Yay for training

Funny how floating around on a cloud of love makes one completely forget about training.

I've been a little bit lazy the last week or two, not really forcing myself to stick to any training schedule, but doing what I feel like, when I feel like it. Generally, it works out pretty well and I end up doing swimming, biking, running twice a week each, which is where I want to be.

But the last week, it's resulted in me sitting on my butt a lot. Last weeks' training consisted of two runs, one swim and one bike.

And I'm ashamed to admit that Sunday and yesterday, I did absolutely nothing. It was HOT!

The good news, though, is that I rode on Saturday and I'm getting a lot faster. Not fast, fast, mind you, but faster than before. When I first got my bike, I was averaging just over 13 mph. On Saturday, without even really pushing it and riding by myself, I averaged just over 15 mph. I'll take it!

And this morning, I did my first timed distance swim. I wasn't trying to go fast, just trying to finish. I swam 750 meters in 17:20, which comes out to 2:18/100m. Not great, but not bad for a distance. Still better than what I was swimming 100 meters at a time a month ago.

Randy and I are headed up to the mountains this weekend for a belated four-year anniversary weekend. (Our anniversary was last Thursday, but we couldn't get away last weekend because I had to work and he was riding bikes for 24 hours straight.) We'll have some chances to bike, which means the rest of my week will look something like this:

Wednesday: Run
Thursday: Swim
Friday: Bike
Saturday: Run (or more likely hike since we'll be right on the Appalachian trail) Sunday: Bike

At some point, I need to get out for an open water swim. I keep making excuses for why it isn't convenient or why I can't go, but the truth is that I'm just scared! I've gotten so comfortable in the pool that I don't want to face something new and scary. But better I do it now than on race day.

Yay for training. And thanks to Jessi for giving me the nudge I needed to get this posted.

Catching Up

Lots to catch up with, so let's just dive right in, shall we?

I got my bike fitted at Inside Out Sports -- they were amazing. Richard carefully fitted my bike, answered every one of my pesky questions and even unwrapped and rewrapped my handlebar tape to move my shifters up 5mm so I would be more comfortable in both the drops and on the hoods.

And boy what a difference it made! I felt like I was on a different bike. The day after my fitting, I went out and did the same ride that had earlier induced finger-clawed paralysis. This time it was perfect.

While I was getting fitted, I mentioned that Randy makes fun of me when I want to wear my Camelbak on a road ride. He always tells me that it is not kosher, but can never tell me why. Well, I figured I'd ask the guys at Inside Out Sports what they thought.

Man, y'all should have seen the expression of horror on their faces when I innocently asked if a Camelbak was really THAT bad. You would've thought I asked them if it'd be okay to put streamers on my handlebars. But, like Randy, they couldn't tell me exacly WHY it was so wrong, just that it was terribly, terribly uncouth.

So, then, I'll put it to you guys. What is so wrong with a convenient, efficient water-delivery system that just so happens to strap onto your back?

Anyway, Randy and I went out of town last weekend to visit his parents. We were planning on leaving Friday midday, after a nice road ride in the morning. On Thursday, I was all jazzed about the idea, but working until midnight meant that I was a little cranky when I woke up on Friday.

And by cranky I mean that I was a complete and utter shit. Stomping around the house, muttering to myself about how much life sucked, slurping down coffee while grumpily staring into space, responding only in mono-syllables. After suffering through my crankiness for a good hour, Randy finally came out dressed to ride. "Ready to go?" he brightly asked me. He knows me well enough to know that, in a mood like that, I'll take any excuse not to do a single physical thing. So his strategy is to pretend that there's nothing wrong and I'm just as raring to go as he is. Which works admirably pretty much every time.

"All RIGHT," I grumbled and stomped to put on my riding clothes. I grumbled all the way down the stairs and into the basement. I grumbled while I checked my tires and did the good old preflight. I grumbled as I walked my bike out of the driveway.

And then I got on. And started pedaling. And was magically redeemed. Literally, the second I started spinning the pedals, all my bad feelings went away and I was suddenly happy and excited about riding and feeling really good.

I love it when that happens.

It would have been hard to stay grumpy, though, because it was an AMAZING day. As we rode out of Carrboro, Randy and I both kept exclaiming over how perfect and beautiful everything looked. We decided to ride out to Dairyland Rd, because that's about the best place to ride on a day like that, when the sky is super blue and the fields are lush green and rich yellow and everything smells good and you have the day off and left your bad mood somewhere on Merritt Mill Rd.

Right as we were coming to the Maple View Farms store, Randy said that he needed to stop and adjust his seat. He's been having problems with his left knee and wanted to raise his seat a little to see if that helped.

