Week 13 Ironman Louisville Training: Strength is the Product of Struggle

Just wrapped up a 12-13 hour week…I have a 17-hour week on the books for the next seven days. I’m too sore to walk now, which will make for interesting training later today. Things are going well despite my internalized open water swimming fears that are creeping up on me again. This reminds me of when I first started swimming. I was even scared of swimming in a 3-foot pool, so getting into the lake was a big step for me. Now I just need to train even more so in a lake to get used to the idea of swimming where there are no lane lines.

*big big big giant sigh*

Things will get better, right?

Week 13 Ironman Louisville Training: 12.7 hours; Swim: 6916.8 yards; Bike: 75 miles; Run: 13.7 miles.

Monday, May 13: 40-minute swim in the morning. The pool at Shant’s gym is sooooo warm. Feels great! We even relax in the hot tub for a bit.

Tuesday, May 14: Rest day looked a little something like this:

Will Rodgers State Beach

Busted out the bikini and enjoyed the sun and some reading…about training, of course. I get home a few winks to midnight since I missed my flight home, but at least I got home in one piece that night.

Wednesday, May 15: Swim 1:15, Bike 1:30 in the evening

Thursday, May 16: Swim 1:15, Bike 2:00 in the evening

Friday, May 17: Team training in the morning. Great sweat session with a few of the girls who are also training with my coach. I followed it up with an indoor trainer ride for 1:30 in the evening after dinner with my friend.

Saturday, May 18: First open water swim of the season. At 8am. YIKES that was early! It was also on my way to the Rock n Roll expo in Portland, which made way for good conversation. Pretty sure my wetsuit shrank or something because it was slightly embarrassing how long it took to pull on. I got into the water and it was a lot warmer than expected. I was too chicken to go out and swim in the lake with the big kids so I swam around the docks in the shallow end. As I started swimming everything I learned went out the window…bilateral breathing? NOPE! Reach and pull? NOPE! It was terrifying :( Where did my blue line go? My sighting was off. I felt so strange and out of place. I think I’m being hard on myself but I really began doubting the whole 2.4 mile swim leg of the Ironman. C’mon….no wet suit…river currents…a couple thousand of other people in the water splashing around me too. Being in the lake this weekend made it seem like I had ever even swam in the ocean before or survived the LA tri. I really need to find more clinics for practice. It also kind of freaks me out that my next tri this weekend is in a lake :( And it’s a 4-5 hour drive away, one way :( :( What have I gotten myself into?!

Open water swimming at American Lake. Just swam back and forth in this small boxed area.

Sunday, May 19: Rock n Roll Portland Half Marathon. It was a hillier race than anticipated and I finished slower than I wanted. I tried something new this time and kept a pretty continuous pace throughout the race. I’m sure if the race was flat I would’ve PR’d. Oh well. Race recap soon!

Rock n Roll Marathon Series

99 Days + 4.5 Races To Go Until My First Ironman

I don’t think you can fully appreciate a full 48 hours of rest until you go through Ironman training. My weekly training is stacked like a part-time job: 14 hours here, 15 hours here, 17 hours there, eventually it’ll increase to almost 18-20 hours a week. Can you imagine what type of progress you can make when you devote that much time to a past time, a new career, or to a hobby?! When I look at the big picture, it all looks and feel incredulously impossible, but when I break it down into phases — base, build, peak, taper — or even on a weekly or granular daily level it seems manageable, almost feasible and, dare I say it, attainable.

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” -Muhammad Ali

So what is a large looming Ironman goal without a ton of other sub-goals? Here we go:

