Week 21

Dead chicken heads aside, this week turned out to be pretty good. We were on our 4th week of the 4 week cycle, which is recovery week. Although, after I experienced the workouts over the weekend the coaches might want to rethink the "recovery" part. Hard! I also got retested at the Sports Nutritionist and some changes, they are a happenin'!

Monday - Rest
Even though I rested the whole week before, I took advantage of it to prepare for a demanding week ahead.

Tuesday - Swim 2800 yards
Now the cute Russian life guard is my personal calculator. He'll ask me how many yards I am swimming and I'll give him the distance for a 25 yard pool and he'll calculate it based on the 33.3 yard lengths I am swimming. I don't have the heart to tell him I have an uber-detailed workout grid that I fill out after every workout that automatically calculates that stuff but, whatever!

Wednesday - Track 5 miles (or something) of speedwork
Track was really hard for me on Wednesday since coming off of a week of inactivity gave my heart license to beat out of control on several of my level 7 loops (exertion rate). Say that a level 1 is strolling and a level 10 is sprinting and then keeling over...a level 7 is pretty hard. I decided to listen to my body and slow down even though Yi didn't really understand and kept pushing me, which made me feel guilty and useless until I finally had to exclaim, "my heart is gonna explode out of my chest if I don't slow down!" hahahaha. Oh wells.

Thursday - Sports Nutrition appointment
No swim for me in the morning (and a date that night kept me out of the pool later) as I made my way to Walnut Creek to shell out another almost $300. I am gonna have to start fundraising on a personal level to support my "medical food" habits and testing. Jeesh. This was the 5 week mark for being on my new whole foods diet approach and I was having my blood, urine and saliva tested again. I'll get the results on Monday but, for the readers benefit, I will see into the future and tell you that I dropped 4 lbs of fat and gained1 lb of muscle, increased my BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) by 60 calories, which takes non-Iron people about 6 months to do, dropped my cholesterol a few points and started metabolizing protein a bit better. All that and I totally had an anxiety food binge somewhere in those 5 weeks! Yeah!

Later that night I went to see my friend DJ Cadillac spin at The Argus and he told me that he was in The Sports Authority and saw an ad poster for Under Armor and he thought the sports model was me! Hahaha. Totally forgot I was going to check that out to see what his perception of my body is. Double hahaha. He thought I totally had a modeling gig and was getting cash money for it. That would be, um, sweet.

Oh bummer news: Dr. Scott totally eliminated dairy and wheat from my diet. Now I will be having no fun while I eat my sticks and grass. Sigh. I'll probably be ripped in about 2 weeks.

Friday - Whoops
Was up a bit late on Thursday so didn't work out. Felt it was for the better since I had a huge weekend of workouts scheduled. Stayed in and watched movies...well, watched them until I fell asleep at 9pm. I'm a real live wire now.

Saturday - Bike 50 miles, run 30 minutes
Hi? You ride your bike to work? Oh. That's cute. I rode from San Francisco to Nicasio...AND BACK. Forecast called for showers and wind but I had to Ironman Up and just get the thing over with. Turned out to be almost perfect riding weather with no rain, some wind and some sun. I prefer it a bit warmer so I don't have to wear arm and leg warmers but whatever. What is so different about being on a tri-team or training with Ironman people versus being on the TnT cycle team is that these triathlon people don't ever want to stop. On the cycle team we stopped whenever we could! There is always time for ice cream on a 50 mile ride! But now that I'm an Ironman in training, I only stopped once in 50 miles to pee. Heh. I hear, during the race you don't even do that. You just kinda stand up on your pedals on a descent and let it go. I really have no interest in doing that, by the way.

After the ride, we got our sneakers on and ran for 30 minutes in a circle around the parade grounds in the Presidio. Fun. Came home and crashed hard. Then ate everything in site!

Sunday - 50 minute swim in Aquatic Park, 100 minute run

Um. Yeah. You know, I really feel like swimming in ice cold, rolling wave conditions isn't really working for me. Ha! But this was going to be my first time out in my new wetsuit! I was excited to see how it was gonna feel and also a bit worried because when I tried it on at the store I felt like the neck was choking me...something you really don't want to feel while swimming. But that was 5 pounds ago sooo....

FYI, that is not my body in that suit...

When I pulled up to AP and saw the white caps I was like, shit, we're screwed. The plan was to swim the perimeter but because of the choppy seas (and "sea" is the operative word here people..as in swimming in it. ugh) we were told to just swim the buoys for 50 minutes. Three laps is a mile. Funny thing about open water swimming. I know logically that the first 15 minutes really, really suck. But every time, I get in the water and I start to swim and I say "Eff this...I'm getting out in 15 minutes." Then the 15 minutes goes by and you're warmed up and feeling a bit better about the whole 52 degree water thing. I was actually doing ok but talked myself into getting out at 30 minutes. I wasn't really tired or anything. Just kind of, "not into it." And so I consulted with Yi and we decided to do one more half lap of the buoys and get out. Then all of a sudden there were HUGE swells and the current picked up and I was just swimming so hard to just stay in place! And then my ear plug started to leak water in my left ear (we wear ear plugs to keep the cold water out of our heads to prevent seasickness and instability) and it was all over. I got so nauseous that I looked at Yi and was like, I'm out of here! So we got out about 15-20 minutes early (which was still a 30 minute swim) and went back to our cars to change into run clothes. Needless to say, we were freezing! We sat in Yi's car with the heat blasting until we saw our teammates starting to run away and then we clamored out of the car and headed on our 100 minute run.

Oh. You run 30 minutes at lunch time? That's cute. I ran from Aquatic Park to the Ball Park...AND BACK! WHAT THE HELL! I remember when I first came to SF on a reconnaissance mission to check it out and ended up walking from AP to Market and I thought I was gonna die. Sunday I did it in about 30 minutes.

Surprisingly. I stayed awake that afternoon. I wasn't really worn out or anything. Funny how the body adapts, isn't it?