Week 14 - Broke 12 Hours in One Week!

Run miles - 21.55
Bike miles - 67.11
Swim yards - 7,600

Total time - 12:10:32 (And this is missing out on 1:15 workout on Tuesday!)

Yeah, so I kinda skipped a workout this week. I skipped Tuesday's small brick workout of 0:45 bike/0:30 run. I was really having a tough time at the beginning of the week with motivation (which I think is more evident in my Week 13 post). There are a few reasons I can think of for the poor attitude; being female thus dealing with pesky hormones is one. But, I think I also have to just sit and remind myself of what I'm doing.. of course I'm tired, I workout 11+ hours a week. And those 11 hours also have "preparation time" as well. I would say that it takes at least 30 minutes to get ready for each workout, so lets add on 4.5 hours a week to just getting all my stuff together. And these hours are only going to pile on, I should be maxing out at 19ish hours at the cap!

I come from a world where I used to eat dinner before 6pm, I always joked I'm already prepared for the cheap dinners at 4pm and eating with the older, retired folk. Now, I rarely eat dinner before 8pm. I now try to eat something for breakfast, which I never really bothered to do before. I drink nearly a gallon of milk a week.. I had cut dairy except hard cheeses before.

I've put on about 4 pounds of weight, still not sure where it went, as my arms and legs are more chiseled than I ever seen them, and I think I have a little 2-pack forming on my abs. My clothes fit the same. But, I just don't think its possible for a woman to put on 4 pounds of muscle in 3 months..

Have I really been at this for three months (and one week)? Holy toledo! Almost halfway done!

Week 13 - Looks like I'm hungry again

Totals:
Run : 19.67 miles + 15 mins treadmill
Bike: 76.05 miles (estimation since I think trainerroad makes my speed like 3 mph slower than outside)
Swim: 5,100 yards

This is my 3rd week of Build phase and I am not sure what to really think anymore. It was easy just getting up, going for a run or bike at an easy zone 2 heart rate pace, not really having to think about the workout exactly, I just knew I was getting better and the long run/bike was pretty much cake. Three weeks into doing zone 4 intervals in the middle of my easy zone 2 pace is almost leaving me with certain DREAD when I have to go for a run/bike.

Just yesterday I had my afternoon run and I had to do TWO 4.5 min intervals in a run where my legs just did not want to move fast enough to even bring me into zone 2. My legs were dead from Sunday's 50mile/2.8mile brick workout, I think.

After awhile, I was thinking that I am not sure I want to do this anymore. I mean, I know I WILL do it, I'm not going to quit, but damn this training stuff is hard to do every.single.day. (except Thursday :P) I try to go to sleep early, but can't seem to stay asleep, I wake up feeling groggy, hungry, sore, tired. Did I mention hungry? Today I ate a 1/2 pound cheeseburger and half a load of thick fries, gah! AND I WASN'T EVEN FULL. I would really like to go back to eating primal, but I just am not sure I could hack it. I am going to try to up my protein intake and see if that helps with the hunger and soreness.

Weeks 11 and 12 - Intro to Building!

In general, I feel pretty good about these few build workouts. Of course, all I have done so far is about 5 mins of Z4 heart rate per running and biking workouts. When I do those 5 minutes though... man am I tired! I always look at my watch way too often and when I do it's usually like, "3 MINUTES LEFT!? MAKE IT STOP I'M GONNA DIE!", ... I never die though. :P

The need for sleep has crept back up to needing a little more than usual, hunger has stayed pretty stable, though I am being more diligent on drinking a bit of chocolate milk after workouts. I really think that chocolate milk thing really does help with the recovery, and I find it way more tasty than choking down protein powder shakes.

Here's hoping to getting faster as I continue to build more endurance. My running really needs to be better, at this point I'm looking at like 11:30 min/mile on race day, and I'd like that to be maybe 10:30. Honestly though, all I want to do is finish! Time goals are just goals and not going to be disappointed if I fall short on speed.

Recap:

Week 11 was front loaded with me still being on vacation up in Oregon. Things got shuffled around and week 10's long bicycle ride got moved to Monday. So Monday and the following Sunday were bike rides, making my totals for the week a lot higher than week 10. Also, my tension bolt on my Kurt Kinetic Road Machine decided to strip and break! Luckily Kurtkinetic has some pretty awesome customer service (and they fully admit the tension bolt strips), and replaced it with their new tension bolt system! Shipped and everything for free! The only problem was that I was bummed I missed a bike workout on Friday. :( Then I had to push Week 12's Tuesday workout to Thursday. The bolt showed up on Wednesday!

I'm actually surprised that Week 12 worked out (pun?) as well as it did. I was on call for work, but I only got one call on Tuesday evening, so it didn't even interfere with my sleep that much (only lost about 2 hours), I still made all my workouts minus Sunday's long bike ride. Originally scheduled to be a 2.5 outdoor ride with 0:15 min run brick, I just did 1.5 hours on the indoor trainer and skipped the brick aspect of it all. I feel a little guilty about it.. but guilt should not drive my workouts, otherwise all this training will become more like a chore and less about completing something much larger than myself.

Base Phase DONE, with Family!

Major milestone hit this week by finishing the first phase of my training. Base phase was actually pretty easy, so I am interested to see what the next few weeks bring.

What made this week even more special was being able to do the last four workouts with my family. I shuffled a few workouts around to accommodate my cousin's wedding and everything worked out great! Mostly my bike rides were with my aunt and Dad, and my running was accompanied by my aunt as well. A small group of us would get ready to either bike, run, walk, jog, etc, and then we would head off at our respective paces. It really wasn't a big deal about breaking away from the pack, but what was important was us all doing something active, and returning to the vacation rental to all say what we accomplished.

I did find it a little odd having company on my runs at first. My aunt slowed down to my pace and we held it quite nicely and even my niece stuck with us for a mile! 1 hour 30 mins running was the longest run so far in the program and it went by quick! Having someone to chat with was pretty awesome, and I got to pick her brain about everything Ironman. (2 time finisher, yeah, she's pretty cool)

You don't see this weeks long bike ride since I did shuffle things around and you won't see it til next week Monday, but it was just shy of 3 hours long.

We will be packing it up tomorrow morning to head back home, but I gotta say that this vacation was pretty sweet and it couldn't have come at a better time in my training program. Finishing a milestone with so many around just made it mean something that much more.