We pulled over so he could do that, and as I waited for him to do his adjusting, I noticed that he was having the darnedest time pulling the allen wrench tool out of his jersey. And then I noticed that he had a kind of weird look on his face.

And then everything went into slow motion. Because when he pulled that tool out of his jersey, it wasn't a tool at all.

It was a box. A tiny one, with a very distinctive shape.

And then he was opening the box and he was saying something that sounded suspiciously like "Marry me?" and then he was smiling and something was glittering really brightly at me.

I almost fell over. I may have uttered the phrase, "Are you f-ing kidding me?" At some point in there, I said, "YOU GOT IT!!!!" And then I ran around in lots of teeny circles.

And then I called my best friend and when she answered (groggily because I had just woken her up), I screamed "WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!! Okay gotta go" and hung up.

And then I ran around in more tiny circles. And there was hugging. And there was squealing. And there were more tiny circles.

And then I asked Randy, "Well, what do we do now?"

And Randy, being the practical one, said, "Well I think we get back on our bikes and finish our ride."

And that's just what we did. And it was perfect.

I couldn't have imagined getting engaged in a more perfect way. It was during something that we really love doing together. It was outside on a beautiful day, in one of my favorite places. It wasn't too sappy or overplanned. And then we had an hour on the bike to burn off all that adrenaline.

And man was it an amazing ride! Usually I sweat and puff and barely make it up the hills, but on Friday, I stood up on my pedals and JAMMED up them like they were speed bumps. We saw a couple riders going in the other direction and it was all I could do to keep from screaming, "WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!" I did, though, yell Good Morning! in an entirely overenthusiastic fashion. I'm sure they wondered why I was greeting them with such energy. What can I say, the idea of getting married to the man I love is a pretty exciting thing!!


This picture is kind of old (considering I don't even wear glasses any more!) but my digital camera is acting up, so that's what you get!

And, for those of you who are interesting in that sort of thing, the ring:



He did pretty amazingly well, if I do say so. And I do! I am probably obnoxious to everyone in meetings this week, because I am not listening and am instead admiring the way my hand glitters in the light. Shameless! If my camera was not a total piece of crap (I hate you, Canon) I'd post a real picture of it on my finger, but this will have to do for now.

So, yeah, the bike fits, riding is fun and we're getting married! It was a good weekend!

A Solo Ride with Some Creepy Results

On Saturday, I went out on the road with my bike for the first time EVER.

I thought Randy was going to have a heart attack. For three hours before I left, he kept giving me little tidbits and reminders and watch out for this and don't forget about that and make sure you bring this and do you know what to do in the event of that and on and on.

By the time I rolled my trusty steed out of the driveway, I felt like a little kid on the first day of school. Excited for a new adventure, but scared to be going out on my own. Randy gets worried about me and insists that I am "clumsy" (well, I never!), so he had me all amped up and basically terrified.

Before I left, we did a little refitting on my bike. I was pretty certain that the stem it came with is too short for me, so we changed it out for a longer one. Of course, the only one we had lying around was way longer...like a full inch and a half. But I was tired of spinning the wheels like crazy and feeling like I was too crunched up to get any power, so on it went and away I rode.

Right away, my body position felt a ton better. I did notice that there seemed to be a lot more pressure on my hands, but I shrugged it off and got my ride on.

And it was a beautiful day! The sun was shining and there were cyclists all over. Randy had designed a route for me that basically circled around Dairyland Rd., so I could enjoy all the beautiful country scenery, but avoid the countless drivers out for some ice cream at the dairy up that road.

I'm proud to say that I didn't have a single mishap. I'm sure Randy was waiting by the phone for me to call with horrible news of some incident, but there was none. I was definitely super-tense the whole time, but I loosened up a lot as I got used to the experience of being out there on my own. And I loved going solo. It was nice to just go my own pace and enjoy the solitude of the wind past my ears and the company of my own thoughts.

I ended up riding for 1:15 and Google maps tells me that I rode 17 miles in that time, which puts me at just about 13.5 mph. Not great, but not bad for my first time out.

Triumphant, I came rolling into the driveway to celebrate my successful solo adventure. We had a bunch of stuff we wanted to do for the afternoon, so I hopped into the shower.

And the strangest thing happened. When I started shampooing my hair, I noticed that the ring finger on my left hand wasn't operating properly. It was stuck in a bent position and try as I might to send "MOVE" signals from my brain to that finger, it wouldn't go straight.

