The never ending off season

Long time no blog post, I know, I know... But crazy busy work and trying to have fun when I'm not staring at my screen 12h in a row does not leave much time for something else. For those looking for a triathlete in training, I am not much of one these days. It's like the never ending off season around here. But at least I am not stuck inside my head with my dark thoughts or eating my feelings. That's progress!

What February "training" looked like

February started pretty miserably with a week that I already talked about in my previous blog post. But at least it ended on a more positive note, with Zumba. As you can see, I kept the Zumba streak alive by returning to the class twice more.

I also swam three times, all in my Roka SIM shorts. I am still in love with them. What a marvelous invention these shorts are. I wish I'd swum more, but my motivation to go out of the house in the cold at 9pm hasn't been that great after very long days at work. Honestly, I felt like sleeping most of the time. I've been so exhausted, it's not even funny. And I'm not even training for an Ironman, yikes!!

Then, I went back to Yoga. Hot Yoga that is. Three times as well, and it made me feel so. damn. good. So far no hip injuries like last winter, but then I'm not going crazy with biking at the same time either. Speaking of which...

The biking has suffered the most. I've completely fallen off the wagon. I stopped going to the group spins on Wednesdays and Saturdays and since the aborted trainer ride at the beginning of the month, I only went on the bike once to try Zwift. Now, that is a lot of fun, but oh so dangerous!! If you are naturally competitive, watch your effort level! Within 3 minutes I was already trying to hang onto other people's wheels for as long as possible and beat my own times with each loop. I remember killing my legs that night which was probably not very smart. I didn't go back since, but I will... I decided to start one of the base building programs from Trainer Road and attempt a return to cycling...but it requires being on the saddle at least 3 times a week, and that WILL be a challenge. I'll see how I can fit those in and most important... how my knees will hold up.

With that in mind, I also returned to my massage therapist and he immediately found a lot more tension in my left hip and and adductor area than my right, explaining my knee pain once again. Read this article, it's quite interesting. I am going to see him once a week until the pain goes away. Word! I know there is no other way. I've already seen improvement in my run.... This guy has magic hands, for real.

So running... it's been... promising. I almost don't want to talk about it because I don't want to jinx myself. I ran once a week, mostly on the treadmill because of the cold. Last time I went outside, I came back like this.

Note that our 16 days extreme cold weather streak just ended, so there is hope for some outdoor running in my near future. What else can I tell you about my running? The longest I've run without a break is 5 minutes. Just this Friday I was tempted to do 5:1s, but I changed my mind in the middle of the first interval and decided to mix it up with Trisutto's famous treadmill workout. Again, if you are interested, this article explains what it is all about. My improvised session looked something like this:

5 min walk
5 min @ 6mph 1%
1 min walk @3mph
Trisutto's intervals
2x[30 seconds at 6mph 2%, then 30 seconds 4mph 2%]
2x[30 seconds at 6mph 4%, then 30 seconds 4mph 4%]
2x[30 seconds at 6mph 0%, then 30 seconds 4mph 0%]
1 min walk
Repeat set 3 more times
5 min @ 6mph 1%
5 min walk

I felt pretty good, although my knees seem to be a little cranky since... but it's a different kind of pain, more like fatigue. So I take it as a good sign, that other muscles were engaged. My next massage therapy is on Wednesday, and we'll see what Antonio-magic-hands finds then.

Last but not least, I went skiing!! I was SO nervous, you won't believe it. It's been 10 years (!!!) since I've been on skis. I even told my family goodbye like I was going to die that day. Thankfully I didn't go in the Alps, even though it's where I learned to ski, but at Mt. St Louis Moonstone, which looks more like a big hill to us Europeans. It was perfect. My friend Carrie drove me there and together with her family we spent all day on the slopes. I really surprised myself with my lack of fatigue. I remember back in the day, I was ready to go back home by 2pm, but this time, at 5:30pm I was still contemplating doing more runs. In retrospective it was a good thing that I stopped, but I still can't believe how much stronger my legs are. All the Ironman training is paying off now, lol.

Look at this beauty. 30 runs!! If you zoom in, you can even see the turns on some runs. How cool is that?

Okay, enough with the geekery. What's an epic ski day without pictures? And if I can say, I look pretty out of place. I swear, I must have been the ONLY person on the slopes without a helmet. A lot has changed in 10 years... wow.

Alright, time to end this post. Too much fun makes me rethink all this triathlon thing. But hey, Muskoka 70.3 is in 4 months and it's not going to swimbikerun itself. Whose idea was to sign up again?

