Week 27 - Longest weekend run/rides accomplished!

As you can see, it was a little run light this week... I missed both run workouts planned during the week. I actually don't remember why I missed the run workout on Tuesday but Thursday's run was missed because I went to a Kings game and got off work too late to fit it in before hand. OH! I remember, I missed Tuesday because I decided to take my TT bike into the shop for a good clean up before the race! It was extremely worth it. The brakes are snappy, the gear shifting doesn't slip, and they even replaced the shifter knobs that the cats decided to chew on!

Running missed aside (which I actually think I needed because my leg was still a little sore), my long 3 hour run was alright. I stuck to the 4 min run : 1 min walk regiment, and pretty much held a 12:30 min/mile pace the entire time. What I am basically trying to accomplish come race day is be able to hold a steady pace on the run without having to think about pace, if that makes sense. The run is going to be more of a mental game for me and all I want to think about is eat/drink/run/walk. This last run only had me do 14.38 miles, and I have to say it worries me quite a bit on this somewhat low mileage. I read that at minimum two 15 mile runs are recommended in marathon training.. so maybe I'm not too far off.. but still. =/

My long bike was pretty good. It was a scheduled 6 hour bike and I wound up doing only 5:15 of it. 6 hours of moving time is a pretty long time, and I am just not sure you need to "do the distance" before race day to be ready for it. 87 miles in 5:15 on basically the same elevation profile in AZ is good in my opinion. I alternate [Gu & bottle of water] with [sports drink] each hour and felt good. I am not sure what to do around lunch time though.. I get hungry. I am wondering if I can get my mom to bake cookies and have some chips and a drink in my special needs bag and kind of have a real lunch? My stomach can tolerate it, I'm sure.

So, with that, the week that was supposed to be the highest volume, wound up being pretty much average. I think it was just important to get those long rides in and make sure everything was dialed in. At this point I just need to trust my training!

Week 26 - what a cruddy weekend

I know the graphic above isn't that clear, but for some reason Garmin seems to think I burned 18,508 calories this week. Despite this calorie burn, the scale seems to disagree and I did not lose 5 pounds :P

Actually, ever since my mock half ironman, my garmin's elevation data has been screwed up. From what I can gather in my research is that the barometer temperature inside the garmin is maxed out and reads something like 359 F, and the device thinks I'm at 63,000 ft all the time. Luckily, Strava has elevation correction so I've been using Strava a little more. I am pretty sure I can take corrected Strava data and then transfer it into Garmin, but it's a lot of hassle just to fix a few issues on the readings. I'll send the device in for fixin' after the race.

This weekend was such a bummer for my long workouts. Feel free to read ahead if you want, but it is a massive post. The TL;DR version is this: Long run sucked due to overheating in a new shirt. Long bike sucked due to blowing three tubes, having brake problems, requiring a full tire change. I'm starting to get a little worried that I haven't rode over 75 miles in my entire training so far. =/

Now for the long stories, no offense taken if you don't read my ramblings. I'm not a good story writer.

Saturday's long run was scheduled to be 2hr45min long. I wanted to try out my new DeSoto Skin Cooler shirt. I put the shirt on at the house and it felt generally "too warm", but I figured maybe the air outside would cool me down. Spoiler Alert: IT DIDN'T , I found that keeping the shirt wet made it awesome! But, I can only carry so much water with me, and that water is for drinking! Around mile 7, I found a water fountain and doused myself with water. This shirt is so awesome when wet! But, it dried up about 3 miles later, I had run out of water, and it was high 80's at least. I wound up having to call in and get picked up at the nearest 7-11, I got a gigantic Dr. Pepper to make me feel better. :) Ended the run short by about 15 minutes, I was out there for 2:45, but I spent 15 minutes of it just at stop lights! Next weekends run will be at a park or somewhere I won't have any stops like that. Undecided about wearing the shirt on Ironman day... it will be easy to keep it wet with aid stations every mile.

Well, the fun didn't stop there. The next day for the long bike ride, it didn't start off very well at all. It was scheduled to be 5hr30mins long. My Dad drove out here for some flat uninterrupted riding. Attach the bikes to the bike rack, and my tires needed a bit of air, so we filled them up and then drove to our starting point. When we got to our spot, I noticed my front tire was completely flat.

[Back up to last weekend, I did get a flat that managed to cut my tire, so during the week I changed both my tires to some I had lying around. One that was lying around, I had forgotten also got a gash in it and I had superglued it shut. I guess having it sit in the garage for some time made that seal become weak, but we didn't figure this out until two more tubes later.]

So.. 2nd tube gets put in and since my rims are deep, I have to use valve extenders.. yeah, the stupid extender broke onto the valve, and I lucked out I had a spare extender in my bike bag. Okay, so the 2nd tube finally gets pumped up and we get ready to go and I say, "Dad, I just don't have a good feeling about this ride.", no more than 2.5 seconds later my tube explodes! Dad gives me a *high five*. =/

Alright, so we take the tube out and feel around the inside of the tire and don't feel anything sharp, so we just assume we're pinching tubes on accident. 3rd tube is in, and I finish pumping it up with what's left of the CO2 cartridge and kinda just call it good even though it was a little low. We start to pedal off and I try my brakes... they don't catch! Wow.. now the brakes don't work! So we pedal back to the car for an allen wrench and fix up the brakes best we can. My front brake needs fixin'!

