Six … 6 weeks until Ironman France

Why yes I did have a happy mother’s day. Thanks for asking!

This is my son and I at Kindergarten Mothers day tea. He’s adorable, I know. I did this instead of going to swimming on Thursday. It’s one reason I came up short in swim yardage but the bigger reason is I was too lazy to get up at 5 am.

my kids and I went to the beach Sunday morning. It was pretty terrific. I also got home made presents from all 4 kids. That was also fantastic.

This was a big training week. It was sort of a repeat of what last week was supposed to be since I was off still from the flu last week.

Summary First
Bike 8:56:44 (100.54 miles plus 2 trainer sessions – I don’t know how to get mileage on the trainer)
Swim 2:30 (5450 yds this was a little light but sometimes that happens)
Run 6:56 (33.25 miles including a 16 mile long run)

Total 18:23:33 Gad zoinks that’s a lotta training.

Recap
In order to have Sunday off I did my long run on Friday. The whole family juggled so I could get an early start but when I woke up it was storming (thunder). So that was a downer. I was psyching myself up for a long rainy run. But I got up and got ready and by the time I had driven my water cooler out to the route it had stopped raining. That was lucky. The run was uneventful. Not the fastest I’ve ever run but not the slowest either. When I went back for my water cooler after the run it was gone – that was unlucky.

This is me after. I was pretty tired but my legs felt fine the rest of the day. It was good. I look like crap after training. I have an acquaintance that takes these beautiful pictures of her after training … I don’t quite understand how that works.

The bike ride. Riding 100 miles after running 16 miles hurts much more than the first 100 miler which followed an 8 mile run. My legs were burning the first 5 miles. Once the lactic acid flushed out I felt much better but the last 1/3 was really tough and a little slow. I could really feel the fatigue in my legs. The only other thing that bothered me was my shoulders / neck a bit and of course the old toosh takes a beating after 100 miles in the saddle.

Let’s talk nutrition here. I haven’t been nailing my nutrition on the bike which leads to bailing on the tranisition run. I also got my first cramps in the bottom of my foot (my toes) on my first 100 miler. It hurt a lot. A LOT.

So,  to try not to get those cramps again I did 3 things. I bought a new water bottle because I think that one reason I’m not finishing my infinit is because the straw was too far away with the speedfill. I did not take a picture of the bottle it’s the new profile design bottle if you’re curious. I’ll do a review later this week maybe.

I also got salt pills which are anecdotally supposed to help with cramps. Couldn’t hurt so I picked some up.

I packed 7 salt pills but only ate 3 on the ride. It feels bizarre to have “medicine” along on the ride.

Lastly I packed a sandwich for 1/2way.

This is me eating a Pb&J sandwich halfway through the ride. It was yummy.

We also had some weather issues. In a 100 mile ride I’m learning it’s like a camping trip you will experience all kinds of things during the duration of the ride. On this ride we had wind and lots of it and heat.

That’s right it was 89 when I finished and did this capture while sitting at home. 16 mph winds from the SE. Bleh.

I kept telling myself wind is hills in disguise. Doesn’t make it any easier let me tell you.

But I finished. I did again have toe cramps this time in both feel during the last 20-25 miles. It hurts soooooo much. It goes away if I take my foot out of the shoe and just stretch them out for a second. But otherwise it’s super unpleasant.

I think these have got to be conditioning related just because they come at the end of the long rides. I’ll continue to take salt pills but I just really think it’s because my body is tired.

All done! Too hot and bothered to do the transition run. My training buddy Jim is getting ready for Kona 70.3 in a few weeks. I was lucky to have him along for the duration of this ride. He’s a much stronger biker than I am and I hid from the wind behind him.

Nutrition recap
So just to recap the nutrition for this ride I did about 4.5 bottles of Infinit. I was moving for 5:45 so I should have been closer to 6 bottles. But honestly I get really sick of the Infinit after well lets say 4:30. Not sure what to do about that really. Part of the reason is that it gets warm and warm drinks are gross. My infinit is 225 calories a bottle so approximately 1012 calories. I also ate 2 gus for 200 calories. a pb&J sandwich say 180 calories, and 1/2 a strawberry smoothie say 200 calories. So just under 1600 calories. There won’t be a smoothie on the France course so I’ll have to drink more Infinit to be sure. We’ll practice that again next week.

When I got home I ate what was kind of a bizarre recovery meal. But it was delicious!

Left over pasta with meat sauce eaten out of the container, scrambled eggs and water with lemon juice to get the taste of Infinit out of my mouth. Yum.

Sun exposure
I do worry about a pale face such as myself being out in the sun for these long rides. So I recently upgraded my sun screen to a brand called Waterman. I also cover my arms as much as possible and I reapplied sunscreen about 1/2 way through the ride. I had good success except 2 little strips that got toasted where my arm covers gapped to the sleeve on one side and the glove on the other. Not bad I’d say.

You can see the little stripe of red where I missed reapplying the sunscreen. Otherwise pretty good I think.

And that’s it for this week!

Just for kicks I’ll leave you with the map of my 100 mile route.