T72 - Flushing and Falling - Swim, Bike (Trainer)

Gainesville

Today's workout was described as "a bit of flushing." I honestly have no idea what he means by this. Like flushing out what? Toxins? Lactic acid? The noxious microbes I swallowed during Sunday's lake swim? Whatever, I'm not overly concerned. After taking a rest day Monday post-race this seemed like a good "back-in-the-flow" workout.

Swim: long day
wu: 500 continuous, then 5 x 50
main: 1 x 1500, RPE 3

2 Lipodrene
This was seriously one of the longer warmups I've ever done, as it's probably about the length of a lot of swim workouts for shorter races. But I needed it. I think the combination of the cloudy weather and my taking a day off forced me into a lazy state. It took me about the full warmup to get into my groove. But as I hit the sprints I noticed myself slowing at the end of every one. I was also pretty lazy on the initial 500. I took the workout seriously, but for some reason the fire just wasn't there today.

Same with the main section. I did ok, but my pace was certainly not what it had been during Sunday's race. I let myself get distracted a lot, usually by the same sorts of things that keep me from sleeping. I guess long swims and trying to sleep are really similar, like there's no noise and you're just there with yourself with nothing new to look at. But it got distracting today and the 1500 was certainly sub-par. Just hope I'm not losing my focus.

Bike - 45 minutes spinning (trainer)

1 Lipodrene
I think from now on when I see workouts of an hour or less labeled "spinning" I'm going to use the trainer. Just makes sense and gives me a bigger window. At any rate, I didn't mention it but I lost a bike shoe in transition on Sunday. No idea how that happened. Probably either someone mistakenly picked it up or I forgot to pack it. Any way you cut it, I had to go to the bike shop and plunk down $144 for new shoes and cletes before I went to the pool. What I hate about new cletes is that they're so tight, so clipping and un-clipping is a lot harder. So it was good to start out on the trainer. Becasue, you know, you never need to unclip really fast on the trainer, right?

The spinning went about as expected. I kept it in the 16-18 range the whole time, going up to about 19 for the last few minutes. I used the iPod, obviously, as I sat out on the deck and watched it rain. Some guy was out in the courtyard with his dog, talking to every girl who came by with their dogs. Really, I didn't know we allowed dogs in my building, and I'm sure Trevor would be livid. At any rate, this cute girl walks out with some little yappy dog and is walking him around the courtyard when all of a sudden I feel myself falling over. On the trainer.

Like I'm tipping over to my left, even though this thing is supposedly bolted straight up. My bike starts tipping, I feel myself crash into the wicker table next to me. A very loud noise I'm sure echoes through the courtyard, which I fortunately did not hear becasue I had my headphones in. Fortunately I am able to unclip quickly before I demolish all of my deck furniture, but when all was said and done I'm standing there leaning on the table with my bike totally tipped over and the cute girl staring up at me like "What the FUCK just happened? How did that guy manage to fall off a bike that wasn't even moving?" Yeah, coordination still not my strongsuit.

The saddest part is, the same thing happened to me a year ago when I got fitted for my aero bars at the bike shop. Tommy, the guy who runs the place, said, "Damn. I've NEVER in all my years seen somebody fall off a trainer. You are the first."

Oddly, when I came in to get my new shoes he said the same thing. "You know, you are the first person to ever come in and tell me they've lost a shoe." I find that one harder to belive.

At any rate, the spinning workout was good aside from falling off the trainer. My insomnia is persisting, though, for whatever reason. I don't even feel stressed about much, but I find myself still unable to sleep. A friend told me it might be the Lipodrene, and I think she may be right. But I'm not making that sacrifice. The next workout is a long brick, and hopefully the lack of sleep doesn't hurt me too much. But I'm still lookin' pretty rough.