I showed it to Randy and we laughed about it. But when 20 minutes later it still wouldn't straighten, I got freaked out. So, of course, I hopped online to research it. And found that while the ring finger was the most affected, my entire left hand felt weak. I tested my grip strength with a very scientific test I like to call, "Let's see if I can pick up this magazine here" and found that my hand was seriously f'ed up.

A little research on Google (awkwardly typed in with lots of time for correcting the typos made by my not-so-functional ring finger) found that I was suffering from "handlebar palsy" which is a nice, friendly name for something called, "ulnar neuropathy" which means that the hand pressure I was feeling and brushed off at the beginning of my ride had succeeded in irritating the nerve that runs down my arm and into my hand. And that it could take a couple of weeks to recover.

Fortunately, my hand was feeling much better by Sunday and this morning, symptoms have pretty much cleared up. But I've never felt anything scarier than the experience of sending a signal to a part of my body and having nothing happen. And all day Saturday, my left hand's functioning was severly limited and it was a pain to do anything. Even buttoning my jeans was hard. It gave me a lot more appreciation for my body and some healthy fear of the damage I can do when I treat it so cavalierly.

And first thing this morning I contacted Inside Out Sports for an appointment to get my bike professionally fitted. Because I'm not taking any more chances -- with my bike or my body.

GAH!

I am frustrated. Here is a yell of frustration: RWAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

I've been training for somewhere between 6 and 8 weeks and I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. My swimming has improved tremendously from where I started, but now I'm just stuck right at 2:10 / 100m.

As for biking and running, I'm not making any progress. My heart rate refuses to stay in the aerobic range (145-155) and insists on always shooting up into the 160s/170s. Today, after 30 minutes of biking, my average heart rate was 165 with a max of 187. And I know I should be forcing myself to stay in that aerobic training range, but I just can't handle it. When running, if I want to stay in the zone, I have to run about 4 miles per hour, maybe even slower.

So I get frustrated and just run however I feel like running and then beat myself up later over the fact that I didn't do what I feel like I'm supposed to. And then when I see that I'm not making any progress, that I'm not getting faster or stronger, I get frustrated and worry that it's because I'm doing everything wrong.

I'm just not sure what to do: Do I keep doing what I'm doing and trust that progress will come? Or do I start forcing myself to train in that lower zone even though it's no fun and doesn't even feel like I'm working out?

GAHH!

I know the race is still 10 weeks away, but I feel like I'll never get there. Or, more accurately, I feel like I'll get there and be a complete failure and everyone will pass me and I'll have to hang on to the rescue kayaks 10 times during the swim and then I'll bike and run more slowly than anyone else and then I will come in absolutely last.

And I know I'm not doing this to win and my goal really is to finish, but I still want to make a good showing. And I just want to feel like I'm getting somewhere and can see improvements in my performance and stamina.

Not to mention that spring is a really difficult time for me emotionally and has resulted in me gaining almost 10 pounds, despite training for about 6 hours a week.

And everything adds up to me feeling like I'm stuck, running around in circles but not really getting anywhere.

Whew. I needed to get that out.

Balance

First, I want to say WOOT!!! and give some mad props to my fellow NC bloggers who did the White Lake Half IM yesterday. You give a girl something to work toward!

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I need to re-balance my training schedule. I was originally doing a x3 schedule, but unfortunately, working out 9 times per week just wasn't working for me. I started feeling fatigued all the time, was having weird aches and pains, and didn't have any time for anything else.

So I've dropped down to a x2 schedule, where I only do each sport twice per week, but workout for longer than I was doing before. This schedule also gives me time to get in two strength training sessions a week and a yoga class. It definitely feels better already.

The only problem, though, is that I'm not working with a structured training plan. That, combined with the rain we've had lately, means that the bike has been getting short shrift lately. It seems like every day I want to take out my bike, something gets in the way. And in trying to stick to a structured plan, I've actually made it harder to get the bike in. On Thursday, for example, I could have gone riding, but since it was a "swimming day," I decided to go swimming and then, of course, it rained on Friday. And I could have ridden on Saturday, but I figured that Sunday was my riding day. And besides, I had planned to run with a friend on Saturday. And, of course, it rained all day today. So that means I ran Friday and Saturday with no riding really all last week. And, of course, tomorrow it's supposed to rain in the morning, which means I'll probably run tomorrow too. I keep bugging Randy about seeing if there are any sample trainers lying around, but no luck. And I really don't want to buy one. But it seems like the bike is the hardest of the three to fit in, just because it's so much more dependent on environmental factors.

The actual workouts are great and fun, but balancing the three sports is definitely the hard part of training.