1) Finish my first Olympic distance tri on May 26th (Memorial Day Weekend)
2) Pace myself well enough at my first olympic tri for my 3.5 hour training ride the next day
3) Run 2 half marathons in the next 2 months (Rock n Roll Portland and Rock n Roll Seattle) and grab myself a Twin Peaks medal, Triple Crown medal, and Grand Slam medal
4) Stretch goal: Rock n Roll San Diego half marathon in June (I’ll have to convince my boyfriend of that one…)
5) Race 2 Olympic tris this summer: Onion Man Tri (on May 26th) and Lake Wilderness Tri (on June 15th)
6) Complete my first Olympic distance tri relay in July with the tri team (I’ll be doing the bike leg)
7) Make it out of training without race-threatening injuries
8) Get my running mileage in, without fail, concentrating on optimizing my performance for mile 13-20.
9) Get my 80 mile, 100 mile, and 120 mile bike rides in without injury
10) Learn how to disassemble my bike into a bike box and re-assemble it
11) Meticulously plan my race for Ironman Louisville. No more looking at the maps and logistics info the night before the race.
12) Nail my race nutrition plan
13) Get in a handful of open water swim clinics in
14) Get comfortable swimming in open water without a wetsuit (This will be a very very tricky one…)
15) Stick to my training plan

I get the next 99 days to knock these items off my list! Let’s see if I can do it. :)

Week 11 + 12 Ironman Louisville Training: It All Sounds Like Crazy Talk

The tumultuous journey is practically half over. 12 weeks out of a 24 week plan?! I don’t feel half ready!! This post wraps up the last two weeks a bit early — I still have two more workouts tomorrow — but I’ll be heading out for my flight at 5am and I need to catch up here before I get too far behind.

If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. Make it burn.

And yes, those workouts are supposed to be done and wrapped by 5am. I almost wonder if they are worth doing! I haven’t even packed yet. I should be in bed by now because if I’m asleep by 10pm then getting up at 2am would mean just 4 hours of sleep. It all sounds like crazy talk…

In between squeezing in an inhuman amount of training hours into my jam-packed weeks, I’m still wrestling with olympic tri vs. half tri for my tuneup race(s). If I do a half, the recovery time will be looooooong. It may impede with my ability to continue training for at least the week afterwards. An olympic tri means that I could bounce back pretty quickly. Plus, olympic tris are significantly cheaper…about a quarter of what it costs to race ONE half tri. Oy vey I’m so torn. There’s an olympic tri at the end of the month — the Onion Man Triathlon — and it’s right over Memorial Day weekend. I could take a road trip! What’s stopping me is the hotel fees…I’ve spent so much this month on my new bike, and a few other things that have cropped up, that I’m not sure if I should spend the cash. I could always hold out for the Lake Wilderness Tri in the middle of June, and then Seafair at the end of July. I really just want to maximize my race schedule, my budget, by willpower…I think racing will help me get back into the swing of racing. It’ll help light a fire under my butt to get even more serious about Louisville because yeah, it’s only 12 weeks away. HOLY CRAP IT’S ONLY TWELVE WEEKS AWAY.

Anywho, the mileage has been increasing. The time on my feet has increased too. My bad ankle is slowly taking a pounding again. My time seems to be disappearing into some sort of black hole and I can’t seem to string together any coherent sentences anymore for my blog so here’s what I did for the last two weeks. It seemed like the bigger challenge was just getting these workouts on my calendar, not necessarily the workouts themselves. Hey maybe I’m slacking. Anywho, too much thinking and not enough sleeping at this point. Toodles.

Monday, April 29: half hour swim

Tuesday, April 30: hour and a half on the bike

Wednesday, May 1: rest day

Thursday, May 2: 1-hour swim, 1:20 on the bike

Friday, May 3: 1-hour run, 45-minute tri team strength training

Saturday, May 4: 40-minute swim, 1 hour 10 minute run

Sunday, May 5: 2-hour bike ride, 1-hour run

Monday, May 6: 1 hour 15 minute swim, 40 minute run

Tuesday, May 7: 1 hour 10 minute ride, 45 minute strength training

Wednesday, May 8: 1 hour 30 minute swim, 1 hour 15 minute run

Thursday, May 9: 1 hour 20 minute swim, 1 hour 30 minute ride, 50 minute run

Friday, May 10: 45 minute run, 45 minute strength training session, 2 hour 30 minute ride

Saturday, May 11 (tomorrow): 2 hour 30 minute ride, 20 minute run

Sunday, May 12: rest day

I’ll still be training on vacation…more posts later.

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