A number of people had told me it takes a while to recover from a 150+ km ride so I was preparing for the worst Monday morning after doing 165km from Kingston to Ottawa as part of the RLTC. But, actually come Monday morning, I was great?! No soreness, no stiffness ... I was like "BAM!"
But then Tuesday and Wednesday morning rolled along and it took everything in me to get out of bed in the morning. Still no soreness or stiffness, just overall fatigue. (In hindsight though, I probably could have avoided this if I ate more and went to sleep earlier). I didn't end up doing much that week except a long run (26km) on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were spent resting up for my training weekend in Lake Placid.
My plan was :
- Saturday: two loops of the bike course (second loop without the "out and backs" = 150km),
then a short run (5km). - Sunday: do a loop of the swim course (2km) and a loop of the run course (21km).
The short of the long is, I didn't get it all done. And the weekend was more mental toughness training than physical training.
Saturday started off with a bit of disappointment. When I got to where I was supposed to be (meeting up with some people from Ottawa to ride the bike course) I found out that I had missed the group that was riding 150km (mix up was not my fault this time!) So I ended up riding with the group that was doing 90km (one loop) and figured I would do a second loop myself afterwards.
Right off the bat, the course felt different. I was tired after the first climb and after about 40km, I was laggin' behind the rest of the group. I mean, not by much but I couldn't help but think ... WTF? I've been training for an IM for the past 10 months and these guys haven't so why are they out-riding me? Am I really ready for the IM??? It also felt like I was pushing a lot harder than the last time I did the course but my ride time didn't reflect that at all. Maybe only a 2-3 minute difference. The only explanation I could come up with was that these guys were going all out for the 90km, where as I was conserving, knowing that I would be doing another loop. Also, it was a lot hotter this time around and ... maybe I still was recovering from the previous weekend.
Anyway, we finished the first loop, I thanked them for their company and I started my second loop. Again that first hill seemed killer and mentally I took a real nose dive over the next little while. I kept wavering, trying to decide whether I should just turn back or not. I was worried about riding by myself (some of the LP drivers had proven to be real jerks); I was worried about descending the Keene hill by myself; and I was worried about not having enough in the tank and being stranded in the middle of the course somewhere. At some point though, I just went into autopilot and time just seemed to fly by. Second loop was done. I then went for a 5 km run. It felt ok but my Garmin had cacked-out on me at the end of my ride so I had no idea if I was running at my usual pace. Taking a lesson from the weekend before, I had a big dinner (almost ate a whole large pizza by myself) and went to bed early with the plan of waking up at 7am to swim.
Turns out I still didn't eat enough because Sunday morning the alarm went off and I felt like shit. Went back to bed, woke up, still felt like crap. Remembered something my physio told me ... "try to eat, even when you're feeling nauseous", had some leftover pizza and went back to bed. Woke up feeling better. By this time it was about 10am. I packed up all my stuff, checked out of my cabin
and went into town, not sure what I'd do.
I drove by Mirror Lake and it was deserted. I didn't want to swim by myself (safety reasons) and swimming is probably my least favourite discipline so I convinced myself not to swim but to run instead. Then it started raining.
I sat in my car for literally 10 minutes, struggling with whether to run or not. I had almost convinced myself to just go home - that I could run when I get home - but then I snapped out of it, changed into my run clothes and took off. To make things a little harder for myself (after having decided not to swim), instead of doing a loop of the course I did two loops of the hilly part of the course. Still 21 km but, more difficult. Or so I told myself.
When I got back to my gym locker (aka: my car), I thought about going swimming again but canned that idea quickly. It was still raining and already about 3pm. Instead, I just started the 3-hour drive home and the most exhausting mental struggle of my life. It involved a few fits of tears, and about 5 times I decided NOT to do the IM. But then I'd start to think about all the friends I have coming to watch and cheer me on ... and how crappy it would feel to tell them I'm backing out. So, I'm still in it.
That's all I can say for now.
That's all I can say for now.
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