My finest video editing moment yet

In absence of motivation to go swimming, I attended our club's last indoor swimming practice last week on Tuesday. I am sharing this because I got to play with our rarely used GoPro and had a lot of fun following people up and down the pool during their workout, mentally analyzing everyone's technique because you gotta put your NCCP certification at work sometimes, even if it's for nothing. Nobody is paying me to give them feedback and I do that for free anyway because I have this tendency to give unsolicited advice left and right, especially when I'm drunk. But I digress.

Lo and behold, the fruit of my first video editing attempt, playing with Windows Movie Maker. This was also a first. In the past I used some fancier software because I needed color correction and flipping images and whatnot. Now I treat videos more radically. Yellow tint? Cut, cut, cut! Man, I can't hold on the thought train today. Back to the subject, once again: my personal greatness in filmmaking. Tadaaaaa. You will need to play it with sound, because it took me only 2h to find the right soundrack, free of copyright, so that Youtube doesn't choke on it. And I'm damn proud of it. Please tell me that I don't suck. My ego really needs some stroking on this dreadful Monday.


I know you liked it. But please don't judge my peeps, or I'll break your ribs.

Oh yeah, on that note, my ribs are still giving me a lot of grief. I spent last week heavily medicated, had to work from home two days and went to my ART specialist to see what exactly was out of whack because no other doctor would touch my ribs. The doctors would look at them, say... yep, you're broken. Stop this. Go back to taking pictures or something. Stop hitting people. You're too old for this shit. No, seriously.

I heard that before, about 10 years ago when I fractured a leg hitting my heavy bag. But I ain't giving up, so stop telling me what's good for me. Alas I was also unable to exercise because any movement of my trunk would send me screaming and hyperventilating.

On Saturday I had to take my car to the mechanic to replace a broken muffler and decided to come back home by bike. My first time back on the saddle since the Muskoka long weekend, and it didn't suck. I could breathe through it quite nicely, but I also had the wind at my back and no hills to power up to. I was optimistic that I could return to exercising and I stopped all painkillers. Today I also went back to ART for another torture session. I feel so good after these sessions, they're crack, pun intended. I am not a masochist, but I can move a lot better afterwards and I am no longer in huge amounts of pain, at least for 6h or so. Hopefully it will last longer this time... At least until after my evening Taekwondo class. I did not go at all last week because I'm not THAT stupid.

I don't know what I'll be able to do, running is still out of question because all the bouncing inside my belly is very painful. Maybe I'll work on my patterns and my sine wave, Or I could just listen to my teacher and stop being such a pussy. Not verbatim, of course, he'd get some weird looks if he said that. But sometimes he means it, alright. Will let you know how it goes... Upward and onward! And if you are not confused enough, my first triathlon race is two and a half weeks from now!

IMMT Training Weeks 19, 20 and 21: Where did the time go??

You know what's harder than Ironman training? Blogging!!! Not only it takes me hours to complete a post, but it also stresses me to no end because I'm a person who tries to meet deadlines on a daily basis and when I miss my own deadlines by so many days, and even weeks in a row, I go cuckoo inside my head. Case in point, I could not delay this post a single more day and I decided to switch my rest day with tonight's workout and get it done!! Ok, ok, open water swim got cancelled (but I could have gone to the pool) and my legs aren't 100% and I could use more rest after last weekend's 70.3 race, but these are just excuses. If I really wanted to, I could have done both. End of story.

But, say... aren't you relieved to see that I am back? Yeah, baby, and I'm feeling fantastic! Bursting with energy even. No kidding... Can't wait to get this recap started! (now, where did I put my cheat sheet aka Training Peaks?)

Swim

Including the race, I swam 6 times in the last 3 weeks. Twice in the pool and 4 times in open water. One pool workout was a lazy continuous swim for 2300m and the second one was a glorious 10x200m with warmup and cooldown for a total of 3000m. Both times I left the pool as drunk as these lanes.

I won't even bother to share my times because as I expected, they did not transfer in open water. I returned to the exact same pace as last year. I chose not to dwell too much into the whys and hows of this particular WTF and instead, I listened to my hubby who wisely said that if this is my time at the beginning of the season, it can only improve from here. Do I believe it? When I see my last swimming analysis video, I truly do want to believe. If only I could keep that stroke consistent and powerful throughout, maybe I'll get somewhere.


