July check-in

I wasn't going to do a July check-in because I didn't think anybody wanted to read, "I suck, I hate this." But then I re-read my May check-in, and it gave me a little perspective. I realized I don't suck, and I do, in fact, enjoy this. Geez, that didn't take long.

So. The last weekend of July was the heaviest training weekend I've ever done in my life. On Saturday, my training schedule called for a 50 minute swim, and a 12 mile run, which would take me over two hours to do. I had to be at a party at 1pm which was over an hour away, which meant I had to be done and home and showered and ready to go by noon at the latest. I always forget to add on that extra 20 minutes of sitting on the couch waiting to stop sweating. The workouts were not meant to be done back-to-back, but since I was in a time crunch, I had to do them back-to-back. I wasn't about to swim for 50 minutes after running for 12 miles -- there's a reason the swim isn't last in a triathlon, and that reason is called Drowning. I figured I'd swim first, and then run, but that just didn't seem right to me, so I ended up adding a bike leg in to my already crunched-for-time routine. This is the Beath. This is the Beath on OCD.

Saturday
At 6am on Saturday morning, I loaded my bike onto my car and drove to Walden. I swam for 55 minutes, then hopped on my bike and rode it 10 miles back home to my apartment, where I brought it inside, changed into dry socks, a dry shirt, and running sneakers, then started running the 10 miles back to my car which was still parked at Walden. I have a love/hate relationship with logistically tricky plans like this one. If anything, it was a good distraction to continuously have moments of panic like:

(biking back to my apartment): "I don't have my house keys! Oh yes, I do they're in my pocket."
(biking into my apartment complex): "Someone stole my car! Oh no they didn't, it's parked at Walden."
(finishing the run at my car): "Someone stole my bike! Oh no they didn't, it's in my apartment."

The whole workout took me a little less than 4 hours. The run was rough. Partly it's because I haven't been running long distances since the marathon in April. My training plan has been written in hours, not distance, so sometimes I wonder if that "1 hour long run" is written for people that are going to run 8-10 miles in that amount of time, as opposed to my 4-5.5. It was also a 2+ hour run after already exercising for 2 hours. It was also poor planning on my part because I left one bottle of powerade zero at mile 5 of the run, which was my only source of fluids on the whole run. My coach told me afterwards in SHOUTY CAPITALS that I'm not allowed to do that anymore. You know what I say to that, Peej?

We might be up to seven or eight at this point. My average pace for the run ended up being in the 13's. I walked a lot the last 4-5 miles. I kept looking at my watch which was only around the 3+ hour mark, and thinking, "I feel this crappy after 3 hours, and Timberman is going to take me over 8 hours? I'm doomed!" Hopefully having aid stations every mile on the run will help. Oh, and a miracle. That'll help too.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, I rode the entire 56-mile Timberman bike course with my aunt who is doing the relay. We were also joined by her friend Jo who rode with us for the first 42 miles, and my cousin Emily who joined us for the first 10 miles. This was my fourth time riding on the course. The first two times I wrote about in the May check-in. The first day we did the flat middle part of the course, which I thought was hilly back in May. This time, it not only felt flat, it felt mostly downhill (which it is, according to the elevation map). On the second day back in May, I did the first 9.8 miles of the course and then called it quits and took a longer flat route back to the car. Then a few weeks ago, we rode most of the second half of the course, but when we got to the final 10 miles of the course when it starts to get really hilly, we bailed again (my idea) and took the flat part back to home instead of finishing at Ellacoya. I knew this would be my last chance to train on the course, and I was hell bent on doing the whole course in completion. 

