Almost an Ironman

Biggest. Training. Weekend. Ever.

I'm still sort of in awe...over the course of 27 hours (starting 8am Saturday), I swam/biked/ran enough mileage to be just 3 miles short of an Ironman.  And for whatever reason, our weather turned from mild to HOT HOT HOT just to add some difficulty to it.

On Saturday Kristi and I carpooled early down to Chesbro Reservoir for the Catfish Open Water Swim.  We were both doing the 2.4 mile swim, which involved 2 loops around the reservoir.

Representing for Team Aquaphor!

The swim went well! I PRed by 7 minutes over last year (and was 18 minutes faster than my swim at IM AZ) and finally cracked the 1:30s.  As soon as I was done, I hustled back to the car to change into my biking gear - it was already getting hot and we had a LONG day ahead of us.

Kris and I set out from Morgan Hill north heading for the Crystal Springs reservoir on the border of San Mateo - the goal was to ride 115 miles.


It was not an easy day on the roads - it very quickly got over 95 degrees and we were going through our liquids quickly.  We stopped every 20 miles or so to refill our bottles.  We focused on hitting our long 15-20 mile intervals at IM watts and just got through the miles.  On the last stretch before the turnaround, I was CRANKY - my head hurt, the headwind was driving me nuts, I was tired of being hot.  Thankfully once we turned around, I started feeling better (or that would have been a long 60 miles!).

The scenery up at Crystal Springs was beautiful though!

Totally NOT enjoying the moment but doing a decent job of faking it

Love this!

At the 100-mile mark, Jeff met us and gave us Coke and ice cubes (most of which went straight into my bra).  What a pick-me-up!  And then we continued south, ticking off the miles back to the car.  Our profanity coefficient had been increasing over the course of the ride and it hit an all-time high in the final miles (where I joked we sounded like we had Tourette's - "crotch! ass! shit!" every time we hit a bump in the road).

When we finally reached the car and were done with 115 miles of cycling (after doing a small 1/2mile out and back to reach the full mileage), we still had a short run off the bike to do.  It wasn't pretty and it wasn't fun, but it got done.  This photo gives no clue as to how completely trashed we were at this point.  I think I just repeated "holy shit" over and over for the drive back to my house.  Upon arrival, I submerged myself in an ice bath and stared into space while Puck licked salt off my arms until Jeff got home with my dinner.

After a surprisingly fitful night of sleep, I was up reasonably early today and eager to get on with my long run before it got any hotter.  I didn't get a sunburn on the long ride but I did get some nice skin reaction to the grippers on my bike shorts (heat + many hours in shorts).  

I did feel better than my long run a couple weeks ago but you know it's not a good sign when you START the run by jogging through people's sprinklers to cool off and you gag on every salt tab you have to take.  As with yesterday, the miles clicked off - I felt better on my faster-than-race-pace intervals than I did on the easy recovery ones - and finally I was able to sprawl in the shade on my front lawn and stare at the sky until I could move again.

With an almost-3-hour run in the books, I closed out the weekend with 137.5 miles of swim/bike/run.  And finished up my biggest training week ever, as well as the huge 3-week training block!  It could not have come any sooner, because I am trashed!  Rest week arrives at a perfect time and I plan to focus on recovering (eating, sleeping, etc) and not thinking much about Ironman (I'm even hoping to fit in a small camping trip next weekend).  Because after that comes peak week, soon to be followed by TAPER, and I want my focus and motivation on target when it counts.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!