T84 - IDGAF Day - Bike/Run Brick, Swim

Gainesville

This is becoming a disturbing trend. IDGAF, for the unaware, stand for "I Don't Give a Fuck," which was completely my attitude today. Again, this felt like one of those workouts I was squeezing in, even though I had all of Sunday free to do it. I just didn't much feel like getting off the couch.

Bike - 60 minutes

2 Lipodrene
I took my bike into the shop Sunday morning at the crack of 2 p.m. and had it back in an hour, realigned and retaped and ready to roll. So when I got home I was actually pretty motivated for the workout. So much so that I decided half an hour down Waldo-Williston would be a good trip. It's a little more hilly than Hawthorne, but not too bad. It was also the site of my worst ride ever last cycle, the one where I couldn't sleep so I decided to ride early, found it freezing cold, and ended up averaging about 15. But that was in February. It was cold. I was perpetually stressing out about my girlfriend leaving. And I wasn't sleeping. And oh yeah, I'm a little better of a cyclist now. So I figured no big deal.

One again, I figured wrong. I knew something was wrong when I was going 24-26 the whole way down Waldo. As I said before, you really don't notice when you have the wind at your back, and I looked for flags or trees or something and everything looked still. But whatever, I just figured this showed how much I'd improved. Notsomuch. I turned around and for some reason just lost all motivation. The trip back is all uphill, into the wind. Not something I'm a fan of. It didn't help that I couldn't drop down into Aero because of the massive wound on my right forarm, and my shoulders were jamming up, still residual from the accident.

Basically, I was pissed, felt like shit, and didn't want to be there. So even though I averaged about 20 on the way down, I was going a steady 13 a lot of the trip back and ended up averaging 17 for the ride. That's 1 mph slower than I did on my 5 hour ride, which included the crash. Not only that, I turned around at 28 minutes, and made it back in 1:05. Meaning the return trip, of about 9 miles, took 7 minutes longer than the trip down. So maybe that road really is that bad, and it wasn't just my poorer conditioning and stress that led to that awful, awful ride back in February. But who knows. Maybe the run would go better.

Run - 30 minutes

Alright, so get off the bike, have another spoiled yogurt PowerGel and do a nice run to the stadium and back. Can't fuck that up, right? Well, again, I started out strong, but by the time I got to the stadium I was fucking starving and didn't really want to run back. Again, just started chopping my steps, and by the time I got to about 11th St., I decided to say fuck it and walk the rest. Just didn't want to finish. I really don't know why. I'm not sure if the accident took a lot out of me, or I just had a shitty attitude today, but workouts like this need to be few and far between

Swim - 12x100. Practice bi-lateral breathing every other set. Do much later or earlier, but not within a few hours of the brick session

1 Lipodrene
I got back around 5 from the wasted Bike/Run and followed the advice on the card. Headed over to the pool about 9 p.m., which was nice because nobody was there. I was supposed to practice breathing every other set of strokes, but after about one lap (50 meters) of doing this, I said "Fuck this." Lung capacity is one thing I really haven't worked on, and since I was in a shitty training mood I wasn't about to push it. No excuse, I just didn't give a fuck. So I went back to normal breathing as I went through the motions to get this done. I didn't even time myself. I didn't care.

I think around set 8 I actually started pushing it, either because I was warmed up, or the Lipodrene kicked in, or because I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, but the last four sets actually felt really good. So at least I ended a shitty day on a high note.

But I can't afford many more bad workouts during training weeks. I got a month of balls-out training to go before I taper, and I need to make the most of it. Sometimes a couple of bad workouts in a row motivates you to crush the next one, and I hope that's the case here. This trend cannot continue.

T83 - Ironman Swim, Interrupted - Swim

Gainesville


S: long day-mental toughness day!
8 x 500, odds are RPE3, evens RPE 5

2 Lipodrene
Do the math here and you see today's swim is actually a little longer than the Ironman swim. Of course, you don't get to take a nice little breather after every 500 yards there, nor do you have an entire swimming pool to yourself. But it was good to get the distance in anyway.

My first set I did in under 10 minutes, closer to 9 actually. I kept up a solid stroke despite the perpetual soreness in my shoulder from the accident (really feels more jammed than anything else) and the fluid buildup in my right forward. Like it feels significantly heavier than it used to. I kept up this sub-10 pace for the first three, then hit about 10 even on the fourth set. I then took a quick bathroom break (why does swimming always make me have to piss?) has a Vanilla PowerGel (tastes vaguely like spoiled yogurt) and did my second four sets.

The second four were, predictably not as fast. I tried to keep up the intensity of the strokes, but I think my frequency started to die down as I got more tired. My last set ended up being about 12 minutes. The card has this workout listed at 2 hours, and I did it in 85, including the piss break and about 45 seconds between sets. I'm not sure why exactly the guy who wrote this though 4000 meters would take 2 hours, but the timing on swims always confuses me anyway.

At any rate, I felt pretty good after the swim. not terribly tired, but like I'd had a solid workout. I know this is in a totally controlled environment (swimming on Saturday night at an indoor pool means that there are zero other people to deal with) and I had breaks. But it was good to see that my body can handle this muhc swimming this far out. Very encouraging workout.