Friday, August 21, 2009

The Devil Is My Coach

I am pretty sure Coach E had every intention of killing me this week. In my two years of triathlon training, this has been BY FAR the hardest week I have encountered. Although the volume isn't huge - just over 10 and 1/2 hours; the intensity of the volume is insane.

Last week Coach had sent me an e-mail telling me to get my rest in because next week would be hard. I in my idiotic nature decided I needed to mock Eric for being the only person in "Born To Run," that McDougall, only praised his amazing coaching ability, not his looks. Throughout the book McDougall mentions how good looking specific members of the ultra community are. So I think I provided Coach E with all the incentive to turn into the devil this week.

Monday started innocently enough with 2, 35 minute runs and an hour lift; although the heat and humidity down here didn't help matters. Tuesday was when the fun started - hill repeats on my bike! 6, 2 minute repeats, 6 1 minute repeats and 6 30 second repeats. I had never done hill repeats on my bike before and holy cow are they tough! I decided to ride over to Free Union so I could ride the long hill for the 2 minute intervals and a short and steep for the 30 second intervals, by the time I finished I thought my legs were going to fall off.

But Coach wasn't done, he had more in store for the quadzillas. On the menu for Wednesday was a 70 minute run including 6, 5 minute intervals at a 7:20 to 7:30 pace. I left my apartment at 9:15 am and the temperature had already cracked 85 degrees and headed over to the shadiest road I could find. Showing my complete lack of intelligence, I forgot that there was one huge hill on this road, and I of course had to run up that hill for intervals # 3 and # 6. This run seriously kicked my butt and I was pretty much out of commission for the rest of the day - but somehow managed to rally to close out the bar with my Darden friends that night!

Yesterday Satan had me doing swim speed intervals and a recovery ride on the bike. The UVA pool has weird hours right now so I had to bike before I swam - bad idea. I got into the pool with my legs feeling pretty heavy. I made it through the warm up ok, and the first three, 100 yard intervals (in under 1:35) weren't awful, but then I thought my heart was going to explode on the next two. I then did my 50 yard kick set and on the first interval of my last set, I bonked, HARD. 75 yards into the interval I had to choke back vomit as my legs dragged behind me like dead fish. I danced with the devil and the devil won.

At least I close the week off in style, Sunday I have a nice easy brick which consists of a 2 hour ride and a 10 mile run!!!! If someone can drive through C'Ville on Sunday to scrap me off the side of the road that would be awesome. But the best part is - no blood sugar issues during the workouts this week and my basal rate is dropping like a penny from the Empire State Building. This is fun!

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