Week 16(hell week/month) wrap up

Week 16, 188 miles, 17 hours

Holy crap what a week! I remember looking at this week nearly a year ago, when I first signed up to do the Ironman and wondered how on earth I would ever get through such a grueling week. The highlights of this week included starting out with a 2.2 mile pool swim, a 3 hour run, a 6 hour bike ride. Those were just the highlights, on top of that I had another nearly 1.5 hour run, a 3 hour brick(swim/bike), among other things.

So to summarize, the long sessions didn't go as well as I'd have liked. The run, I expected to be near 16 miles based on previous sessions, wound up only being 14.3. I was a lot slower than I thought I'd be, considering the week before I did over 15 miles in 5 less minutes. The bike ride, where last week I covered 100 miles in 5:40, this week it took me 6 hours to cover the same distance. One thing may have been that I forgot to fill my tires so there was a bit more drag than there normally would've been, and the wind was a bit strong. Still, not valid enough for the huge drop off. I'm not feeling great today, so I might be fighting off a cold as well. However, one huge positive to come out of it was my nutrition was solid. I never felt even the slightest pinge of hunger. I used 3 scoops of perpetuem per bottle and used GU every 45 minutes. My legs still felt really good for the short run portion. Unless I can figure out how to keep my HR down on race day during the bike leg, I full expect to spend a very large amount of time on the run walking. Thats ok, a finisher is a finisher!

It was quite a feeling to finish up yesterday. The hardest workouts are now behind me. I had the long run(3 hours) and the long bike(6 hours). Now I have a recovery week this week. Hopefully it does me good. I'm down to 26 days till the race, and really only about 19 days of any real serious training sessions. At this point the longest run left is 2 hours and the longest bike is 3. Still some opportunities to build some confidence and work on keeping that bike HR down. I'm thinking the cold weather may be playing a part, especially on the bike. My body is having to work harder to keep my body warm. It's crazy to think about how far I've come. I remember when the 2 hour bike ride was the long ride. A 1.5 hour run was a long time. Those have now become my typical midweek distances(well, not the run, that's still pretty long). But 2 hour midweek rides have become the norm. It's so exciting to know the race is just over the horizon. I'm finding myself thinking about it waaay too much, especially when I'm trying to get to sleep at night. I imagine I won't sleep a whole lot the night of the race.

Well, I guess that about covers it for this past week. Hell week/month is finally over! I've been looking forward to saying that for a long long time. Now it's time to take it easy, enjoy recovery and tapering and start setting my eyes on the prize....IRONMAN ARIZONA HERE I COME!!!