Training!

Training is going well!

I've been a bit overwhelmed by some of the volume and intensity but that is completely normal for me.

Skipped yesterday's 30 minute swim because my stomach was feeling a little wonky. Nothing too bad and I skipped the swim completely free of guilt!

This morning was a 1:45 run which Tony was kind enough to run with me.

I've mentioned Tony here before. He is a 68 year old PHENOM! He is retired, he lives around the corner from me (less than a mile away) and he does not seem to adhere to a particular workout schedule. He just loves to get out and run and bike. Although Tony is much, MUCH faster than me, since he has no particular agenda, he slows to my pace and regales me with his intimate knowledge of all the trails, mine shafts, race courses and the like that are around here. He points out places that would be good for hill repeats (no shortage of those around here)!

It was Tony who motivated me to get up at 5am today, which is absolutely the butt crack of STUPID, to run. We were running by 6 (I simply must have breakfast and coffee before working out). And while I hated it for a few brief minutes, having the run completed before 8am was certainly AWESOME! And somewhere at the start of the run, I thought I felt just a hint of cool air. Probably a hallucination, but it was nice.

We ran the Six Tunnels course (the part through the tunnels) which I absolutely LOVE. We went all the way to that steep nasty hill which was at the turnaround at mile 9, and made our way back. I had to stay in zones 1 and 2 so I was pretty slow up some of the hills but Tony didn't care. Nothing seems to faze him. Tony is scheduled to race the Pumpkinman Olympic course, and he is volunteering at Silverman. Very cool.

Tomorrow I have a three hour bike, which I think may be a solo ride. Tony has other stuff planned and Izaac's and my schedules did not quite sync up this week. This is probably a good thing as a solo ride here and there will benefit me. After all I'll be racing solo! So I will just really nail my nutrition and do some hill repeats like Coach wants me to do. Last week I was really REALLY sick of the hills and not happy with my weekend ride. Maybe tomorrow will be different, maybe not. Either way I'll get it done.

I looked at the schedule for next week and had a momentary freak out! 12 hours of training with NO DAY OFF. Additionally Coach said to throw an extra swim in there if I want to. Holy CRAP.

Yeah that seems kind of overwhelming to me. I know it's all relative. But moments like that make me glad I've not taken on an iron distance race. I am really seeing the benefits of building up fitness over time. Fitness and confidence! For me this is all still so new and coming from no athletic background I didn't have much to fall back on in terms of fitness.

There were people out there today running laps of the Six Tunnels course and I told Tony I was sure glad we weren't running that long. He said yeah but if we were training for a marathon or something (incidentally Tony has run at least 3 or 4 marathons – he told me he lost count) we would run that long we would totally get it done. True enough! I think for now though I've bitten off as much as I can chew.

Sometimes it feels like more than I can chew but for me that's totally the point. To push myself!