Monday, October 25, 2010

What do you feel like doing?

I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday. She works with women as a coach and is currently working with a woman who has lost over 120 lbs. In the beginning, it was both overwhelming and difficult to get started. The woman was unmotivated and feeling hopeless. Even though she had been given a plan to help get her started in fitness and healthy eating, she wouldn't follow through with it.

Her: [sigh] I didn't get in the exercise you asked of me.

Coach: Why not?

Her: I don't know, I just didn't feel like doing it.

Coach: Didn't feel like it? Look, you need to take your feelings out of this and just do it. There are lots of things we do everyday that we don't "feel" like doing. It doesn't matter whether you feel like doing it or not. You have to do it.

She's right. We do plenty of things everyday that we don't feel like doing. Who wants to get up early in the morning? Who wants to go to work? Who wants to brush and floss their teeth?? But we do them anyway.

If you took out a sheet of paper and divided it in half, listing on one half the things you felt like doing and on the other, the things you didn't feel like doing, what would it look like? Sadly, I think most of us would have a list where the things you didn't feel like doing far outweighed the things you did. But we still keep doing that which we don't want to do. Why? Because it's life! Because of some future pay-off. Because my future self wants that healthy, lean body. Because she wants a paycheck. And because she wants gleaming teeth. :)

Friday, October 22, 2010

That Crazy Girl on the Treadmill

That would be me. This morning. 5 am. Did you see me there? I was the one running non-stop. People came by and joined in, doing their walk/run, but then they left. Rounds of people came. And they looked over at me. With the water bottles, discarded gels, and drenched towel. Step, step, step... focus, focus, focus.

TWO HOURS. Two hours!!! The treadmill doesn't even allow you to go that long. The LED display only has enough digits for 99 minutes so at that point, it turned off and I had to reset it to start again.

I felt surprisingly good. There might be something to this theory that eating more during training will help you perform better. I managed to get down 2 gels and 1 bottle of the Powerbar drink. It started tasting nauseatingly sweet near the end and I had to chase it with some water afterward though. My fellow triathlete friend D (who is very fast BTW) says she would have tried to get down 3 gels, but this was pretty good for me.

I could barely walk after I was done. Just think, by this point in the race, I'd already have swam 2.4 miles and biked 112 miles. And I'd STILL have to run 13 more miles! YIKES.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Practicing race fueling

I haven't been ETL-ing as well as I would like. About a month ago, I had a discussion with my triathlon coach and some of the others in group also doing IM next month. The coach stressed the importance of fueling properly. He said that the more we eat while we race, the better we'll do. He gave us a formula to calculate how many calories to try to get per hour during the race. It worked out to about 200 calories/hour for me. 200 calories! That seems like a lot. I barely get 200 calories in 1.5-2 hours of training. I've always had stomach sensitivty and distress during races too (which rarely happens in training) so I'm a little worried about trying to eat so much in such a short period of time plus with stuff I'm not used to.

The coach also told us not to rely on our "special needs" bag since anything could happen and there is a possibility we won't have access to it. So although this doesn't jive with ETL, I've decided to try training with the stuff that will be used on the course - namely, Powerbar products. This way, I won't have to rely on my special needs bag and won't have to carry a bunch of special items with me. I can just grab what is at the aid stations because that is what will be there.

I purchased a few boxes of Powerbar gels and the powdered drink they'll have available. I refuse to do the bars because (1) I don't do solids well while racing and (2) they contain HFCS.

I hope my body tolerates this junk.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

I want my girlfriend back.

Those words were uttered last week by the Boy as I dashed off to yet another early morning training session. I received a new schedule from my coach and now comes the loooooooooong stuff. This weekend I will do my first 5 hour training ride followed by a run, and then on Sunday, an hour swim followed by a 2 hour strength interval bike ride. Tomorrow morning is my first "long-ish" 2 hour run. This is after we ran hard today at the group track workout.

But as my friend K told me today,

Suffer now, suffer LESS later.

So true. :) We are both doing IM AZ next month and she has been a real inspiration to me. She coaches beginner triathletes and this is her first Ironman as well. We've been running a lot together, which has been good for me. I'm the "slow" one in the group and usually never have anyone to run with. So I'm stuck most times by myself which is hardly any fun or motivating. She joined the group specifically for IM training back in July and is just about the same speed as I am in running.

During today's run, she said it was too bad she wasn't a faster swimmer or we could try to race with each other the entire time. How great would it be to have someone to run with during the most grueling part -- the marathon -- at the end? Who knows, I think she'll catch me on the bike so maybe there is a chance...

I thought I would have more free time now that my class ended but it looks like I will spending most of it exercising.