Week minus 3: Tiring

A very frustrating end to the week!

It all started very well. I extended my long swim to 4km this week and I felt good in all my shorter training sessions. Come Thursday morning, I decided that I would go for a 3hr30min long run. The run itself went well enough, though it was pretty hard and I was pretty knackered afterwards - just as well I didn't have anything planned for the next couple of days.

In fact Saturday would be my first morning that I didn't wake up to the alarm for quite some time - it is a bit depressing sometimes when you are getting up earlier in the weekend than you do during the week! But typically, despite there being no alarm, I didn't sleep much past 7am. On all of Saturday I felt pretty lethargic- and I now question the wisdom of that long Thursday run. Later in the afternoon, I even joined Anna on an 'easy' ride. I could hardly get my legs moving though and I could have just about gone to sleep on the bike.

So I was hoping that these two days of rest would put me in good stead for the ocean swim on Sunday morning. But I never got to test this out....

Getting up early Sunday morning and getting myself ready, to weather was looking a little dodgy. Driving down to the start at St Helliers, I was quickly told that it had been cancelled. And it was pretty understandable why. Some wild weather was about - light rain and some really strong winds. So out went my plans for my big training day - and by the looks of it, I wasn't the only one. There were a few hardy souls who we're still heading out into the water, but the idea of chugging back sea water for an hour wasn't doing much for me. So reluctantly, I had to go to Plan B - though it was very tempting to just go back to bed, there is nothing like having your training plans go awry - very frustrating!

So I headed down to the pool and did my 3.5km there - not the same as the test run the open water swim would have done for me, but I still wanted to do my pseudo 'Half Ironman' hit out. I timed my swim for one of the few times, and I am little surprised how slow my swimming still appears to be. I did the 3.5km in 1hr6min, which probably isn't too bad, but I definitely seem to be a slower swimmer than I was when I first left NZ. I'm not sure whether it is a technique problem or just my stroke rate? Not much I can do about it now, but in retrospect I could have focused a bit more on technique in my training.

Getting back home, the weather was still pretty wild and the prospect of getting on the bike wasn't very appealing. But I knew I had to, so I saddled up and headed out. The wind was pretty crazy, and head-on it was difficult to just keep the speedo above 20kph. It ended up taking 3hr20min to complete the 90km, which is a little slow, but with the wind the way it was, I can't reflect on that too much.

Typically, with what would have been perfect running conditions, no sooner had I headed out to pound the pavement did the weather calm down, the skies open up and it was hot and sunny. Nevertheless, I actually felt very good during the whole run and it was the most encouraging aspect of the whole day. I ended up completing the half marathon distance (21.1km) is 1hr50min, which I am very happy about. I ran at a pace I felt comfortable and easily could have kept going. I can't see myself running a sub-4hr marathon in the Ironman - but I'm feeling a lot better about what will be toughest part of the race. On the run I also trialed out eating potato crisps and pretzels, as these will be available at the aid stations and are suppose to be good for getting your salt levels up (to avoid dehydration). I certainly got some weird looks running along the road popping chippies in the mouth or with a pretzel stick hanging out my mouth like a cigar. But they seemed to go down OK, so that is another tick for the preparations.

What didn't go so well was the trying out of the all important night-before dinner. I have been wanting to try something else other than the usual pasta - as it can often make you feel a bit stuffed the night before. I found a recipe for a Rice Pilau with spinach, spring onions and herbs and thought it could be a good replacement. But it turns out that it didn't work at all. I was very bloated all day and was getting plenty of turbo blasts from the 'back engine'. So back to the drawing board on that one, and I might have to revert to the tried-and-true pasta dish.

So only one more week of full-on training before the two week taper - and man am I looking forward to that! I'm definitely suffering a little from training fatigue at the moment, and tiredness is my ever present companion. So if I can just get through this week - which won't be as tough as the previous two - I can then start looking forward to the big day.