Back To Structured Fun

I enjoyed a 2-week mid-season break after Ironman Lake Placid. Although I was pretty smashed for the 48 hours after the race, I bounced back pretty quickly on Wednesday. By the weekend, I was itching to get back into structured training. However, I knew that I needed to respect my body (and mind) for what it allowed me to do for 140.6 miles and give it the rejuvination that it deserved. 

My approach for my two week mid-season break was unstructured fun. Without a schedule as to what to do each day, I let my body and mind decide what it was I would do, and for how long. Aside from swimming, all exercising was kept at a low intensity and included stops as needed. 

Here's a recap of my 2-weeks of unstructured fun: 

July 25th: Ironman Lake Placid
July 26th: Walking around town
July 27th: Fly home
July 28th: Road bike (90 min, 4PM)
July 29th: Long course swim (~3700 yards, 8:13AM). 40 min run (5:40PM).
July 30th: Long course swim (~4300 yards, 9:04AM)
July 31st: Bike (~1:20, 10:11AM), Run (59 min, 11:54AM)
August 1st (private training session with an athlete): OWS (9:31AM), Bike (2:58, 11:20AM)
August 2nd: Long course swim (~4300 yards, 8:58AM), 45 min run (4:23PM)
August 3rd: Long course swim (~3900 yards, 9:11AM)
August 4th: Run (1:10, 9:40AM), Bike (1:11, 4:27PM)
August 5th: Long course swim (~4000 yard swim, 7:45AM)
August 6th: Road bike Blue Ridge Parkway (4:01, 10:39AM)
August 7th: Spectate Karel at Lake Logan Half
August 8th: Run (1:25, 10:34AM)

It was a nice mix of swim, bike, run but without any structure or routine. I made sure to keep every workout fun but without a purpose. 

With a little over four weeks left before Ironman 70.3 World Championship, I am back to structured training. My tri bike made it's appearance after 2.5 weeks in the travel bike box from Ironman Lake Placid. The focus switches from unstructured fun to purposeful fun. Although not every day is easy, I make a conscious effort to always have fun when I train. It is something I choose to do with my body and mind and the benefits extend far beyond a race day performance. 

If you have been struggling with finding the "fun" in your training, I encourage you to explore the following topics to see how you can bring yourself back to that beginners joy for training and racing. 

• Obsession with metrics - miles completed, weekly distance, paces/watts/speed
• Dissatisfied with body image 
• Rigid and ritualistic with training (and eating)
• Pressure to perform 
• High expectations 
• Fear of failure 
• Inadequate recovery
• Monotonous training
• Isolated training
• Dull workout environment 
• Workouts without purpose or meaning
• Too high volume/intensity
• Not enough intensity
• Training without gratitude 

Team Sumbal weekend training recap - Bricking it up!

source

It's hard to believe it but in 24 days we will be traveling to St. Croix for our first "race-cation" of the season. Not only is this our first time visiting this beautiful island but we are really excited to tackle this beastly  challenging half ironman course. 

This has been a very time-demanding year for us with the Trimarni coaching and nutrition business keeping us super busy. Our athletes are absolutely amazing (one-on-one and pre-built for coaching) and they inspire us every day with their commitment, discipline, passion and enjoyment for using the body. My nutrition athletes have worked hard on daily nutrition as well as fine-tuning sport nutrition for better training and recovery and a more effective fueling plan for race day. 

It's really incredible to see so many age group athletes out there who love to dream big, work hard have fun with training. It's not easy to balance a multisport lifestyle with life but when the outcome is a strong performance on race day, the sacrifices pay off. 

On Thursday we (Karel, me and Campy) made a quick, 6.5 hour drive to Greenville to finally secure a home to rent when we make our big out-of-state move in May. We checked out 6 places that we found on Zillow and the very last house was the winner! We are so excited about living 2.5 miles from downtown Greenville and most of all, enjoying an even more active lifestyle with lots of nature to play with on a daily basis. 

Karel and I love dining out at local restaurants when we travel and we found this place called Bravo in downtown (which we heard has over 100 restaurants!). 

