Hold on, because August was a full month and I’m going to get it all down before I forget everything. Is Ironman brain a thing? It should be. I’m definitely to the point where I’m tired of being tired and I can’t seem to remember things I should remember (you know, like my watch to workouts or my sports bra). Get excited because it’s race month!
(OK, so I know it’s October and the race is done but I wrote this post at the beginning of September and never got around to posting it. So just pretend)
Not that anyone cares, but I’m going to organize this training recap a little different because it was one busy month. I feel like so much of it was a tired blur and I want to remember this month before I consider signing up for another Ironman. I don’t want that race-day happy haze to cover up the more painful parts of training!
Aug 1-7: “Taper” for Lake Logan Half
Sat: 53.5 mile bike
Sun: 8 mile run
Mon: 3200 yd OWS
Tues: Yoga/Rest
Wed: 3000 yd swim/24 mile ride
Thu: 4 mile run
Fri: 1500 yd shake-out swim
Training notes: Goal for this week was to get recovered from a pretty killer week before. Long bike was 50 miles, long run was 8. One open water swim with drafting practice and a fun little scavenger hunt just to get us swimming without being totally boring. The rest of the week was shorter workouts with some race-pace intervals to be ready to race. My hip was really bothering me towards the end of the week so instead of doing a 3 mile run as planned on Friday, I hit the pool for a short swim with a few sprints to shake-out.
Aug 8-14: Race and Recovery for Training Camp
Sat: Lake Logan Half
Sun: Spectating at Lake Logan Oly/Sprint, 30 min trainer ride, yoga
Mon: 2000 yd recovery swim, yoga
Tues: 24 mile easy ride
Wed: Yoga/Rest
Thu: 3 mile easy run/Yoga
Fri: Rest, travel to Chattanooga
Training notes: Very, very easy week this week. Coach wanted to make sure all of us that raced at Lake Logan would be recovered enough to have a good weekend at training camp a week later so a few easy workouts and lots of yoga. It was really nice to get some extra sleep.
Aug 15-21: Chattanooga Camp
Sat: 120+ mile ride
Sun: 14 mile run
Mon: 3000 yd OWS
Tues: 3000 yd swim
Wed: Rest/Yoga
Thu: 7 mile run
Fri: 3800 yd swim
Training Notes: Training camp weekend! Cliff notes from that post: lots went wrong but we survived and I was tired (duh)!
We had team OWS on Monday and all of us that went to camp were pretty pitiful but it felt good to shake things out in the water after such a hard weekend.
You can see I didn’t do any more riding the rest of that week. The reason is I had some terrible saddle sores (sorry, TMI but it’s a reality of IM training for sure) after the ride in Chattanooga and my coach advised me to just stay off the bike for the week. So I took advantage of that time to go swim and also actually do something social which was awesome!
I’ve actually been having a lot of trouble with my bike seat all year which has been frustrating since it was fine last summer. After a string of emails with my coach and a new saddle ordered, I finally figured out that my saddle had somehow “collapsed” (either the foam or the rails) and the saddle height was not where it was supposed to be. It was less than a cm difference but that height matters! Months of suffering for…7 mm. Luckily, now I know so when I run into this again, the first thing I will check will be the saddle height.
I took a rest day on Wednesday because when I tried to leave for swim practice in the morning, my car wouldn’t start -_-. I was 99% sure it was a dead battery (it was 6 years old so I was definitely due), but when we tried to jump it, it wouldn’t go. Apparently very dead. So I ended up having to call a tow truck which didn’t come for several hours and by the time I got home from work that day I was just done. =)
Aug 22-28: Build week
Sat: Flight of the Dove 100K
Sun: 12 mile run
Mon: 3000 yd swim
Tues: 5 mile run
Wed: 30 mile ride
Thu: 6 mile run (track)
Fri: Rest/Yoga
Training notes: I did the Flight of the Dove again this year with some friends and it was far, far less hot than last year. I also had to travel to Nova Scotia for work for part of this week but was able to get a run in while I was there. Low key week because of travel but it *almost* felt like fall on Thursday during my track workout. At least it wasn’t 80+/100% humidity which was excellent.
Friday night we headed up to Lake Jocassee to camp out for the Upstate Splash. We stayed up a little too late, ate a little too much, totally didn’t have any drinks (yea right) and generally set myself up for a rough training day.
Aug 29-31: 2nd to last big weekend
Sat: Upstate Splash/60 mile ride
Sun: 16 mile run
Mon: 4000 yd OWS
Training notes: Oh this weekend was absolutely brutal. It’s also very fresh in my mind which is probably why it seems worse than some of the other weekends. I started out Saturday not feeling the greatest because of the drinking that I totally did not do (also, who actually sleeps well when camping?) – just tired. But it was Upstate Splash weekend, yay!
Afterwards, I had a 90 mile ride on the plan – which didn’t happen as you can see. I made a solid attempt. Since the area around Jocassee is really not a great place to ride, I packed up my stuff as quickly as possible and headed back home to meet a friend at 12:30 for the ride. She was planning to do 60 with me and then I would finish the last 30 on my own. I was so, so tired (which was clearly my fault but still). The first 30 miles were ok but about halfway through the 2nd 30, I felt like I could lay down right there on the pavement and take a nap. I was feeling like maybe I could go home and finish the last 2 hours on the trainer. Then…bad thing. My riding buddy hit a set of train track wrong and went down. THANKFULLY THANKFULLY she was not injured seriously but there was definitely a moment of absolute panic where I wasn’t sure. Some nice people stopped for us and called EMS while I was moving our bikes off the road and seeing if she was OK. I could not thank those people enough because they helped her up so she wasn’t laying in the road, directed traffic around us and helped call her husband once we realized she was not seriously hurt. Just some road rash and a broken helmet (WEAR YOUR HELMETS!). But after all that, I was definitely mentally done too so I packed up once I got back to my car and went home. By this point it was almost 6 and I just ate dinner and went to bed. Fail, but can you blame me? The run on Sunday was particularly ugly after such a long day Saturday but I did get it done. Then we had team OWS where we basically did 3×1000 (one of them pulling a kayak) and yea I’m basically dead on my feet. I feel like I could sleep for daaayysss. I know taper is coming but it feels like an eternity!
The good news is that I feel physically able. The fitness is there and any long workouts I have left are just bonus. Remember that race day is the reward and it will be great. 24 days…
swim.run.eat 