miles there have been a bunch of swimming and biking right beforehand. I ended up running it in 2:40, which is a PR for me but I'm surprised that it took me that long when I ran the distance at the Wildflower Long course in 2:52 (a tough run course with a tough bike beforehand). Oh well a PR is a PR. I saw lots of friends and acquaintances out there and overall had a blast.
Also, lesson learned: 1/2 marathon aid stations aren't stocked with food like the 1/2 ironman aid stations are. I had about 300 calories with me, luckily I saw Dana and Penny around mile 9 and they graciously shared some food and salt tabs with me.
I definitely want to do this one again next year.

Did I forget to post the Vineman race report?

Yep...and everything else that happened in the past 6 weeks.

Actually it wasn't forgetfulness, it was more like the malaise that has engulfed my body ever since February. My goal has been to train and blog, but I can barely motivate myself to train, and the effort is usually so mediocre that I don't bother blogging the attempt. But more on that later.

Here are Katie and Dana (circled). I had planned on doing something with this picture but changed my mind...and it turns out that once I upload something into Blogger I don't know how to remove it. So feel free to ignore this picture (and this sentence explaining what happened)

I am really really surprised that I finished Vineman. I wasn't in the mood mentally or physically to do this thing, even though I had rented a cabin in Guerneville and was surrounded by friends both old and new. Brian and Katie even came up to cheer us all on, which I thought was really great.

Since the race happened over 7 weeks ago I forget most of the specifics, but here goes:

Vineman 2008, aka The 70.3 That Didn't Hurt
THE LEAD-UP
Woke up to the usual Guerneville morning fog. It was pretty cold, but I kept telling everyone to prepare for 100 degree temperatures later in the day (never happened). I was in the 2nd to last wave (start at 8:22am), so I took my time getting down to the transition area. I could tell Sandra and Dana (left) were excited to participate in their first half-ironman!


THE SWIM
At 8:22 the gun goes off and I'm swimming the 1.2 miles. I really haven't been training hard at swimming, but instead focusing on form and energy conservation. I also focused on having an "honest" swim, since at some places the river is literally 12-16 inches deep and the temptation is there to just stand up and walk. But I kept honest, even at the turnaround point where my hands were scraping the bottom on every stroke and every single person around me was walking.

I swim in and my time turns out to be 0:39:30; I was able to have a smooth easy swim AND break one of my old goals of 40 minutes. So I got that goin for me.

Swim rank = 1191 out of 1825. This can almost be considered "back of the middle of the pack", which makes me so happy I can barely stand it.

T1
I always feel lame for including my transition times, because 1) I don't feel they reflect fitness level (or much else), 2) they are easy to manipulate if the athlete feels so inclined, and 3) my transition times usually suck. As usual I took it fairly slow to give my stomach time to adjust from the horizontal to the vertical, and my time turned out to be 0:5:23, which is pretty poor by coach Gurujan's standards. However my T1 ranking for the day was 1328th out of 1825. What the hell were those other 500 people doing?


THE BIKE
So as usual, about 5 miles into the bike I start feeling horrible and feel like quitting. I don't know why this happens, but I suspect I get water in my sinuses from the swim and it induces some sort of pressure-migraine effect on my head and brain. So the next 10 miles or so consist of me searching for some reason to keep on going and finishing this damn thing. The reasons that ultimately kept me going were:

• I've never DNF'ed a half-ironman before. If I finished this one, I would have completed 4 halves in under a year. If I didn't finish, I would have to say I DNF'ed a half and I didn't want that


• There is the possibility that I could cheer someone on and motivate them to finish when they otherwise wouldn't
  

So I decided to just go as slowly as I needed to on the bike, and enjoy the day and the scenery. My ultimate goal was to finish this race unhurt, and have the ability to continue training the next day or the day after.

Around mile 25 I caught up with Dana, who was changing her 2nd flat of the day. She was pretty discouraged so I stopped and chatted with her for awhile and tried to cheer her up (which was tough because my attitude was probably worse).

FYI here is an excerpt from Dana's blog "I'm feeling like I'm WAY behind on time and going to have to race the clock without much luck of making the cut. ok - it's going to be ok. and then i see him. paul has caught me and i know that i'm in trouble of not making it"...I'm hoping she was referring to the fact that I started 2 waves behind her, and not to my slowness :P

Anyways, to make a long story short (too late Paul) I finished the bike in 3:56:53, about 30 minutes slower then last year but given my current state I was just happy to finish.

Bike rank: 1750 out of 1825 (ugh)

T2

Again, same as T1...I take my time to take off my bike gear and change into my run stuff, T2 time = 0:4:29. Ranking = 1061 out of 1825. Looking back I could have easily shaved off a minute and been in the top 700. Maybe that should be my new goal, at least I can be in the triple-digits for SOMETHING.

THE RUN
I brought my road bike instead of my triathlon bike so my quads were cramping up almost immediately. Last time, Coach Felipe! No more road bikes in triathlon, I swear!

So as I said before it was a lot cooler this year. It was maybe 80 degrees on the run, whereas last year it was 100+. nothing interesting to report, just a 13.1 mile out and back in 3:04:52 (about 30 minutes faster than last year). I get near the finish line and see Katie jumping up and down and screaming her head off...she was either 1) excited to see me, or 2) was waiting so long for me to finish that she really had to go to the bathroom. She ran the last mile with me which was super-cool because I was ready for the race to be over.

run rank: 1729 out of 1825.

Final ranking = 1695 out of 1825, time = 7:51:08 or about 4 minutes faster than last year. I stated above that I wanted to finish the race unhurt. It turns out that after a cold bath (no ice available) that I only had mild soreness the next day and wasn't forced to take time off to recover. So that plus my swim PR made a pretty decent day.

Thanks for reading, and I banged this out without proofing so sorry for any spelling errors!