Planning and plowing

This week was a good one in terms of plowing right on through all my workouts. I spun both my Tuesday and Thursday short rides. Tuesday was because of the downpour (it is June, right?!), but Thursday was because I just couldn’t motivate to get out there on my own. I got sufficient razzing from my spinning buddies about the imaginary “rain” that brought me inside, which helped to lighten my mood and wake me up to get motivated. Good training company is invaluable!

On a related note, I’m having a bit of trouble on those kinds of days getting my heart rate up where my training plan says it should be. For example, on Sunday morning I should have been at 100% AT, but my legs were so tired that 88% was all I could muster. Does that sound normal for what should happen when I’m worn out? Or could I be changing something for next week? I assume I’ll have the same difficulty then after another long week of training…

But, for now, back to this week: I again did my longest ride (90) and run (18). Nutrition went well for both, although I think I could have used a few more calories out on the bike. I ended up shortening my brick run to 10 minutes as I felt pretty discombobulated coming off the bike. My new (old) seat worked out well on the long ride, although I think my handlebars will still come up a bit. I feel like it’s hard for me to get into the aero position and even harder to stay there. It take me leaning way forward to get into the bars and then I can’t rest much of my weight on my elbows without putting strain on my upper back. So still some more tweaking to do, but nothing like the pain of last week so that is all good! My run was also better than last week’s. I felt more confident in my nutrition and overall fitness so went out a bit harder and managed a faster pace and higher heart rate average. I’m heading back down run mileage-wise for the next couple of weeks, but then ramping back up post-Victoria. That’s all good as I’ll have several weekends worth of podcasts to carry me through.

I also met with Emily this week to talk about nutrition. We both feel like things are going well. She gave me some good things to work on including upping my caloric intake in general as training continues to increase. In service of that goal, I’m looking to turn my snacks into small meals. I’m on the road most of the time mid-day so I went looking for a little cooler today to keep in my car, but no luck yet. I did find baby milk boxes (or milklets as Alden called them when he opened the fridge) that I’ll use to supplement after swimming. Mmm, chocolate milk in the car! Emily also said that doing the math to exactly calculate my nutrition intake in a racing situation is important so I spent some good time yesterday reading labels to see how my calories worked out on the long ride. After all the calculating, it seems like I’m doing a decent job of getting in enough stuff, but it may still need to be dialed in a bit in terms of carb/protien/fat and liquid/gel/solid ratios.

Alden and I took some time yesterday afternoon planning for the next chunk of summer and I’m thinking that we’ll head out to eastern Washington twice to get in some training in the heat. The last weekend in June will be just a day to do my 80 mile ride on Sunday. The weekend of July 4th, we’re thinking of going up for a long ride (yet undetermined distance) on Saturday, spending the night and running early Sunday before heading back to beat the holiday traffic. Calendaring also helped me to figure out how packed my schedule is with all this training in the next 8 weeks- wow! I don’t know if I mentioned here that I’m signed up for the 3.2 Fat Salmon open water swim two weeks before Vineman.

The biggest thing I noticed this week is how tired I am. As the week goes on, it is harder and harder for me to drag myself out of bed in the morning. Meg noted on her blog last week that she is re-instituting the 9 pm bedtime and now I’m committed to doing the same. We’ll see how a few more hours of shut-eye coupled with some more good food do for me towards the end of this training week.

Looking forward, I’m down to a short(er) 10-mile run on Wednesday, but am following up by riding the Flying Wheels Century on Saturday. It will be nice to have my first 100-miler be out on a supported course and I can imagine that the finish line festivities at the Velodrome are all in honor of my fabulous training- woo hoo!