Swim...Bike...Run...Eat...Sleep...Epic Weeked

It's 7:24pm and I'm already lying in bed with my cat Brutus snuggled right next to me.

I remember in the good old days, I'd be having some dinner, getting my drink on and getting ready to go out for the evening. Now, I'm getting ready for bed on this wacky Saturday night. Why? Because I have to be up at 4am and running by 5am. More on that after today's recap.

This morning I was at Barton Springs Pool by 7:00am for my 2800m open water swim (seven laps). Believe it or not, this was a new distance record for me. I've never gone this far in one open water swim in my life! All felt great because I was just taking my sweet ol' time with each lap. I lost rhythm for a while, but seemed to get it back by the last two laps. It took me one hour to complete the swim. The main reason I took it easy is because I also had a 75 mile bike ride right afterward. Most people do their Barton Springs Swim on Friday mornings, but I've been doing mine on Saturdays the last few weeks to practice that swim-to-bike brick workout.

The bike ride was an out and back from Austin to San Marcos. After four days of cold drizzly weather, the sky opened this morning and the sun came out presenting a glorious day for riding. We started at 9:00am while it was still pretty cool outside so the first few miles were chilly. However, it didn't take long to warm up with all of the gear I was wearing. I rode consistently throughout and settled in to a nice sub-group with Nancy, Jeff, Jerry and Jane. T3 definitely has several sub-groups of fast folks, but I like my place as a "tweener" right now. My legs didn't hurt this morning, but I still didn't feel the need to push it. This route is actually one of the less hilly courses and, for the first time in a long time, there weren't any major wind issues.

A couple of things I noticed today that I have to work on... (oh my God, my cat is snoring right now)
1.) Heart Rate-noticing that whenever I was climbing, my HR also seemed to raise very quickly and I'd get a small wave of nausea. This could be many things including dehydration, fatigue, heart attack...not sure yet, but something to keep my eye on.

2.) My Nutrition-I'm not consuming enough calories during the ride. Today was weird because I have been having some sour tummy issues this week and I just didn't want to consume a whole lot. When I was nauseous, I definitely didn't want to eat or drink calories, but I knew I needed to. I know this is one of the major "crash and burn" factors at Ironman. People stop following their nutrition plan and invariably bonk. Again, it's something I'm aware of and monitoring. Right now, I'm trying to keep most of my bike calories liquid in the form of Perpertuum. I mixed 3 scoops of that with water and drank the whole bottle throughout the course of the morning. The taste isn't all that spectacular, but it keeps my levels consistent and doesn't make me bloated (like gels will). I'm hoping to save my gels for the run portion. I just noticed that when I finish the bike, I'm pretty depleted which is not a good thing knowing that I still have to complete a full marathon!!

3.) Form-I was in and out of aero-bars today more than I should've been.

Today's Results: 74 miles at an avg pace of 17.0 mph. It's my fastest training ride to date, but it's also one of the flatter rides we do. I keep telling myself that IMAZ is also pretty flat so I should do great!! My goal is to avg about 17mph on the IMAZ course so this was a good practice run (without the 40+ extra miles I'll have to do)

And now the reason I'm going to bed at 8pm? We have a 22-23 mile run in the morning! The 3M Half Marathon is tomorrow mornig at 7am, so a group of T3'ers are meeting at 5am to run 10 miles to the start line and then run the Half Marathon. I won't be setting any PRs tomorrow, that's for sure, but it's supposed to be a perfect morning for a run. I just hope my tummy holds up since it's been so darn queasy.

Completing this weekend will be a huge deposit into the Ironman bank as I continue to reach new distances and levels with all of this training. Of course, I'm also reaching epic levels of food consumption as well!