Sunday, May 24, 2009

Back on track -

With complete rest on Thursday and Friday (except for the push up challenge) my body was feeling much better! I went to bed on Friday with no soreness, no aches, no pains, no 'jimmy legs'. It was a little strange. I guess I had become accustomed to the pain.

I woke up Saturday feeling fresh. However, it was raining with no signs of it letting up. I had thought about driving to the coast for a dualthlon - thought about the race, thought about the rain - decided to go for a run.

I changed into my running clothes knowing that I would be wet and that is when it really started coming down. I 86'ed that run idea and put the race bike on the trainer. The Giro would be on in a few minutes and I could zone out. The rain lightened up a bit and I decided to just brave the outdoors. I really do not mind running in the rain - thunderstorms are a different story. I plastic bagged my mp3 player and headed out. Under the tree covering on the trace the rain was not bad at all. I ran the same route as last weekend at the same exertion level (9 miles with heart rate less than 150 BPM). The run felt good. The effort felt easy - last week at the same heart rate the perceived exertion was much higher. The rest did me a lot of good. Towards the end of the run I did feel my right hamstring start to tighten up - this was been an on going problem since early fall. I finished the run about a minute slower than the previous week. Two ways to look at this - I either got slow for the week or I didn't lose much for the week - probably just very different conditions.

Regarding training smart, I was looking back over my workouts. When my plan called for a 40 minute easy run I have been tending to round up to an hour. When the plan called for a 2 hour bike ride I have tended to make it an even 50 miles with a hard brick thrown in - not training smart. I think part of the problem is that I had just finished that 70.3 race and then started the ironman training plan. The plan started my to build my base again. I got a little frustrated and wanted to do more. This set me up for failure.

I am going to re-double my efforts to stick to the plan - regardless.

3 comments:

Missy said...

Sounds like you've got a plan and are sticking to it! Yay! It is so hard when you're feeling good and just want to go OR just came off of a race and are all jacked up. You're rolling now. Never underestimate the power of rest (and sleep).

Marci said...

Just stick to the plan... no matter how great you really feel! Oh and rest... esp with IM training is a must and a necessity!

Kristin said...

I have been warned repeatedly not to fall into the trap of adding a little more. It's so hard because right now it feels easy to add more, but there is a science to the build so I've been using restraint and feel it has made a difference. I'm rarely sore and only about every 2-3 weeks I'm hit with that heavy fatigue feeling and luckily it's usually right in time for a rest week!