I enjoyed a delicious mushroom, corn and bean salad for dinner on Thursday evening and after being inspired by this salad, I couldn't wait to get back home to re-create the meal at home. 

Viola! My own creation - sauteed mushrooms and onions in olive oil on top a bed of mixed greens, avocado, tomatoes, hard boiled egg (1), rice, shredded cheese and crumbled pita chips and a side of salsa. 

To improve overall health, to reduce risk for disease, to control a healthy body composition and to boost performance, prioritize eating meals cooked/prepared in the home so that you can be in control of portions and ingredients. However, when there's the occasional opportunity to enjoy a meal outside of the home, use my dining out tips from my latest Ironman article.
How to eat healthy when dining out

On Friday morning, Karel and I went for an early morning hilly 4.5 mile run (with headlights - Thanks Trisha!) and after a busy day of finalizing paper work, it was time for a 6.5 hour drive home. 

After a hodgepodge of recovery workouts after HITS Ocala half ironman, with Sunday after the race being a full day of no activity aside from walking Campy several times throughout the day and stretching, all lights were shining green for full-speed ahead with my body and mind to resume structured training a weekend after our tune-up half ironman race. 

With no running until Wednesday (4 days after the race) and extra focus on sleep, Karel had two great workouts for us (we biked together both days) to challenge our running legs off the bike for we know that a steady bike paves the way for a strong run. 

Saturday: 

2 hour Bike + 1:15 hr T-Run

Bike is again just endurance pace for first hour. 2nd hour, take it up just a notch - SESP (steady effort still pushing).

40 miles, 2 hours

T-RUN: 

5 miles descending off the bike (with a planned walk/rest of 30 sec after mile 2 and 4 and 60 sec planned rest after mile 5).

The rest of the run was steady with planned walk breaks (10-20 sec) every 2 miles.

10 miles - 1:17 total time (7:40 min/mile pace w/ walks included)

MS:

7:55

7:38

30 sec walk

7:27

7:06

30 sec walk

6:48

1 min rest

7:45

7:34

30 sec walk

7:52

7:41

8:07 ( with campy and Karel)

(Karel did 12 miles (he did his own MS). Total time: 1:24, average pace 6:58 min/mile)

Sunday:
2 hour bike + 7 mile run

First hour steady endurance pace.

MS: 30 minutes - alternating pulls of 5 min upper Z3/low Z4 watts

(Although being able to trade pulls with Karel was years in the making and I know he can go harder than what he does with me sitting behind his wheel, here's what it looks like for me (stats below) when Karel is pulling and I am sitting on his wheel and then for me to take a pull...it's not easy to draft and then take a pull! I'm sure Karel fully recovers when he sits behind me but when I am behind Karel's wheel, I am still giving a steady, slightly uncomfortable yet doable effort. Also, we were not riding on a straight rode for 30 min so our speed adjusts whereas we both focused on the same normalized power)

5 min (Karel in front, me on his wheel drafting) - 150 W, 23.79 mph

5 min (me in front) - 165 W, 22.68 mph

5 min (Karel in front) - 154 W, 22.77 mph

5 min (me in front) - 168 W, 23.46 mph

5 min (Karel in front) - 155 W, 23.98 mph

5 min (me in front - last pull!) - 170 W, 22.98 mph

Then SESP effort until we arrived home

T-run - 6 miles (+ 1 Campy mile)

Goal was steady effort, RPE 8/10 with 30 sec walk in between

55:08 total time, 7:46 min/mile average (including 3 minutes total of walking, 30 sec after each mile)

7:43

7:22

7:27

7:18

7:22

7:10

8:00 (Campy mile)

(Karel did 14.25 miles and a different MS, 1:42 total time, 7:12 min/mile average)

And to finish off the weekend - the perfectly balanced post-workout meal of fresh pineapple, homemade banana walnut bread (thanks Trimarni athlete Elizabeth from DC!) and an open egg omelet (2 whites + 1 whole egg scrambled with milk) with spinach to replenish, refuel and repair my body.