EPIC Weekend

For all my avid readers and followers out there constantly checking my blog daily, I apologize for my lack of blogging. I have been so darn busy lately and I have a lot of catching up to do. Ironman Florida is only a short 8 weeks away from this coming Saturday. Time to start thinking about my checklist of things I may need to order soon like running shoes, spare tires, clothing, etc.

Since my last blog, my training has been going well. I have done a couple of races and some great training. I will write a separate race report of my race in RI which went fairly well.

But first, since its fresh in my mind, I'll report about my most recent training weekend. Last week I trained 20 hours. My most yet. Saturday began with a 3 mile open water swimming event in a lake. It was a race but I was treating it like a workout. I have never swum that far so I wanted to take it easy and just try to get into a nice rhythm. After getting to the event, I realized I forget a bathing suit....oh well, I'll just wear my underwear under my wetsuit. Ooops....forgot my wetsuit too. This should be an adventure. I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it without a wetsuit. The gun goes off and away I went. I felt fine, not working too hard. My shoulders started to tighten up. It was 2 loops and I really didn't feel like going around for a 2nd loop but I did since I figured it would be good for IM prep. I ended up in last place, over an hour slower than the leaders.....wow, I want my wetsuit back. I stink. After putting a few thousand calories back into my body, I head out on my bike for 2 hours....so far so good. That feels okay. I don't need my shoulders to ride. After a few hour break, I head out for a 1 1/2 hour run.....finally the day is complete and I am completely spent. I took on some allergy attack that was just killing me....sneezing my head off. Off to bed. Tomorrow is another big day.

I wake up with the goal of riding 5 1/2 hours Sunday. I thought I would feel terrible after Saturday's training but I was feeling okay. I'll just take it one hour at a time. I rode with 6 or 7 other guys all training for IM and we are all fairly equal. I paced myself really well with my powermeter and I fueled up very well. That PT is really cool. Most of the group stopped after 70 miles but I headed out for another hour with one other guy and we had a good ride. My day was still not complete so I kept going as I still felt pretty good. 5 1/2 hours later and 95 miles of a fairly hilly ride, my day was complete and felt like a million bucks. Now, for IMFL, I just need to ride 3 mph faster and feel the same way and i'll be all set.

Monday was a recovery day and got to play golf (one of my favorite hobbies that I don't do very often) and played pretty darn well.

Easy week ahead as I'm recovering and racing Madison sprint on Saturday.....all out effort.