Long training weekend

I don’t often go into details about my training but this was a long weekend of solid training and I feel like sharing. Read on if you are interested and feel free to close the browser if nothing sounds more boring. Friday I did my first 100 miler ride! It was great. The weather seemed perfect to me. Compared to the normal 90+F cloudless sky days, I was thrilled to be riding in the rain with strong wind. It was cool and no sun and that make me so happy. I had no issues hitting all my numbers and I still felt strong at the end of 100 miles. I even had a good run off the bike. The next day I had a long run. Now at this stage my long runs should probably be longer but I’ve been slowly coming back from injury. I was very happy with the fact that I finished a two hour run which is the longest/furthest I’ve gone since NOLA 70.3 in April. That’s a big step for me. The run wasn’t particularly fast and it was very tired given the training from the day before but I held strong. I didn’t let the fatigue wear on me and mentally, that’s something I know I need to hold onto right now. For the first time my thoughts changed from “how the hell am I going to do a marathon after swimming and riding ALL DAY” to “… I can do this”. Another big step for me. Although I’m still wondering how the hell I’m going to do this.

I ended the run at my in-law’s house where we made “gravy” aka tomato sauce, not to be confused with the brown stuff you put on mashed potatoes. Every year the Italian family gets together in NJ to make a years’ worth of gravy for everyone. This was the first time they did it in SC by themselves and also the first year I participated. Participated is a loose term as in between helping I laid on the truck bed or pool chair trying to give my legs a break. After several hours of that, we headed home to head right back out to go couch shopping. Finally, at the end of the day I was able to get off my feet which I should have done many many hours earlier. I was hurting. But before I could sit on the couch, a quick swim. Sunday was an easier day with a swim and strength. Even for being a not very challenging swim, it was a struggle because I WAS SO TIRED!

Since Monday was Labor Day, it meant I opened my schedule for more training. I got a 4 hour tempo ride on my schedule based on HR. This made me nervous as my HR is always low on the bike and I knew I’d have to put in a strong effort to ride in that range. I got up early to make sure I was riding as soon as the sun was up to beat as much of the heat as possible (ug it’s still summer). Unfortunately, my HR strap had decided sometimes between the run I did on Friday and my Saturday run to stop working. I assumed it was the watch but apparently not. So I once again tried another strap. Nope. I then pulled out a crappy strap that came with my first running watch which was mostly made of hard plastic. After sitting on the ground wearing three HR straps on the verge of tears (because I’M SO TIRED), I finally got the old shitty one to work. I couldn’t seem to shake the grumpy mood from the HR monitor issue with sounds ridiculous but when you are tired, your brain is not functioning properly. The ride was hard. I had to ride a bit harder than I excepted and all I wanted to do was quit. My legs were so unhappy about having to ride at all, let alone ride at this harder effort for several hours. I felt like I was riding a 70.3 but it felt more tiring. All I wanted to do was soft pedal home and not move for hours. I went on for a long time thinking about quitting and yet my legs kept chugging away. Even my PowerBars were giving me a hard time as this box contained some messed up bars which were 100% stuck to the plastic forcing me to scrap at it with my teeth and pick out the plastic I was eating. A bag of chews dropped out of my jersey so I swung back to pick them up and text my husband I was still alive. I do this during all my longer rides so he knows I’m safe, especially since a cyclist had been killed earlier in the week by a driver on one of the roads I ride often. Although his response was simple, it picked me up mentally. It was the boost I needed. I started thinking more positively and started riding a bit stronger. I was riding my bike on a pretty morning on a Monday instead of being at work. And here my husband was home working on the house like the awesome husband he is while I was "gallivanting" as he puts it. What did I have to be unhappy about? Other than dropping the chews AGAIN at some point which I think is the 5^th pack I’ve lost during rides this summer. I was very happy to be done with the ride when I got home though. I slowly changed into running gear and headed back out the door for another run off the bike, this time not feeling nearly as great as Friday. This morning I continued to trash my legs on a run after struggling to get myself moving in the pool again. My legs are toast.

So training is going well overall. Some days it’s great, other days it straight up sucks. Most days it's just work. In the end I know it will all be worth it. It’s all part of the journey.