IMMT Training Week 8 and 9: Work hard, crash harder

So it happened. I skipped a recap week. Training and work and life swallowed me whole and I got nothing left, not even brain power to put down things like 1+1=3. Wait, is that right? Does it mean that I skipped 2 weeks? No, wait. Whatever... That's what you get when you lose all your week's neurons. Which means that I need to go back in time twice as far and put my memory through a lot of effort. To tell you the truth, I don't even know where to start. Training Peaks to the rescue!

Swim

Two weeks ago on Tuesday, I did a 3000m swim which called for 20x100m on 2:30 main set. It hurt so much, I don't even want to talk about it. The hardest swim I've ever done until now, period. I managed to finish it all, but I wasn't quite sure on what planet I was at the end of it. Needless to say, two days later I was so tired that I put on my pull buoy and swam for 45min straight, all with flip turns so I can keep up with the kids in my lane. I was supposed to do this swim on Sunday, but it felt more appropriate for Thursday. On Sunday, I was still feeling pooped, that I decided to swing it and do whatever my body was in mood for. I swam 100m free, then another 100m, then 300m with my pull buoy, and decided to repeat the same pattern until I ran out of time. I managed to fit in 4 repeats for a total of 2000m. Matched my swim quota for the week, so that was success in my books.

This past week, it was a different story. Tuesday's swim didn't happen. But on Thursday I went to masters with the tri group and had a nice 2000m swim with a lot of 50s, 100s and 200s. I didn't think I could pull it off, but stamina showed up and got me through it just fine. I even swam my fastest pull/paddles splits - how?? Must have been the 10h sleep...

I have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow, but there are enough missed swims to choose from. Anything that fits within 1h will do I suppose.

Bike

I had a few good rides as well, no complaints here. I only missed one workout, last Wednesday, when I pretty much hit the wall. I came back from work and fell asleep on the couch. Decided to call it a night and go to bed at 7:45pm. I needed it really badly and I'm glad that I listened to my body. I could feel that everything was falling apart, starting with my mental. 

Below are the most exciting rides that I've done.

This one was made by hubbs with instructions from coach. I called it One Leg drills and Two Leg Spins (100rpm). Visually, quite exciting. Pure poetry. I managed to keep my calm and pedal on, what a miracle. Last spin looks almost like a scream though.

The only other ride worth sharing was my 2h45 ride today, Conness. Trainer Road didn't crash like the week before, yay! I did it all in my new Coeur Sports kit which I received yesterday. I was really curious about the magic chamois and whether my bottom was going to complain. Another miracle, I swear. Last week I had a lot of pain in my bike shorts with triple diaper-like padding, but this time, nada!! No pain whatsoever, how is it possible? The people at Coeur should better patent this one because they've got a winner!!

The ride was easy peasy. It wasn't too difficult to follow directions since the intervals were quite long, and I killed the boredom watching "Zoolander". Can you believe that I waited 13 years to see it? I still had a megawatt smile at the end of it (the workout, not the movie).

If you are wondering what a gratuitous view of my belly is doing here, this is my own #keepingitreal moment. The kit fits wonderfully, but I still have a muffin top to deal with. Hopefully 5 months from now I won't have to suck it in until I pass out while approaching photographers on the course of Ironman Mt. Tremblant.

Run

So far, I didn't miss any of the runs! They all have been 8km or more, with the long ones at 15km. Still doing them on the treadmill, sorry. But the early ones in the week were "hilly" where I got to play with both speed and incline on the treadmill, while the mid-week ones introduced 1min accelerations to 10km pace or faster. I'm glad they are not boring me to death. Speaking of which, I need another movie to watch during my long run tomorrow. Last week I watched "Food Inc." and it was rather upsetting at times. No, I didn't cry, but it got me mad. I'll never look at a piece of meat the same way again.

Here's another piece of worthy news. I bought new shoes!! I joined Kona winner Frederik Van Lierde, Mary Beth Ellis and Caroline Steffen in wearing On running shoes. I had NO idea they even existed until I walked into the Running Free store and tried them on. And NO, I could not put them down and walk away. Very rarely I find a shoe that marries my foot (both of them actually :-)) so wonderfully and this is one of them. I was looking for a shoe to do my long runs in while I rebuild enough calf strength to go back to my K Swiss K-Onas, since there is a new Ironman branded pair at home waiting for me to run in at #IMMT. I chose the Cloudsurfer model and so far, amazeballs! Not a single blister, no pain, even my knees seem happier lately. I also run a tad faster for the same level of effort. They are definitely springy and they almost feel like propelling me a little quicker.

