#140.6

Well it’s official - I signed up for my first full distance Ironman!

Come April 27, 2024 I will be attempting to swim, bike, and run a cumulative 140.6 miles under 17 hours. I fully expect to take nearly the entire allotted time 🤣

This marks week 14 of training, and a minor miracle in that I’m still blathering away over here. The plan and I did not play nicely this week, well we did for the first part but by Friday I was doing my own thing. Here’s how it looked:

Swim: nope. Pools still closed. I really miss swimming.

Bike: Killer Vo2max intervals on Monday (done as a TrainerRoad group workout) and brutal over-unders on Wednesday as per the plan. If I’d stuck to the rest of the plan, it would have been an easy ride on Friday and a tempo ride followed by a brick on Saturday, BUT. The weather for Saturday looked decent and I wanted to get out with Dan for a longer ride, so that’s what we did. It was awesome, I came home and my legs were done!

Run: “Hard” intervals on Tuesday and an easier run on Thursday. I suspected I’d be tired and not in the mood for a brick on Saturday so instead headed out on Friday. I had a route in mind and it worked out to a little over an hour of running. Good enough for me.

Row: once. 

Core/yoga: two strength-ish sessions. I’ve been doing lots of bodyweight lunges the last couple of weeks. Also some yoga because my left side seems to be tight all the time.

Swim cords: signed up for a program. I’ve done two of the three workouts for the week. Jury is still out on it.

Welp, I did a thing today.

After I read that highlighted portion in Finding my Voice by Mile Riley, I knew he was right. I can’t stop talking about it. I almost got registered a few days ago and then backed out. I was just lying to myself about signing up. I already signed up for the half, so it was just time.

This weekend I’m gonna go hopefully purchase and take a treadmill home. I got a new bike trainer cause my $50 Amazon one that was 5 years old needed to be retired. Now I can even connect to zwift if I so desire.

Time to really crack down. Go get that pool membership I’ve been putting off. Continue to eat better and start building a good base cause training starts the last week of February!!

Right now I want to focus on building a strong base and losing weight. So I need to start swimming biking and running again. But also weights and building a good core.

Week 8 of training is in the books. It feels like it’s been a solid block of training so far. 4 more weeks of base training to go! Other than the training, we also got logistical stuff done: flights, rental car and bike boxes are all lined up. Kudos to Dan for taking care of all of that!

Here’s what the week looked like:

Swim: I was ready for my recovery week! A little less volume, and no kick sets. My continuous base swim on Thursday was 1800m, the third time I’ve done that set recently and I shaved off another few seconds. The garmin also told me I had a 1000m record - when I reviewed it later, it was only by 1 second, but I’m glad to be seeing numbers in March that I was seeing last May.

Bike: I never thought I’d be happy to see Pettit on the schedule but an hour of endurance instead of an hour + of sweetspot was just what I needed. The “long” ride on Friday wasn’t perfect, but it got done.

Run: I felt pretty flat this week; just like during my last recovery week. I think it’s a combination of shedding some training fatigue and where this week falls on my cycle but luckily my legs felt good during my brick run on Saturday and I’m ready for another big week next week. Bonus was being able to run in shorts this week!

Core: both pre-run sessions done during the week AND I hit up a yoga class (not shown above). I probably wouldn’t do the yoga class again - I was the youngest person there by at least a decade AND it was not my kind of yoga at all, but I’m pleased with myself for getting out there and trying something different.

Pictures from this week are from my local trails. Would you rather run uphill or down on ice?

Trying to hold on to some semblance of normality this week. Who knows if our race will even happen but I like training and I have process goals so right now, I’m keeping on keeping on.

Swim: It was a decent week. The highlight was the long steady swim on Thursday (gosh that feels a lifetime ago now) where I swam 2400m continuously, feeling strong throughout. That was reinforced in the changing room when one of the pool regulars commented on how much faster I had gotten over the weeks.

The pools are now closed for at least the next three weeks, so I’m going to be doing some stuff with stretch cords and bringing the rowing machine out of the basement. If you have any recommendations for what to do, send them my way.

Bike: I manually upped my FTP again and that made Monday’s VO2max intervals super painful. I got through them with intensity reductions and back pedals but I’m definitely starting to hit my upper limits. On the other hand, the 3 x 20min at 90% on Wednesday felt good. By Friday’s long ride I was not in the mental place to focus for 3.5 hours so there were a few breaks (one was for krinkle cut potato chips, don’t judge me) and I gave up holding aero for part of it, but it got done.

Run: parkrun has also been the casualty of the current situation so I actually had a lie-in on Saturday and went running in the afternoon. All week I had tried to take my runs on to the trails and to explore some more of the trail system around us. My run legs have felt wrecked this week (6 hours on the trainer does that to a person) so this was a great way not to feel pressure to hit times on any of my usual routes. Pictures below from my exploration.

Core: It’s been yoga and foam rolling this week.