Back on our way again.. where we are immediately passed by a group of three, and once they pass us, they slow down and ride 3 wide! How annoying! We get pass them and then come upon 2 riders riding next to eachother who were chatting. A couple of yells of, "Hey coming up! On your left! HELLO!?!" I am assuming they did not speak English or something. sigh... this ride is really shaping up. Maybe about 30 feet ahead of those two guys is an intersection that was green when we rode up to it, so we crossed the street before the light turned red. Well, those two guys must've just been sheep because they entered in just like we did but for them the light was red! I turned around just in time to see them both fall in the middle of the road narrowly being missed by a giant, green SUV. I probably would have felt different if they got hit, but in my mind it was a small victory for their stupidity.

Now, we finish crossing the intersection, and I feel that I really do need to put more air in that tire. So, we stop, I hook up a CO2 and pump it up good. I ask my Dad, "Is it good?", he says Yes.. and then *BAM!* air shoots out right where that superglued spot was right into my face! If I wasn't wearing my sunglasses, I think the ride would have been over and a trip to the hospital for a busted eyeball would have been in order. SIIIIGGHHHH... we have one tube left, but at this point I think we were stupid enough for using 3 tubes already. We were going to call it a day at this point (a whole 1.8 miles in), but instead we called Andy to bring me a new tire, tube, and a floor pump. 15 minutes later, he delivers and we get ready to go.

After all that, the ride went without a hitch. I even had a guy draft off me at 20mph for a good 8 miles or so, and then he had to quit :D Only rode for a little more than 4 hours though, for a total of 70 miles. Oh, and my gears were slipping the whole time! Taking my bike in for a fix this week!

Week 25

Week 25 was pretty good to me. During the middle of the week was a car shopping week, so considering that takes a lot of time, I'm pretty happy with the amount of training I was still able to accomplish. Now that I have a car of my own again I can go the full duration of swim class! I have found that 40 minutes of swim is alright, but 80 mins of swim is waaaay better.

I haven't too much to say about this week because it just seemed rather ordinary I suppose. Our long bike ride was on saturday and it was a bit of an adventure. Dad had no nutrition with him other than 1 Gu, so we rode around and stopped at a bike shop which I guess threw him off our route and we wound up doing almost 5k feet of climbing that day and I'm not sure that was the plan. After the ride was done, I made it home in time to see the last 15 or so miles of Ironman Kona pro racers. The age groupers that stroll in around 10 hours was simply astounding.. I'd say 1 out of 4 needed major assistance off the finishing mat. They push themselves really hard!! If you tuned into the finishers at 13-14 hours it was a lot less frightening as those people didn't pass out at the end. Some did, but not nearly as many at the 10 hour guys.

My long run was another test of the run/walk method I plan to employ on race day. I tried a 4 min run; 1 min walk ratio. Probably the first time beyond 10 miles that I actually felt really good! I think that 4:1 is going to work on race day, I'm hesitant to try 3:1 ratio, but I guess you never know what will work until you try it. I'm just trying to stay around 12 min miles. I'm no runner, and I won't pretend to be!

The weekend workouts have finally reached a point where taking Monday completely off is completely necessary.

Week 24 - Good volume, santa ana winds.

First I'll start off with that I may have miscounted last week and it was week 23.. but I think I'm starting to lose my mind over all this counting.. So I THINK this is week 24...

At any rate, this week was def. more like it! Total training time of 12 hours 13 minutes, and this was a low swim week due to the lack of a vehicle to stay for the entire swim class. I went out to Alamitos Bay to swim and it was really windy so I got to swim in some chop. The chop was good practice, and I would have stayed longer (only 23 minutes), but I've been feeling this weird pain in my right leg lately. I would rate the pain as a 7/10 and it's this weird nerve pain in my groin. It sucks, and I think swimming is the aggravating exercise that does it.

The Santa Ana winds were pretty crazy all weekend, which brought in some high heat and some single digit humidity. Sunday's bike ride was interesting to say the least. But it also was HORRIBLE! Bleh! Okay, not horrible, but I hadn't felt sick on a bike ride in quite awhile. I picked the ride.. and I knew it had quite a bit of climbing, but I just needed something new. Riding all these flats lately, and it's been boring me to death. I had a camelbak type pack filled with 2.5 Liters of water, 2 bottles of Perform and 3 Gu to get through the planned 60 miles. It was good I brought all that water (even if my Dad did make fun of me!), my Dad refilled his water twice off my packed water :P, but daaaang when we got to mile 50 or so, it was just this wave of feeling like I was going to vomit and it wouldn't go away. We got almost to our planned destination and instead got picked up about 3 miles away and then got to eat lunch/dinner with my Mom and Andy! I got a gigantic full sugared coke and it was awesome!

Week 22 - is this all I really did all week?

I'm a bit disappointed in my totals for this week. I guess the excuse is that my motorcycle kinda died early in the week so I was a bit thrown off by not having a way to get to work or get to swim. My long bike for the week was sacked because well.. I just didn't feel like it. Which is a poor excuse, but riding for 5 hours by myself up and down the San Gabriel River Path just felt... unmotivating. So, instead I went to the LA County Fair! I think it was worth it. Mentally speaking, all the exercise is getting to me. But, then I look at how much I've been doing for the month of September, and I actually missed quite a few workouts, averaging about 8 hours a week only. =/

October is a new month and it is also the last full month of training! I am going to try real hard to just suck it up the whole month and do these next 5 weeks to the best of my ability. Right now I am having to deal with only be able to go to swim class for 50-60 minutes instead of the usual 80-90 minutes, but other than that, I am going to do the workouts. All should go back to normal when I get my motorcycle back. I am still getting over that barrier of not doing an entire workout just because I can't do the full 1.5 hours.. I need to say, "I can fit in 1 hour, so I'll do 1 hour. DONT SKIP!"

After 5 weeks, it is all taper until race day. So let's make this a great 5 weeks!