Scary as it sounds (and it sounds pretty darn scary to me!!), this week marks the end of the first 15 weeks of training. That means that there are only 15 more to go!! WHOA!! While I appreciate how far I've come since February, I have even more appreciation for how much further I have to go by September. I had a few moments of near panic this week thinking about what I need to accomplish over the next couple of months.
On Friday, I met up with Bob (has done IM Wisconsin a few times and is going to again this year), Brad (has done IM Wisconsin a few times before but not this year), and Mike (a IM Wisconsin virgin, like me) out at Peterson Pits (nice name for a swimming hole, eh?) for some open water swim practice. It's been since last June since I'd had my wetsuit on, and I forgot what a constricting, claustrophobic feeling that is. I wasn't very comfortable for the first 200 yards, and by then I'd lost the group and any chance to practice drafting. I never got 100% comfortable, but I guess that's why we practice. We all have pretty flexible jobs, so we'll be getting out there over the lunch hours on a semi-regular basis to get lots of yardage. I was starting to feel really good (probably too good) about my swimming while pool swimming was all I was doing. This was quite and eye-opener for me.
I kind of reached my breaking point with the weather this week, too. I figure that it is the end of May, so the weather should be done screwing around and just get hot and sunny and stay that way until mid-September. Of course, the crazy Iowa weather has a different idea. Sunday's long ride outside became a half outside and half on-the-trainer ride because it tried to rain on me. Of course, once I got back home and got on the bike on the trainer, the rain stopped and never re-started. I was too bitter to get back outside that I just finished the ride indoors and watched a movie.
My brick runs (runs right after a bike ride) have been feeling great for some strange reason. Usually I feel like like someone surgically attached someone else's legs to my body and then told me to get up and run without letting the anesthesia wear off first, but lately I feel like I've been allowed to use my own legs. And when I feel pretty good, I tend to push it a little bit on the run. Wednesday's brick felt awesome, so by Thursday night's stand-alone run, I had no "go-juice" left in my legs and I had a terrible run. I was just pooped.
As the Memorial Day weekend approached, the temps crept into the blazing-hot range. Saturday's group run was a real cooker, even at 7am. So, I'm just adding "heat acclimation" to the list of things to work on.
Since this is the end of the first half of my training, I thought it might be kinda fun to see just how much of everything I've done since the end of February:
41 miles of swimming (that's about from Ames to Iowa Falls!)
57.5 hours of riding (roughly 920 miles, if you figure about 16mph average pace or 2.4 solid days of riding!)
311.3 miles of running (as a comparison, Interstate 80 is 306 miles in length across the state of Iowa!)
Weekly Round-Up (Sunday thru Saturday):
Swim: 5100 yards (about 1500 of that in open water)
Bike: 4 hours, 45 minutes (about half of that on the trainer...)
Run: 25.5 miles
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