Or maybe it's all in my head and I already imagine myself winning Kona in them. On folks, call me now!

In a nutshell

I had such a hectic schedule between office work, workouts, basketball games, long drives in the snow, parties, corporate ping pong tournaments (I move onto round two in doubles, yay!), endless meetings, stress to the max, that I ended crashing really hard and had to skip two workouts in a row. Not the end of the world, since I got back my sanity and some extra hours of sleep, but there were times when I questioned my ability to train for this Ironman. I told myself that if I'm crashing with 10h worth of workouts, what will happen when I'll hit 16-18? Thankfully the funk didn't last, but it's a little seed of doubt that I need to watch closely not to sprout.

I'll leave you with a few more pictures, so you can see what I've been talking about.

We drove for hours in this. 

More snow!! MAKE IT STOP!!!

NOT my bike. Phew.

We like basketball. At least the Raptors win every so often.

100 points = free pizza for everyone!

We skipped the pizza this time, but we went to Pizza Hut later in the week. We had the super thin crust pizza with veggies and a greek salad.

In case you were wondering...

The sad face of our sidewalks. Anyone have skates?

You could call this a slip and slide, alright!

You can understand why I keep my runs inside. No sidewalks, no fun! I refuse to dodge cars.

One last sweaty smile for the road, with boob crack as a bonus! See you next week!!

Winter Running

IS IT SPRING YET??

I am starting to lose my patience here. Don't get me wrong, I do love winter and snow, but when it messes up with my training and my longing for the outdoors, I am going cuckoo. We had enough of this already!

So far I've only been able to go outdoors for my long runs and while they have not been too miserable per se, I just wish I could spend more time breathing the fresh air. The treadmill is nice and predictable, convenient too, I can hop on it without wasting too much time at lunch, but constantly staring at the outside while I do my runs, it wears off my little fuzzy brain faster than my soles.

Ok, I know, I know, I am full of it, I COULD go outside if I REALLY wanted to. Coach has been giving me some specific workouts such as hill repeats and tempo runs, but finding the right places outside my office to do those looked pretty impossible to me, and I just didn't want to leave them for the evenings, it's dark and cold and all that meh.

The trail outside my office was in this shape until very recently, I guess, so without YakTrax it's useless. The time I went out for a walk and took the pictures below I almost broke my neck thrice.

However, it did the job and brought back my sanity, at least for a little while. I have the smile to prove it:

I tried though, now look at this messy sidewalk. This particular run was constant jumping over slushy puddles and tip toeing on ice patches, as well as on and off the road because the sidewalk itself had 5 inches of frozen snow on it, harder than a block of concrete (I don't have proof, but you gotta believe me, I almost sent a letter to the city).

We had nicer ones too, thank goodness, but far too few. And the sidewalks were FINALLY cleaned. See the difference with the one below and look at my hubbs go up the hill!

There is hope though, it seems to be thawing little by little and soon there will be no more. Right, RIGHT?? Some people even took their toys outside, for good juju. Look how the snow melted all around it. I think it's getting the message, slowly but surely.

As for me, I am trying to keep a positive attitude, what else can I do? Have you seen this bright sunshine? At least it's not always grey and gloomy. I even got to wear a sweater instead of my fleece and replaced my wool hat with a buff. Can I say hip hip hooray?

Last  but not least, the snow seems to have its advantages too. Instant ice bath, half the soaking! I swear I laid there motionless for about 10 minutes and I could not get enough of it. It's only when my butt froze completely and I could no longer feel my belly button that I decided to go inside and stretch.

The morale of this story? Some days, winter is great, some days, it's a real bitch, but in the end, it shall all pass. When it comes to biking, I am still in the honeymoon phase with my trainer, when I run I am thankful for at least being able to look outside, the pool is warm, most of the times, so triathloning in winter is doable. It's only the times when you want to break the monotony that get to you.

So, Mother Nature, please, please, with a cherry on top, hurry the fuck already and put on your bikini and stop all the crying before I lose it again.

Enough with this, even if it's pretty:

And definitely no more of this!

Mmmkay? Peace out!

Life is good

It's Sunday, I finished my 2h long run, had an ice bath, then pizza for lunch. I even had a haircut. Life is good.

