Monday: 7 hours sleep
Rest
Day. I cut the tip of my finger off last night while chopping garlic. I might get it looked at so it doesn’t end up
interfering with swimming. I really need
to be less excited about preparing food.
Tuesday: 5 hours sleep
So I
ended up staying awake until midnight last night (reading the second Hunger Games) and then had to get up at
5 to swim. I also made to poor choice of
having a Costco-sized bag of Kashi cereal next to me while reading, and managed
to consume about half of it. On the plus
side I didn’t need to eat anything before swimming, and the downside, my
stomach has been feeling weird all morning.
So now for my workouts: 2500 yards of straight swimming and 45 minutes
of running in Z2. The swimming took ~45
minutes, which corresponds to 1:17 for 2.4 miles. My goal is 1:20, but I made this my goal
pretty arbitrarily, so I’m glad to know it isn’t completely unreasonable. Swimming also felt really good this morning;
there were a few laps towards the end when each stroke felt completely natural
and powerful. So far this has only
happened for a stroke or two at a time, so I was pretty excited about it. Also, Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” was playing on
the radio when I was driving to swimming, which was great, because it’s the
soundtrack to most of the motivational Ironman videos on Youtube. Oh, and with some Neosporin and water-proof Band-Aids
my finger was just fine in the pool.
Running
was uneventful; I did it on the track at the field house. The amount of people-watching you get to do
on an indoor track is great, it kept me really entertained. Plus I had to avoid all the people who didn’t
understand the concept of following arrows, which was fun.
Wednesday: 5 hours sleep
I
was up late last night studying, so I did my short brick (30 min bike to 15 min run) in between
classes. I was freaking out all morning
because Stella’s (my car) brakes started scraping and grinding last night. I’m convinced she knew I had been lusting
after the new Outbacks and is trying to get back at me. Anyway, I was much less stressed out once I
finished my workout, and Stella is now on her way to an auto shop. Hopefully it’s something simple; Ironman is
taking all my money so there’s not any room for expensive repairs or car
payments. Given that it’s my last week
of classes my stress level isn’t that high.
I’ve got two homework assignments due and a quiz to take on Friday, but
have a pretty good start on those already.
Update:
Stella is fine, a bolt on the CV axle that was replaced this summer needed
tightening, and luckily I hadn’t driven her enough to damage anything else.
Thursday: 6 hours sleep
Went to bed early (10:30) last night but had
to get up at 4:30 to start something in lab before going swimming. Repeated my first swim workout (300 wu, 6 x
50 drill, 12 x 100 yrds and 2 x 50 drill/cd).
I pushed myself more than usual on my main workout, but I find myself
slacking on the drills and cool-downs.
I’m supposed to 8 x 50 drill at the beginning, 6 x 50 at the end and a
200 yard cool down, but a) I get bored doing that same drills that many times
in a row, b) my calves want to cramp doing the drills with flippers at the end
of my workout, c) the drills are essentially a cool-down and d) I usually have
to go to the bathroom by that time and it seems pointless to get back in the
pool for a few laps. Maybe I’ll lengthen
my main set a little to make up for it.
I also learned that I have much less motivation on the bike in the
afternoons. All I had to do was 45 min
of high RPM (100+/min) spinning at a low heart rate and I kept sitting up or
pausing pedaling for a few seconds, just because I was bored and couldn’t
focus. I think in general I felt a
little unmotivated this week. I didn’t
do any circuit weights, partially because I was so busy with school but I could
have made it work if I had really wanted to. My diet was also complete crap
this week, mostly because I tend to snack uncontrollably when I’m up late
studying. So overall I felt a little
guilty about my behavior. Oh well, I’m
done with classes tomorrow so I’ll have plenty of time to get back on track
next week.
Friday: 5.5 hours sleep
I was
up late doing homework and eating chocolate-covered rice crispy treats but at
least both homework assignments got done.
I definitely failed the quiz I took since I had no time to study for it
after doing the problem sets. It sounds
like everyone else feels about the same though, so my overall grade should
still be okay (I have to get a B- in every class and maintain a B average to
stay in the program). I went for a 60
min run in the afternoon. It was great,
the sun was out and it was in the mid-20’s, which felt perfect. My run was about half on a pretty steep
downhill and the other half coming back up.
I had to give up on staying in Z2 for that part, otherwise I would’ve
been walking the whole way. I finally
decided that I can’t keep avoiding hills just because it gets my heart rate too
high. I’ll probably do plenty of runs on
the track with a consistent HR to ensure that I have a good low-aerobic
threshold.
Saturday: 8 hours sleep
I didn’t set an alarm this morning! I was up until around 1 AM reading the third Hunger Games but still woke up at 9:30. I did my long bike ride (1:45) during the
Kona highlight show, which was great fun.
I don’t think it’s necessarily biking in the afternoons that I have
trouble with, its biking on a full stomach and making myself push through the
first 10 or 20 minutes until I find a good rhythm. Once my legs and back are warmed up I really
enjoy biking, I just hate every minute before that point. I guess I used to feel the same way with
running, I just find my rhythm a lot sooner now. I’m guessing this will happen with biking
soon enough.
Sunday: 11 hours sleep
One
nice thing about training in winter: you can sleep in and it won’t be too hot
to run. The nice thing about training
over winter break: you can completely ignore your alarm and not be stressed out
about your run taking away from your study time. Regardless, my hour-long Z1-Z2 run felt
pretty challenging this morning. I think
it was a combination of poor air quality, being around a dog last night and coming off a couple of hard back to back
days; between running pretty fast downhill on Friday and pushing myself on the
bike yesterday, the muscles on the front of my shins were pretty sore.
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