I cranked up the volume of running and biking over the past 2 weeks, which gave me a real beatdown. I was running 10-11 minutes/mile for a lot of long runs of up to 16 miles, and doing some really slow cycling at big volumes as well. I've been here before though, and I'm well familiar now with the payoff after hanging in through such a beatdown. A lot of less experienced or motivated folks would probably give up or pull back training at this point, thinking that they simply can't hack it, but I know that these moments of beat-down are the moments of true improvement as long as you don't give up.
Sure enough, after a small 2 day pullback in volume, my legs are starting to come back to me. My running is picking up in pace, and I cranked out a solid 18 hilly miler this week with no problems, which was the longest run I've done since my stress fracture 10 months ago. For sure, the marathon option is now fair game again should I decide to go that route in the near future. Cycling long distances is still challenging after the 4-hr mark, but I am definitely improving. I can outpace the entire intermediate Saturday group in the LA Tri Club, and end up riding solo for the last 2 hours since everyone bails out on the last major push, but it has definitely yielded real benefits. I still have a ways to go before I can confidently hang with the 100+ mile riding advanced group of 5-6 riders, but for sure, I'm close.
A nice field test of my current fitness is a weekly brick workout that the LA triclub now hosts at Beverly Hills High on Wednesdays. It's a hard bike interval session (on bike trainers) followed by a 25 minute hard run. I hammered on this workout, and got my run down to 6:30-6:40/mile for the entire run, even after going all-out on the bike. With luck and continued training, I'm hoping for 7min/mile over 10k for my upcoming triathlon, which would be the fastest I've run in a triathlon to date. (I did 7:10s over 4 miles in a sprint in November.)
Nutrition has been going really well as well with my maltodextrin liquid mixes and salt caps. I've had no problems or hangups with it, and it has been fueling my long rides and runs extremely well. Gone is the shaking hunger that I sometimes got after 4+ hrs on the bike, and gone are the postworkout headaches I got from dehydration. I'm not sure if the salt caps are making a difference on the ride, but I do believe that they're important for maintaining blood volume on long rides, as simple fluid replacement will be ineffective if there is insufficient extracellular salt to osmotically retain the fluids. I used to get ringing headaches during the day after big workouts, similar to a hangover, but those have been eliminated after addition of salt caps + liberal hydration.
I signed up for the Strawberry Fields triathlon on a whim - it's in 2 weeks (!) This is by far the shortest signup interval I've done for a significant race (meaning longer than a 10k), so I'm not expecting to throw down anything amazing that day. It will, however, be a big test of whether I can survive a true triathlon Olympic-distance mile swim, which is the single biggest impediment to my participation and success in triathlon. I have now done over 10 successful open water swims of a mile or less, but it will still be interesting to see on race day whether I can complete the distance with gas to spare as well as not falling too far behind the entire field.
I'm going to attempt to spend more time in the pool in the next 2 weeks to get myself as close to swim-race shape as I can. It's a real time challenge, as my run & bike require so much time even to maintain fitness let alone improve, that swim time is very limited. I'm also hesitant to spend a large amount of time on swim improvement until I take a private lesson with video analysis to fix the remaining big flaws in my form. This is high on my priority list, and hopefully I can get this done in the next few weeks.
I'm off to a gorgeous mountain run up Westridge road and the neighboring trails!
