Explosions and Inspiration

Training is an absolute frenzy right now! Every day feels like a huge step toward this race, and I feel more and more physically ready for the demands I'll be putting on my body. At the same time, I'm realizing more and more details that I need to figure out.

How far apart are the water stops?

Do I need my rear bottle cage?

How many tubes should I carry?

Do I want a separate outfit for the run?

Am I wearing a watch? What about my Garmin?

But I know that I'll have time to settle all these issues. Heck, it might give me something to do when I finally start tapering. (I do get to taper, right? Right?)

On Wednesday, I had what has to be the toughest swim to this point. 4200 meters (that's 2.6 miles, if you're scoring at home), with the majority of it in a descending interval set. It was all based off of my latest swim test: I had 400s a little above my average pace, 300s a little less above it, 200s at my test pace, and then a final 100 of all-out-everything-you've-got effort.

One thing I've learned about Ironman training, at least for your first time, is that very little of it is at max effort. Lots of aerobic, zone 2, sustain a comfortably uncomfortable pace work. But I haven't hit the track, I haven't been sprinting on the bike, and other than swim tests, most of my long swim sets have been at a moderate pace. Not this one. This was a gut-wrencher. And it didn't help that in my IM-addled state, I didn't remember my swim pace time correctly. I was thinking 1:32/100m. And I thought, "Well, instead of doing math in my head for 1:32s, let's just round it to 1:30".

My swim test pace was 1:35/100m.

So now I've just inadvertently made my goal 20 seconds faster per 400. My first 400 came in at 6:55. That's a 1:43 pace, within what I really should have been doing, but too slow for my poor math. So I doubled my efforts for the rest, and brought them all in between 6:42 and 6:46.

Now I was feeling better! (Though a bit tired, those seemed hard! Go figure.)

On to the 300s. Should be shooting for 5:00 flat, but wrote it down as 4:45. And I hit 4:46!

Once.

Then it was 4:57. Then 5:05. Uh-oh. Now I'm supposed to step it up again? I must have been feeling bad, because I couldn't even manage to hit the stopwatch correctly for the first 200, and then the second one was 3:25. Pop! There went my arms. Kerpow! And my legs.

One last 100, and I did manage to bring it in in a 1:35. I'm pretty sure that was 35 seconds for the first 50, and 1:00 for the remainder. I remember making the last turn and not quite knowing if I could even make it back to the other end. :) But other than a little cool down, I was done! A blow up, yes, but another big step in pushing myself and growing.

That wasn't the only explosion this week. After the mishap during last weekend's ride, I had to replace Charlie Brown's tires and tubes. It wasn't fast, but I got the front tire changed, inflated, and set aside. Then, while I worked on the rear tire, POW! The front one exploded, just sitting there! I hadn't even put it on the bike yet! I did realize after the fact that the new tires have a much lower max pressure, so I'm thinking maybe I overinflated this one. Still, a disturbing trend.

And finally, a bit of inspiration. I'm not sure why, but I absolutely love this video. I watch it multiple times per week, and enjoy it more than any IMCDA videos I've found of actual racing. Maybe it just captures the feel of the whole event the best.



Thanks for reading this far, have a great weekend! I'll be off for my longest bike ride of the whole training plan on Sunday - 7 hours!