We started out at Ellacoya. I briefly pretended I had just swum 1.2 miles, but honestly I was so tired from the monster workout the day before that it wasn't really hard to pretend. We started riding, and believe it or not the first 9.8 miles weren't as hard as I remembered. Really? You mean after 2 months of training I've actually improved?! It shouldn't have been this shocking, but it was. I happily rode past my "quitting point" of 2 months ago, and knew that the biggest hill was just up ahead. I made it less than halfway up the hill before I got off my bike to walk. If my ride ended at the top of the hill, maybe I could have pushed it, but I knew I still had 45ish miles to ride after that, so I wanted to preserve some leg strength for the next couple of hours. Once we got onto route 107, which is the long out & back on the course, I settled in fairly quickly. A few months ago I think I said I had hoped to get my speed up to 15mph. On this part of the course, I was averaging about 17 mph, with a few 20+mph miles in there. I'm happy with that, although my average pace for the entire ride is still in the 12-13mph range because of those miles when I am walking my bike at a 2mph pace.

I ended up walking my bike up two more hills on the return. At one point I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack. I never push myself that hard. With marathon running, you just find a comfortable pace and you run that (at least that's how I do it, but that's why I'm a back of the pack runner.) With biking, you can't just comfortably ride up a hill. I tried standing up to pedal on one of the hills toward the end, and I still came to an almost standstill. Luckily I was able to unclip from my pedals and get off to walk my bike before I slowly keeled over. The last 10 miles of the course were physically exhausting, and mentally tough. I kept thinking, "How in the hell am I going to run a half marathon after this?!" I tried singing Gloria Estefan's "Get On Your Feet" to motivate me, but even that didn't help. I didn't want to stand up and take some action, or get up and make it happen. Screw you, Gloria, you don't know me! At one point in the final 10 miles, I decided that I would switch to the sprint distance after all -- something I had considered immediately after my DNF a few weeks ago. But, I've been learning to not make decisions when I'm in the middle of a workout, so I put that thought on hold and just focused on finishing the course.

Finished!

When we finally finished, I didn't think I had enough strength to even put my sneakers on. I was only supposed to do a brick run for 10 minutes. Again, this was my last chance to practice that after a ride this long, so I knew I had to do it. When I started running, I had a noticeable limp on my left side. My left knee was really sore, I think from unclipping from my bike pedals. Both legs were like jelly, and my back and shoulders were so tight that I couldn't really stand up straight without it hurting. I wasn't totally out of energy, so I was able to laugh at myself as I tried to run, picturing this video from the 1997 Ironman Kona World Championships and wondering if I looked like these two women (yes, I'm comparing myself to world champion triathletes. So what?)

I only ran like that for a few minutes, and then things got better. By the end of the 10 minutes, I knew I could make it to a mile (Jennie Perkins would be proud of me!) so I kept running while my aunt creeped along in the truck waiting for me to jump in, while I yelled, "Two more minutes!" I was able to run a mile in 11:47 (about the same as my marathon pace). Even though this was only a mile run, and not 13.1, it gave me confidence that I could do the run. As long as I can survive the bike and finish before the cutoff time, I might have a shot of finishing.

The course cutoff time for finishing is 8.5 hours, though each segment has its own limit. The swim wave cutoff is an hour and ten minutes from the start of the final wave. That doesn't concern me. Even if I'm in the last wave, I expect my swim time to be no longer than 50 minutes, which gives me a 20 minute cushion, and it will be more than that if I'm in an earlier wave. I'll need that cushion for the bike portion though, because the cutoff here is 5.5 hours from the start of the final swim wave. This ride on the course took 4.5 hours. I'll be cutting it close. Then I'll have 3 hours to run a half marathon. My half marathon PR is 2:13, and my slowest one was 2:47. I don't think I have a chance of running under a 2:30 half marathon, but I can probably eek it out in under 3 hours. And if I don't? Well, then that's ok too. If I don't finish this race, I want it to be because race officials pull me off the course, not because I pull myself off the course because I think I can't do it. If I think I can't do it, or if I'm miserable and want to quit, I'm just going to say, "Thanks for sharing" and continue with forward progress, no matter how slow. I've been the dead last runner in a race before, and it sucks, but I'm getting my mind ready for it this time. Even if I'm the very last finisher, I won't care about the "very last" part, I'll only care about the "finisher" part, and that has always been the goal.

16 more days!