But as with any open water swim, I get carried away. I love it so much in the lake, and maybe that's the problem. I have to stop swimming with my head in la-la land and FOCUS. I heard myself saying this a few times already... Next time I will listen, I promise.
I swam at the James Dick Quarry twice, and as usual, I struggled there. There always seem to be some sort of chop or current that makes me swallow a lot of sandy water and fight to stay on course. Or maybe I was still drunk, who knows. It may explain the thumb up despite the circumstances.

Then my FMCT tri club started the open water swims at Professor's Lake and OH. SO. MUCH. BLISS. Yes, I know I'm shouting. You should come swim there, it's wonderful! Just look at these photos. Seriously, dudes.

Back to swim dreaming... 
Bike

I managed to fit in 7 bike workouts in total. Four of them were on the trainer, mostly easy, recovery rides watching 24 or Jimmy Fallon. Three were outdoors and they all helped me reach different levels of "holy fuck I can do this".

Three weekends ago, I spent the entire day on Saturday volunteering at a race in Toronto with the office folks, and I had to shift my workouts around. Since coach was free on Sunday, he offered to ride 3h with me, and I was going to top up with 2h30 on my own to reach 5h30. But first, a visual.

I wasn't quite sure where he was going to take me, I only heard mention of Bond Head and that did not ring any bells with me. Another hint was that coach loves hills and he eats them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He must have been really hungry that day. And most days I don't mind them because I have no choice but ride the hills of Caledon. But hills with wind and more hills and more wind? Just look at that beauty of a profile, then look at my speed and my heart rate. If that doesn't scream constant mother-effing-hills-get-me-outta-here, I don't know what does. So we went to Bond Head (the end of the line to the north-east of the trace) and we took a short coffee break there, then we rode back down, on the map that is, because in reality it was very much up and down and up and down, and if I can say Hallelujah intervention, coach's chain broke and he lost 4 links and then he couldn't go into the big chain ring anymore, which meant a little break for my legs and time to look at the pretty landscape around us.

Eventually we parted ways and I decided to head west towards Belfountain because I really wanted to make the day even more memorable, and that meant ice cream. So I took all the courage that I had left and started chewing on it with all my teeth and eventually climbed that mammoth of hill and made it to Belfountain, which ended adding 10-15km extra to my trip. But I was a woman on a mission and nothing could stand between me and my ice cream. Once arrived at the restaurant, I also had a panini because I was starving, then, with a satisfied belleh at last, I started the last leg of my journey back home. It may have been all schuss from there, but it was no piece of cake. 150km in total, and oh so close to completing a first mile century! But hubbs was waiting for me with lunch and we were on a schedule to go to the quarry and so I decided to leave it for another day (spoiler alert: it's coming up this weekend, yikes!). The End.

The second ride in the series took me to Schomberg. Zin and I actually took the little group from the tri club there since we were the leaders of the day, and we had so much fun! Gorgeous route, awesome company, great coffee, yummy cherry pie.... Mmmmmm, yes, pie!!!

If you ever go to Schomberg, make sure to stop by The Grackle Coffee Company, you won't be disappointed. They also have Kawartha's ice cream, but that in itself is rather dangerous for my waistline. I don't have to drive all the way to Muskoka to have some! Anyway, 4h on the bike that day, over 100km ridden, I had no issues swapping gooey gels for pie.

Alright - last but not least, the bike leg in the Welland 70.3 race (now called Rose City Half) - it deserves a post in itself, so stand by... it shall come to this blog real soon.

Run

Between the quick 2.5km runs off the bike and the long slow runs in the weekends, plus the speed work on the track and the hill repeats on the treadmill, 11 run workouts in total. It may not seem like a lot, but they were all quality workouts.

All long runs were over 20km, the hill repeats left me in a puddle of sweat and the track workouts got me pushing Yasso's 800s at mile pace and I didn't even puke. And dare I mention no pain at all in my hips, knees, ankles or ITBs? WIN!

Even though I felt like quitting at times, especially when I ran 5x3km mind-numbing loops around Professor's Lake, it was more out of boredom than anything. So when a girl from the tri club was looking for a partner to run 10-1s (10min run at 7min/km - 1min walk) for 15km, I said why not? As long as I was going to be moving my legs for 2h, it didn't matter the speed. I ended enjoying it so much, that I have no issues saying yes again in the future. These runs are good for the soul - put your pace away and enjoy the day!

