"Patience is the toughest road to stay on, but the surest road to victory."
That quote was on our homepage at work this morning when I opened it up and I thought "ah, how appropriate!"(...and that I suck at being patient)
I have been having a lot of deja vu lately trying to recover from IMCDA and set myself up for healthy, successful training for IMFL. The two races are 20 weeks apart. I have mapped out a tentative plan that includes 6 weeks of pure recovery/base/low heart rate training and then 14 weeks of regular training, which will be very similar to the 14 weeks I did leading up to CDA (obviously I did something right in those 14 weeks :-)).
It is just this low heart rate stuff that is so hard - so hard to stay patient about it all, so hard to constantly remind myself recovery, not real training is the absolute most important thing right now, so hard to look at the 4 lbs I have gained since the race and tell myself that I have to be okay with it. But I also know it is the right thing to do right now, just like it was the right thing to do when I was so sick not that long ago.
I have only run a handful of times since the race, and I really feel like I am back in December when I first started the low heart rate training. I can only run a few minutes at a time right now without my heart rate skyrocketing. The only issue is this time around it is a million degrees outside. In December, it was never that hot (despite some days of running in snow and other days nearing 80 degrees), so I had a better idea of what all was going on. This time around I do not know if my heart rate is going crazy because of the heat or because the extreme deep set fatigue from training and racing an Ironman is still very much present. I know right now that it has to be a combination of both heat and fatigue, and I am ok with that. The thing I worry about is what happens in 3-4 weeks if I am still having trouble?Heat, or fatigue? If I somehow can determine that it is the heat, then I can march on, if I find out that it is fatigue, which would most likely only be found out some very hard way, then I cannot go back in time and rest more.
Oh, the drama...
I do miss the training though. I am taking this time to do more what I feel like, which is kind of fun, but at the same time, it seems kind of like the B-team training plan, or the wannabe club. I have done a few pilates classes and I am really enjoying those - I get to straighten my legs and point my toes and reminisce over my thirteen year ballet career which culminated in me playing the ugly stepsister in Cinderalla not once, but twice. I am also reminded at how horribly inflexible I am now compared to when I was sixteen. Gees. It is mortifying to me, but I guess the good thing is no one in the classes knew me then so it can be my own little secret.
That quote was on our homepage at work this morning when I opened it up and I thought "ah, how appropriate!"(...and that I suck at being patient)
I have been having a lot of deja vu lately trying to recover from IMCDA and set myself up for healthy, successful training for IMFL. The two races are 20 weeks apart. I have mapped out a tentative plan that includes 6 weeks of pure recovery/base/low heart rate training and then 14 weeks of regular training, which will be very similar to the 14 weeks I did leading up to CDA (obviously I did something right in those 14 weeks :-)).
It is just this low heart rate stuff that is so hard - so hard to stay patient about it all, so hard to constantly remind myself recovery, not real training is the absolute most important thing right now, so hard to look at the 4 lbs I have gained since the race and tell myself that I have to be okay with it. But I also know it is the right thing to do right now, just like it was the right thing to do when I was so sick not that long ago.
I have only run a handful of times since the race, and I really feel like I am back in December when I first started the low heart rate training. I can only run a few minutes at a time right now without my heart rate skyrocketing. The only issue is this time around it is a million degrees outside. In December, it was never that hot (despite some days of running in snow and other days nearing 80 degrees), so I had a better idea of what all was going on. This time around I do not know if my heart rate is going crazy because of the heat or because the extreme deep set fatigue from training and racing an Ironman is still very much present. I know right now that it has to be a combination of both heat and fatigue, and I am ok with that. The thing I worry about is what happens in 3-4 weeks if I am still having trouble?Heat, or fatigue? If I somehow can determine that it is the heat, then I can march on, if I find out that it is fatigue, which would most likely only be found out some very hard way, then I cannot go back in time and rest more.
Oh, the drama...
I do miss the training though. I am taking this time to do more what I feel like, which is kind of fun, but at the same time, it seems kind of like the B-team training plan, or the wannabe club. I have done a few pilates classes and I am really enjoying those - I get to straighten my legs and point my toes and reminisce over my thirteen year ballet career which culminated in me playing the ugly stepsister in Cinderalla not once, but twice. I am also reminded at how horribly inflexible I am now compared to when I was sixteen. Gees. It is mortifying to me, but I guess the good thing is no one in the classes knew me then so it can be my own little secret.
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