Yesterday, I did a killer bike ride on my trainer, 3 intervals of 20 min each, called Eclipse. Nothing to do with Twilight. I switched on my TV for the first time in 2 months, watched Ellen, then Argo. Life is good.

On Friday, my work demo setup worked and I shipped it, and we had celebratory beer at the office. It totally turned the week's mood around, so I celebrated some more with a run outside in the snow. Life is good.

Thursday, I met with a local coach from my tri club. I am going to see him at least twice a week and he's going to cook a brand new training plan for me to finish Ironman Muskoka 70.3 later this year. Life is good.

Wednesday I did another bike workout on my trainer, called Ericsson. Nothing to do with the phones. I found my sweet spot. Workout data got botched in the upload, but I managed to fix it after upgrading to the latest software version. Life is good.

Tuesday I was alive and kicking, despite the lack of energy. Life is good.

Monday I accepted a DietBet challenge to lose 5.6lb in 4 weeks. I put in $30. If I succeed, I share $20,000 and some change with as many other winners out of 683 (as of today), so at worst, I lose $30, at best, I win them back and some more. Life is good.

I found on eBay the same set of Gap scarf and hat that I had since 2003, but lost sometime in the last month. Life is awesome!

There is good in everything, you just have to look for it. It's called positive thinking. Train at it everyday.

The Beating aka How I didn't break my neck snowboarding

I am (somewhat) proud to announce that I didn't die today and I didn't even break my neck or a limb. Last time I tried snowboarding, six years ago, I broke my wrist and that, my friends, was the WORST pain that I EVER felt. (Bringing babies in the world didn't count, they took the shortcut). Because of some people's incompetence, they didn't take x-rays until a week later and that's when they noticed that my bones had set at a 15 degree angle which would have left my wrist impaired for the rest of my life. They asked me what I wanted to do though, and without hesitation, I said that I wanted a straight wrist, which meant breaking it AGAIN. So, that's what they did (I will spare you the details) and I ended up stuck on my couch, drugged in la-la land for about 3 weeks, watching the olympic winter games, what an irony. 6 years fast forward, pretty much yesterday, I was still scared shitless. I had not approached a slope, not even with the thought, all this time. When my 12yr old son, who went 4 times snowboarding this year asked me to take him to the Hockley Valley Resort this weekend, it took a lot of mental preparation to accept my fate again. I had no choice, spending quality time with my son was way more rewarding than doing nothing and waiting for the fear to pass.

I didn't need to rent anything, I already had my boots and snowboard, but they were rather dusty from sitting pretty in the basement all this time, so I asked a guy at the rental shop to take a look at my bindings and make sure everything was in order and off we went. First on the "Teddy Bear" hill which I climbed a few times by foot because I was even too scared of the baby lifts and all the crying toddlers hanging around them, literally. Those few runs on the baby hill were a disaster, I could only face downhill backwards if you see what I mean, unable to make a turn to face forward. That's because I obviously have no abs to pull myself up, so I had to flip on the stomach and get up by pushing on my arms. Since I was constantly on my toes, my calves took the first beating. Of course, knees followed closely since they were the natural, most readily available joints to fall on. I was getting quickly frustrated, so I went and booked a 1h semi-private lesson for me and my son. $100, cha-ching! But that was the only thing that was going to save the day, someone to remind me the basics.

We had peanut butter and nutella sandwiches for snack and while waiting for the lesson to start, we decided with my son to take the ski lift up and then the long, gentle slope down. I fell off the ski lift pretty badly, banged my elbow and shoulder again. But guess what, I didn't fall once going down the hill. I kept doing the "leaf" across the slope, but as long as I was standing, I was WINNING! One more descent and it was time for the lesson. He took us to the baby hill again and tought me how to take the kiddie lift, but shortly after that I said enough, I hate this damn slope, I can't get up. So we took the lift up again and after receiving the necessary pointers from the teacher, I had to launch myself into actually making turns. "Keep that goofy foot forward and rotate upper body with the arms out in the direction that you want to turn". Sounds easy enough, right? Well, that's about where the falls started and lasted a long, long time. I counted about 50 for the day. My tailbone and knees are bruised and I feel like I took a beating all over. By the end of the day my quads were spasming, the calves were crying and I was taking it all with the smile. Figured I'd stop while I was still standing and if shaky legs were a sign, I definitely listened.

Here's a picture from our last run, taken by my son.

Am I ready to start again? I need to let my bruises heal, but I think I'm game!! That'll teach me to complain.