In a nutshell

I felt pretty good in the last month, despite everything that I threw at my body and things got really promising. I managed to turn the page of negativity and truly enjoyed every single workout. I knew that I was going to go into my first 70.3 distance of the year with the confidence of a well executed training plan and that helped me stay relaxed and relatively stress free (when I wasn't in panic mode about missed blog posts, that is).

Truth to be told, the last 3 weeks were not that heavy volume wise (14h, 12h, 10h), but now it's time to drop the hammer again. A new cycle starts and this one looks rather scary. Will see you on the other side! Sleep is calling.

IMMT Training Weeks 14 and 15: The meltdown

The rollercoaster ride continues. Two more weeks that taught me new ways of rising and falling, with a huge meltdown in the process. It took a good cocktail of adrenalin and endorphins to get over it, but below is the tale of how it all went down, literally.

Swim

The last two weeks have seen some decent swims, whenever I did not skip them. Yes, it did happen twice for various "reasons". I actually had some valid excuses for once, so I won't get much into the "why". Just trust me on this one. The 4 swims that I did had everything I could wish for. Fast intervals, long intervals, bands, pull, paddles, flip turns and non stop bouncing between walls. One even had an underwater camera since I had to test it for our tri club's swim stroke analysis. No, I didn't analyse myself, but I certainly noticed the boob drag and the revealing view all the way down to my navel that I get with my vintage swim suits. Time for a complete wardrobe replacement!!

One of my favorite swims was this one, which I did last weekend after the 5K race/11k run:

Warmup:
200m free
300m pull
Main set:
8x50m (25 fast, 25 ez) on 1:15
100m breast stroke
2x300m pull 30sri
2x200m (150m free, 50m breaststroke) 20sri
4x50m (25 fast, 25 ez)
Cooldown
100m breaststroke

The next Tuesday I did another long, uninterrupted swim, the longest so far with 2500m straight pull, concentrating on THE "perfect stroke". Scored the perfect goggle marks too.

I recently came across this excellent blog post by Mama Simmons (thank you!!) and something "clicked" in my head. The key words were "lead with your wrist". I've always paid attention to have a high elbow and finish my pull with the hand near my thigh, but never really thought about the angle that my arm had under water. And I realized that my elbow was indeed leading, not my wrist. Since I've been paying attention to this, I noticed an increase in speed and overall more water resistance against my arm, which means that my "feel for the water" is now better and my stroke more powerful. I could definitely feel my lats engaging, and that, my friends, is quite an epiphany. One that needs more muscles in these places, alas. It makes for a HARD workout!!

You can definitely see me leading with the elbow in the video below, dating from last October (mostly because I drop it too low).

Now all I need is a new stroke analysis video and hopefully we can see the difference ;-).
Here's before and after the eureka moment. It seems that I managed to save 1 stroke/length and 4sec/100m. Hey, I may not be the fastest swimmer, but progress is progress!

Bike

Ahhh, the bike.... Or rather, AAARGH!!! the bike. Whose idea to increase my FTP was anyway? That's how you progress, I know, but damn... I did not get a break at all! I was so looking forward to my "recovery" week and what do I get? more sweet spot and MVO2 intervals!! I had to send my coach an email begging for less intensity during my recovery weeks, at least to have some rest to look forward to. These last 2 weeks broke me. The good news is that I managed to last 10 minutes more than the week before at sweet spot (before crashing and burning again) and that I nailed the MVO2s.

But trying to do a double 20min threshold ride after 7 days of workouts and no rest was a lousy idea. Given my increased tiredness and stress at work which led to having to take a full day off from work for physical (and mental) exhaustion, I obviously failed miserably, even though I managed to break 4 more personal records in the process.

In retrospective, maybe I should just stop saying that I failed, because all these ups and downs are part of the journey, but I can't help it being hard on myself and getting more and more discouraged when it happens week after week. Just like this past weekend. On Thursday I tried kickstarting my strength training (again!) with a few squats and lunges and my legs and glutes were so sore afterwards, despite having the Friday off completely, that I spent most of the Saturday long bike ride on the trainer crying my eyeballs off. I had to step off after 2h15, only to return later in the day to finish the 3h45 workout. Every single pedal stroke was a battle of the guts and pushing through the physical pain was downright infuriating. I knew that it was only muscle soreness, and that sometimes all you need is a good dose of HTFU, but I just didn't have it in me that day. More emails to coach followed, interrupted by endless crying spells. I must have spent as many hours crying on Saturday as I spent on my bike. In the end I was ordered 2 full days of rest and a good dose of protein and carbs after EACH workout. Coach is worried that I do not recover properly afterwards, given how I usually go straight to bed after my workouts and neglect fuelling those aching muscles. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I will see the light sometime in the next few weeks. If it were easy everyone would do it.

