Week 29: Or How to Save Yourself From Bonking

I missed a week again? What happened to Week 28? With Wildflower around the corner I decided it was time to shape up and get back on the food tracking plan and on doing all 6 workouts. Lately I've been managing 4 or 5 a week, which I guess is not a good way to prepare for an Ironman. It's hard tho! It's hard to get out of bed when you know you're gonna swim close to 100 laps and it will take an hour and 15 minutes and it's just so. boring. Anyways...

Monday - Rest Day
This was the day after my OysterFest birthday party. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling so sick, no doubt from all the delicious food I ate. The kind of food that has not been allowed in me for almost 6 months... Or maybe it was the Sancerre. Whatever it was it sucked. I just felt queasy and gross from 3am on into the whole next day. It made me eat a bagel! Crap.

Tuesday - Spin
I just dyed my hair the night before so instead of swimming decided to spin at home to keep that dye locked down for one more day. Sigh. The things we have to do. Did about 65 minutes and felt pretty good. Got a last minute hair cut at Glam-o-rama. The truth was that I saw my hair in photos from last Sunday and was like, oh my god. WHAT is going on. Then I realized that I hadn't had it cut in almost a year! Yes, it's true. I'm not really good at being a girl. It's so high maintenance!

Wednesday - Run
Got up super early to be able to run with Yi. Met her at her gym, The Bay Club, and we ran along the Embarcadero, through Fisherman's Wharf (which is so awesomely deserted at 6am) and then on to Aquatic Park and over the hill to Fort Mason turned around and came back. 50 minutes. Went to work. Zack came over later and we put my Raleigh together. You know, the one that I got in Boston in November and my dad shipped to me in December? The one that has been sitting in a box in my front hallway for 4 months. Yeah, that one. Anyways, put it together and clearly neither of us knew what we were doing because it has some "issues." So I just sat it in my living room, assembled but not safe to drive at all.

Thursday - Swim
I finally managed to get swim scripts, which are these little tickets to the pool. Normally to gain entry, the pool is $4 and they only take exact change. However, if you buy a script from the city it's only $3.60 per swim! Today I got to use my first script and did not have to worry about scrounging dollars/change at 6am. (On with the math) Was supposed to swim 2900 yards, which in my pool would be 3863 which is about 116 laps. Wellll, it was just too much. So I ended up swimming 2100 yards, which in my pool is 2797 yards. Felt bad about myself all day. But if I put it in perspective, I swam slightly over a mile and a half.

Friday - Spin
Did about an hour of spinning at home. Came to work and had the most dismal day ever. Felt like crying about 800 times and/or drinking a bottle of wine. Alas, I am off the sauce for the next 3 months. Went to see Baby Mama with Misty and it was really funny. Tried not to cry in my car on the way home. Made a modest dinner of a potato. *blink blink* Watched America's Next Top Model on the laptop. Went to bed at 9pm.

Saturday - Brick Workout
Went to Sports Basement for our 8am start time. The plan was 15 minutes spinning and then 45 minutes running, three times. I felt great! The first run was awesome. I started running at a pace that I usually work up to by the end of a run. Didn't feel out of breath or anything. Was trying Carbo Pro too just to see how I reacted to it. Usually I use Perpetuem, which is a highly caloric workout drink and can be made concentrated to hold about 1,000 calories or more in one bike bottle. I like it. It works for me but when I think about Ironman and how I'll have to carry enough nutrition with me to last 16 hours and knowing that I mix my Perpetuem in a blender at home well...it doesn't seem like the most "easy" choice for nutrition on race day.

Carbo Pro is a light, tasteless powder that easily dissolves into liquid. You can add it to whatever sports drink you are using and it doesn't effect the consistency or flavor and you can effectively add anywhere from 200 to 1,000 extra calories per bottle. Right now I carry 4 bottles on my bike, one filled with Perpetuem, one with water (to wash the thick Perpetuem down) and two with Accelerade. With Carbo Pro I'll be able to carry 3 bottles of Accelerade mixed with Carbo Pro and one bottle of water. Today I also tried out Endurolytes - again. They're basically salt capsules holding about 40mgs of sodium each. I have discovered that I can't take the capsules whole as they make me really sick. My mouth and throat get really dry and I feel like I can't drink enough and then I get a stomach ache. So today I broke the capsules apart and put them in my sports drink bottles. Genius! I felt a little of that dry mouth feeling but not as bad when I take them whole. I think I'll do that from now on.

