A few people have asked me to write a blog. Well... HERE IT IS!!. Seriously, I don't think I will be able to be regular at writing about my sojourns, but I'm willing to try it, for the sake of some you. This very first post is really about the month of April. And really April was a tough month for me, with work, with training with home life...simply crazy. I started the month on a reduce/recovery week of training. I was grateful for that because, well... I was tired. And then the first Saturday I had a half-marathon race with my cousin, Sunday was Easter and Monday was my daughter's 10th birthday.... you may be picking up on a trend here... a "trinity" so to speak.... it seems everything comes in three's!
Now a lot of triathlon bloggers have these really awesome race reports, that I absolutely LOVE to read... they are full of details, excitement, heart stopping moments, triumphs, tribulations...just great stuff to read that you can totally relate to. And, ordinarily, I probably could and will write a good race report on a recent race i had, but this particular race, just. plain. sucked. for me. The only thing that was great about it was that I got to run for at least a few minutes with my cousin Tom, and catch up with him for awhile pre-race. And saw a few other triathlete friends at the site, Steve and Kim ... all three had really good races, So that was fun. I also spent some time looking for my friend Jeff, that was also running, (a race in his back yard practically -- but never found him). It wasn't a bad race, really, my body was tired. My legs were heavy. I had done a lot of biking mileage recently and hadn't really recovered. And the morning of the race, I had a feeling that it wasn't going to be all that I hoped to be. I really hoped that even though I was out of breath climbing a flight of stairs, as if I hadn't exercised in years, I hoped that my body would some how jolt out the fatigue and just be fine. I am the type of person that never misses a workout. I fit them all in, it may be 4AM or 10PM when it gets done, but it happens. I should be able to do well, as the training did get done. I was tired, though. Even a few people said a few days before the race, "sometimes when you feel the worst, you come up with a great performance"...meaning a PR or just one of your best races. Nope... not for me, but given how I was feeling that day... I'm truly surprised I even finished the race. Some people say they knew they were in trouble at the halfway point, or the last couple miles....I knew I was in trouble at mile 1 when the course was relatively flat.... and that's bad on a very hilly half marathon course. Yes, their poster is "these legs conquered the hills of the great bay half marathon." So, what was great for me... I stuck it out. I told Tom to just run his race, I'd be fine, but was going to change my plan. My initial plan was to run a sub 2 hr pace. Now, it was: i just gotta get through this thing and get it done. And that was it....
The rest of April got worse. I took a day or two off after the race, and rallied with my swimming and biking and running. My paces: off, my stamina was off, I stopped sleeping well... I wasn't eating well. I got sick of food actually and work didn't help either. A couple days there we were so short staffed that there wasn't relief for lunches or breaks and I was in some looonnngggg cases and went one day having a snack at 10:30 in the morning and then not getting another chance to eat, pee or drink until 7:30PM. Who works a whole 8 hrs without a break??? Well nurse anesthetists do for sure.... in fact a lot of people in health care go long hours without nourishment... and NO ONE seems to care...the hard, hidden truth. The people that work 12 hr shifts in health care are just nailed with tough hours, limited breaks and usually take the wrath of all the bad things that can and will go wrong on any given day. Being an anesthetist, if there's no one to relieve you, you can't exactly say... be right back.... you're responsible for keeping the person asleep and alive.... you can't just leave unless a physical body with your training takes your place at the head of the OR table.... April Showers. So, I digress a little, but that's part of the trinity, I work and so those long hours, sometimes I am on my feet and don't eat, and then when I enter my home at 8 PM, i might have a bike, or a run or a swim to do. And... I do it.... and sometimes, like April, I start digging... digging a little hole, that gets bigger and bigger and then, eventually it rains, and you slip and .... YOU--- FALL--- IN.... without even realizing it. Oh the picture is quite clear now in retrospect, but at the time I couldn't really see it. I was tired, I was doing workouts, I was eating poorly, just living day to day, moment to moment -- on autopilot... I even cried one day. I didn't want to do a bike ride. I didn't want to do the ride... not because it was raining.... not because it was bloody windy and cold out....not because i was just plain tired....I didn't want to do it, because I was going to have to EAT in order to do it. I didn't want to eat... I was sick of eating, I wasn't hungry, I didn't want food..... but I DID want to go on the bike ride because well, that's part of my hobby and I love it. So I did force something down, ate on the bike and felt terrible the whole time. But afterwards, I was proud... I won.... I didn't want to go, I felt terrible, i didn't want to eat, but I did it!!! Success!! I felt and so proud of myself for getting my butt out there and doing it.. April Showers... more bad training runs, poor swims and more bad bike rides.... and a really bad group ride that I attended and just plain felt lousy on. More days scheduled off or recovery from training... April showers... There was School vacation week, entertaining the kids on days off, hubby was traveling a little and away, single parenting... lacrosse for one, swimming practice and work for the other... birthday parties.... etc etc etc... the family life... I do love it and enjoy it. And Minute Man park, if you've never been... it really is a little gem worth seeing. I don't know how many times i have passed the signs on the highway and always wondered about it, but just never went. I could spend a lot of time there. I would love to mountain bike all the trails there too...So, as I was digging this hole, Angela (trimoxiecoaching.com), knew I had dug one and a few other friends could see that perhaps, I was digging and about to fall in. They gave me advice...I was starting to get a little scared actually. Wondering would I ever be the same again! I continued to do my workouts... between recovery days and days off. Then... it hit me.... I went for this run and I was "rested" and I was supposed to get into zone 2 and so I warmed up zone 1... gradually built into my pace ... zone 1....15 mins into my run, I am still in zone 1....now I am approaching about an 8 :30 pace which was what I ran in the Cape Mid winter classic 10 miler in February.... ran at that pace for 5 or so minutes, I was still in zone 1....HR not budging.... I picked up to 5K pace... still zone 1.... I knew I had a problem.... I shut the watch off... took a short cut and jogged easily back home....several more recovery days after that one... April Showers. Angela was really on top of me at this point. I kept dancing around this hole... Her worry was worrying me... oh my God, I thought... I am making a huge mess of my ironman training...But we got it all worked out and I will tell you about it next blog and heading in the right direction. and onto ..May flowers...the Bassman Half Distance Triathlon race report next blog...
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