The countdown has begun

Today is January 18 and in exactly 30 weeks (and a sleepless night) I will be shivering with anxiety at the swim start of Ironman Mont Tremblant. It is time to start the countdown. 30 weeks of training and a life altering experience to complete it. This week I continued the re-building of my fitness and even though my coach and I agreed that I won't get the official IM training plan until I'm able to train 10h/week again, I am slowly but surely ramping up and adding minutes, miles and strokes to each of my workouts.

I also added more flip turns (to my swims, that is)! Which led to this.

On Monday, I decided to run. My first run this year, so I took advantage of my gym membership at work and I hit the treadmill. I also had a physio session in the evening where I had to do countless butt squeezes, bridges and clam shells, and by 9pm I was craving an ice bath. But not that cold because I'm a wimp these days.

When hubbs told me that the pool was colder than usual that day I knew that I had to go. If I kept moving, I was most certainly not going to feel it in my bones. And so I went. I did 2x100m to warm up, then put on the pull buoy and continued bouncing between the walls. I was doing every length with a flip turn and after a while all that tumbling made me forget completely where I was in my set. I had planned to do 500m, but I was feeling "in the zone" and told myself that I should try and see how long I can keep doing the flip turns. My watch counts the laps and eventually, while I was coming out for air after one of the flips, I looked at it. I had swum 800m non stop and I said, why not go for 1000m and strike one more goal off my "40 steps to 40" list? After all, I never mentioned NOT using a pull buoy. When I don't kick when I swim in a wetsuit, it's still called swimming. Everyone does it. So there, this IS legit swimming, dammit. Plus, I go faster without a kick, so most likely I'll be doing the same "in the field".

Here is the data geekery (the last 100m are buggy because Garmin lost me. Time is correct, but not the length). You can clearly see the 1000m block, the warmup and the cooldown. You'll just have to trust me that I did every single length of this workout with a flip turn. Because I did and I am stupid proud of it!! I promise to provide video evidence of my flipping prowess before the judges change their mind.

Since Monday I also did 2 bike workouts and I even threw in some intervals, more and more intense to remind myself that I can sweat. I managed to get to 1h on the bike with 2 blocks of 20 min spinfest at 95rpm. These felt like the kind of workouts I was doing last year, so not all fitness is lost, phew. 

And today I ran again. Two in a week, wheee! I went to the indoor track for the first time ever since I promised Meg Menzies that I'd run for her. She's no longer among us, but all the #megsmiles logged today will remain in many people's memory, including her family's. We just can't help it, we are family too. She was one of us. What else can we do?

I ran with abandon. I got lost in my thoughts, I did not feel pain, but my heart was aching in more than one way. That I gave it all is an understatement. I did not go to the track to race, but somehow I ran faster than I imagined. I didn't feel tired, so I have no idea where this energy came from. Sometimes there are things that you cannot explain. 

About half way I could still not understand if the numbers I was seeing were real. I started hitting the lap button because I wanted to make sense of what was happening, if not during the run, but maybe after. Now that I know the distance of each lap, exactly 120m, I counted that I must have run 49 laps in 30 minutes. Here are the last 28 of them.

What will happen tomorrow, next week... we'll see. I hope my coach won't read this blog post or he'll lock me in my Pain Cave until I can control my enthusiasm. Until then, I'm enjoying the free benefits of my drug of choice: beautiful, blissful endorphins. Oh how I missed you!!

Anyway, Week 30 starts tomorrow!! Oh wait... do I count up or down? What would you do to keep track of this madness?

Running in circles

You know what's funny about speed workouts on the track? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. If you are smiling, you're not working hard enough. If you are not puking, then you aren't hangover enough. Ok, that's not really what I meant, you better be puking without a reason, or you're still not working hard enough. It's been two weeks now of track workouts with the coach and a few other willing victims. He doesn't have a whistle, he doesn't have a stop watch, but you better speed up when he tells you to move your ass. There is no other reason to be on that track otherwise.

My last track workout went something like this:

24 glorious laps

I didn't know what was waiting for me when I got there. Coach said "I know it's hot today, but warm up your legs with 1200m easy". Ok, that I can do. Easy peasy. I put down my water bottle and off I went.

The sun was still high up and with the humidity at 62%, it was going to be a sweaty one for sure. Three laps later, we stop and do the dynamic stretches, A B C's, accelerations, I can't even remember what else. This part is always a blur. I just know that's not fun. A necessary evil as usual. Anyway, it's far from being relaxing, it's meant to get your limbs and heart going, and going hard.

And then he says - "tonight you guys are going to do fartleks". You remember how I said in the last post that coach thought my fartleks weren't hard enough? Well, this was definitely going to be a lesson in fartleks, albeit a very easy one. Run 20 laps, with the odd ones at 1/2 marathon pace and the even ones at 10k pace. No stopping. 8km of speed intervals. *gasp*. I did a quick mental calculation, I should alternate 5:35 pace with 5:15 pace. I think I can do this.

First 4 laps went by fast, or so I thought. 1.6km, 5:28 average pace. My math was right. And then coach asks, "what is your lap time?". D'uh... I dunno. I just know my instant pace. Ok, let me hit the lap button after this one. Ok, here it is, this was the "fast" one. 2:03. The next one, at 1/2 marathon pace, 2:15. Coach then says, "try to do the next one in 2:00". I speed up a little, this is not comfortable, but I hit it right on the head, 2:00.02. One more "slow" one, and he says, "try to go under 2 this time" so I speed up even more. This feels really hard now... will I be able to recover? After all, my 1/2 marathon pace is 1 min faster than my long run pace... I really do my best and at 4:41 average, I finish the lap in 1:52 and I yell in between laboured breaths, "this is faster than 5k"!!! Next mission, 1:58. I do it in 1:57.7 and I am told that I should stick to that pace for the remainder of the "fast" laps. I feel that I'm getting close to losing my dinner in the grass. I manage to do a few more... but then at lap 18 I really must stop for some water, then I get dizzy and a stitch under my rib cage bends me in two. Coach says, "that was good, enough for the day, go cool down for 1200m". 3 laps "slow" and then I'm done!!

A 5-something average with a 2.4k easy?

The show starts at the 15 min mark

This workout really felt like the hardest run I've ever done. Running so many laps under 5min/km? There is a beginning to everything. Who knew I had these in me? There was a man on that track on Wednesday who believed that I could. And now I do too. I may not be made of champion DNA, but at least I can go beyond my own mental threshold once in a while. My legs didn't break, I didn't puke my brains out and my heart did not burst that night, but it's been pumping tiger blood ever since. Believe me when I say that I can ride that high better than Charlie Sheen.