The second and third run were a little harder for me. Being that I am racing in Wildflower this weekend, our coach told us not to run the last set but to spin for an hour. However, the thought of sitting on my bike in the Sports Basement parking lot for an hour wasn't that appealing. So, I ran, which really was more like a walk since I was, um, actually walking. Afterwards we had a potluck lunch to connect with our honorees and to hear Christophe talk about his Ironman Arizona race (Christophe is an honoree too. Yes, he had cancer and is now an Ironman! Amazing!)

Went home and cleaned my bike.

Sunday - Ride
Soooo, again, because I am racing in Wildflower the coaches said to only do about a 90 minute ride. However, they said if you are just using WF as a training day (which I am) and not using it to race (uh, which I am not) then a long ride would be fine. So I joined Mike and Elaine who organized a 73 mile ride starting at Canada Road and Route 92. Yi, Deb and Pete also came along and Kristy from the East Bay. Yi was dead set on only riding 90 minutes,which she stuck too and left us all after 45 minutes. Deb and I thought that 50 miles might be a good stopping point. However at mile 25, when we should've turned around, we felt so great we decided to do the whole ride. The only problem was that I prepared only enough nutrition for 50 miles or less AND I left my money in my car. Deb said, no worries! I have a credit card and she ended up being my ride support for the day.

Nutritionally, I was worried since we had to use Gatorade, as that is what most gas stations sell,and for me it's not the best choice. I also didn't have enough calories when you consider that on the whole ride I burned almost 4,000 calories and I packed only about 900 calories. Sigh. And that mistake was evident around mile 60 when on a long stretch of Alpine Road, on a slight incline, in 90 degree weather and I felt the unmistakable feelings of bonking -- when your body doesn't have enough fuel to go on. I felt like closing my eyes and going to sleep, however I was currently on my bike riding at about 10mph. But wait! I remembered I had a Hammer Gel in my Bento Box! Some of you may remember my fiasco with a gel during training weekend 2006 and since then I have kind of stayed away from them. They really are gross. The consistency of Vaseline with artificial fruit flavor. Ugh. However, with my body running on a severe caloric deficit, the stuff tasted like manna to me. It gave me a little boost and when I rounded the corner there was Deb and Kristy waiting. I stopped and said, I need water and calories right now or I am not gonna make it. So we ran over to a gas station across the street and I downed a bottle of water, chowed a Kit Kat and got some more Gatorade. And I totally saved myself! Thank you Kit Kat! I rested a little bit and the weirdest thing was happening. If I was still, and then I moved my arms, I felt like the tendons in my hands were making guitar string twanging noises! That is the only way I can explain and it sounds so weird but when I mentioned it to Mike he was like, omg! I felt that when we stopped a while back to help Kristy with her flat! After the rest, I felt good enough to finish up the last 13 miles. We made it back to the cars and then all headed over to the bakery in Woodside for lunch. Came home and crashed.

Assessing Florida
I forgot to mention this last time but a few weeks before I left for my trip my mom told me that Russell Villarini, a friend of the family, died of cancer last month. I was pretty shocked because Russell was my childhood crush and he was just a few years older than me. I remembered being around 10 at the ski club and just being so enamored of him that I couldn't even speak or look at him. (Clearly nothing has changed about me when I am around boys I like.) He never liked me though and probably always thought who is that girl that keeps following me around? (Again...still use same tactics). When we were teenagers he would come with his parents to my grandparents' yacht club and gosh he was so beautiful, all lean and tall and tan with dark curly hair. He'd arrive with his older brother, Dean, in a white Volkswagon Rabbit convertible. I thought that was the coolest car!

So when at my grandparent's house earlier this month I wandered into my grandma's room and there on her desk was Russell's obituary cut from the paper. Right then I realized that he really was gone at only 40, having lost his battle to pancreatic cancer. It's hard for me to express what I feel about this. I never really knew him, and after moving to Boston did not see him until his obit photo. I'm not really good at being sappy so this is why I am here, doing this stuff for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. As I have said before, research funded by the LLS has made many discoveries on how to treat all kinds of cancer. I'm still fundraising!

More Caribbean Photos!