The Hard Work Begins

Waking up Monday morning, it was immediately apparent that the first week is a lot easier than the second. Sure, the volume of training will increase ever so slightly (and generally does, not withstanding that every fourth week is a "recovery" week), but it wasn't so much that as the general fatigue that a week's worth of hard work had caused.

With the mercury dipping below 40 for the waking hours (and snow visible in the mountains!), part of the malaise was the bit of chill in the house, but another part of it was remembering exactly how energized I was just one week earlier as I headed to do my first workout of this long road to the Ironman.

Today I was tired. Physically more than mentally -- it had only been a week after all -- but tired, nonetheless. However, having a semblance of routine helps one fight through that and I packed up the kids and headed to the gym.

1:10 Bike, with 7 x :20 power intervals

Having inadvertently skipped 15 minutes of cool down on the power intervals one week ago, this high intensity workout represented an increase of 25 minutes. At the pace that I intend to keep on these power intervals, that increase would be significantly noticeable.

Having budgeted myself half an hour of warmup time at a power level that exceeded the weekend's longer ride, I chose a long course on the Expresso bike. My goal is to be at about 16mph on a hilly course just at the moment. With an hour and ten minutes, the math says that I should seek a course of roughly 19 miles in length. Unfortunately, the only one that fit was not only quite hilly from the start, but also had silly space-station graphics that looked like the superhighway in the Jetsons. After pausing out of wanting to find something more interesting, I realized exactly how good a fit (and challenging, with the hills) the course was and went ahead with it.

Rather than simply warming up for half an hour, like the workout called for, the combination of hilly course and the ridiculous pace kept by the guy seated on the bike next to me caused me to pedal a little harder than I probably should have. When I started the power intervals (in a particularly hilly part of the course, which was NOT helpful), I had already established a minute lead on my pacer.

I pushed through the power intervals, about 15 minutes in length when combined with the active recoveries, and lost seemingly three gallons of sweat. My legs were quite sore, although more like I had lifted weights than performed a cardio workout, but it was (and is) a good sore. The "candy" on the other side, as I thought of it, was that I now needed to get back to the starting altitude from the heights I had climbed to. I needed to do so with some urgency, as well, if I was going to match my 16mph goal. Even with extensive power intervals, my climbing speed was still well under that. Motivated by my desire to hit 16mph (and to represent my team well in the bike time trial I have coming at the end of the month), I powered down the four miles of hill, came in JUST under the gun (I averaged exactly 16mph!) at slightly under 1:10 and spent the next five minutes toweling off the bike feeling sorry for whomever was to follow. This was a hard, slogging workout and with legs that didn't have the fire in them they'd had the week prior. But perhaps that's why it felt so good in the shower afterwards -- I trust I'll get my legs back under me soon, especially with a week long business trip coming up, and working out with fresh legs isn't what prepares you for an Ironman anyway. For now, it's day by day and workout by workout -- for many, many days to come.