Run

I had some challenges in this department also, but hopefully they are not as alarming as they feel. I started getting some post tibial tendon pain, like shin splints above my ankle, on the inside of my leg. They would come after 1km, 8km or not come at all. So random. I tried changing shoes, but the results were not consistent. I even saw a podiatrist who said that it's nothing serious that a bag of frozen peas won't solve. So I've been icing, stretching, massaging and staring at my leg, imploring it to stop bothering me. Not sure whether it heard me, but thankfully it allowed me to do all my long runs, including the Mississauga Half Marathon on Sunday (race report to follow) with little to no pain at all.

Another notable mention goes to the first run of the year in the rain. Hubbs and I went to the track for some speed intervals and surprisingly enough, I enjoyed it.

The proof is in the smiles!!

In a nutshell

Mentally, I've hit rock bottom. I am scared because it's still early in the training cycle and there has to be enough room for crashing even harder. I know I will. Fuelling appropriately and recovery/muscle soreness may be related, and living with the feeling that I already eat a lot, too much maybe, is a constant challenge. I may not be fuelling at the appropriate times or the right stuff. I know little about recovery science and about the foods that I put in my mouth beyond them being healthy or not. I need to make some changes, but they are not guaranteed to work. Maybe I should just believe more...in myself, in the process, in being able to turn my mojo around and enjoy training despite the (occasional) pain (in the ass).

I think it's time for some swimsuit shopping and signing for a race or two. It should help, right?

Training to train

Like all resolutionists, I started the year fast and furious spitting out 3 blog posts in three days, then I left you hanging for 10 days. But I had a good reason. I caught THE flu. I thought I had the flu before, but no, this one was IT. I could barely keep my eyes open and my head up without passing out. Seriously, last Saturday I was two glasses of orange juice away from a ride in an ambulance (thank you Montana's manager for offering those to me when I scared you by turning cadaveric white and lost my feeling in my hands and feet). Yup, I had to lie down in one of their booths at lunch time. Anyway, the next day I ended in the doctor's office and I was put on Tamiflu which did the trick. I could return to the office three days later without the feeling of carrying a ton of bricks inside my head. Seriously, don't get the flu. Wash your hands often and stay away from the crowds. It's not fun.

But I also knew that you needed those 10 days to really appreciate the awesomeness of my recap posts (1, 2 and 3). What, you don't want to read them again? Okay, okay, you're excused if you already read them at least twice.

Now, what happened since? Not much because 1. I was in symbiosis with my couch 2. I was busy watching the first season of Orange is the New Black. Yes, there is lesbian sex in it. Get over it. It's really a good show.

Once I started feeling human again, I went to a new therapist and she got me doing some interesting strength training (I'll sure get buns of steel after this) and stretches that made me curse my body with new and colourful words. I also got my IT bands taped to show them who's the boss.

With renewed hope, I returned slowly to riding my bike and swimming. This week I managed to work out for 3h so far, including one hour at masters swim with my tri club. And you know what? I could keep up! It made me super happy about how little pool fitness I lost over the past 2 months. Alas, I also know that I won't finish the IM with swimming only and I still need to start putting in some serious biking and running workouts. So I did more spinning this week: 30 min, then 10k, then 45min. Next stop, 1h!! This may just end up as a date with hubbs and Trainer Road in our Pain Cave on Monday.

I also plan on running 30min on the treadmill tomorrow morning and see how my IT bands and hip hold up. So far, with the biking and swimming, no real negative impact, but I am still cautious. Not going crazy with enthusiasm or I'll pay the price. Learned that lesson once.

Bottom line, things have started looking up and I try to stay positive and take it one day at a time, celebrating every little ounce of progress. The IM is now 7 months away, exactly 31 weeks from now. Time to start the count down!

In the meantime, I leave you with some hypnotic footage of my swim analysis which I had done along with 3 private lessons with Sean Bechtel back in November.