Recovery Week and Nautica Triathlon

YEA RECOVERY WEEK! I LOVE RECOVERY WEEK! Monday: 35 minutes of stretching and core exercises, then a 1 hour swim, but nothing hard. Tuesday: 1:30 bike ride with some 3min hard intervals, then a 35 minute run that afternoon. Wednesday: a 45 minute run on the track (FINALLY not the last one done with workout b/c ours was short! YEA!) and NO SWIM! NICE! Thursday: 45 minute easy ride and 15 minute run off the bike. Friday: 20 minute ocean swim, easy! Saturday: a short brick after my swimmers morning workout, a 12 minute swim, a 30 minute bike, and a 15 minute run. Sunday: RACE DAY!

I was feeling like crap about 1/2 way through the week. I guess your body is like not sure what to do with more free time, or not working as hard, so it just goes into exhaustion mode? Not really sure, but I just felt lethargic and my muscles felt tired...but I pushed through. By Saturday's brick, I was feeling much better and actually getting excited about the race on Sunday. It was an Olympic distance race, and its really just a C race for us, but with all this training, I kind of had a glimmer of hope that I could do pretty well, maybe even PR (old Olympic PR was 2:54).

Got up Sunday morning, no big issues, slept a little better than usual on pre-race night. Didn't feel any nerves in the morning. Was able to eat breakfast no problem. It really just felt like another training morning at home, which was nice. We got out the door about 10 minutes later than usual and headed down. Coach wanted us to do a 10 minute swim, a 10 minute bike and a 6 minute run before the race! Never done that much warmup...but was going to try. We parked and Christian and I headed straight for the 6 minute run. Took the bikes in, and went potty and he took his bike out for the 10 minute bike. I went potty again, and again. I hate race day potty! :) Finished setting up my stuff, put the wetsuit on, found Christian and after saying hello to some of my swimmers who were swimming on relays, headed down to the water. The swim was point a to b, so we started walking towards the start with the intention of swimming the final part up to the start to get in the warmup. As we walked it got closer and closer to time for the pre-race meeting. The water was WAVY, which is unusual in Miami. It definitely wasn't as bad as Dewey always is for its race, but it wasn't fun. We did maybe a 5 minute warm up. I really hate ocean water, and I hate fighting waves, so I wasn't very eager about the swim (even I sometimes hate the swim!), but I knew everyone else was in the same boat, so I figured I still have my swim advantage and went into my "Just keep swimming" mantra! :)

First wave: 7:00, Christian's Thunderthigh wave, 7:03, all the females, 7:06 (w/ 55+males). We took off, and I took an outside path b/c I knew everyone would try and cut straight out to the buoy rather than start at the outside of it and let the waves and current aim you at it! I also decided I'm not going to RUN over the waves since I'm not very good at it. I made my way in and hopped over several waves then dove into the 4th one or so. Took a few strokes and got kicked around by a few waves. Started to seep in to my head "man I hate this!" but thought, "Okay Ash, just make it to that first buoy and your are out past the breakers and swimming straight." Once I got out there you had to try and time your spotting with the crest of a roller but I just tried to keep it as straight as possible. I started picking out blue caps from the heat in front of us and just said, alright pass him. Made it past MOST of the blue caps as I made my way by the buoys. Was feeling long and strong, but didn't feel like I was killing myself at all. Mostly did breathing on my right to breathe away from the waves. Stood up at the beach at 23:30, but the chip has me at 25:08 with the beach running. Still pretty happy. Must have had a bit of a current to push us!

LONG distance between entrances and exits in transition. My bike was close to the swim exit, but FAR from the bike start. Managed to get my wetsuit off pretty quickly and started the long run to start the bike! Had a guy ask me what wave I was and he was like "so the elites should be done, right." I was like, um "yea, they should be!" Maybe I beat his Elite out of the water, cool! :)

Took off on the bike, and this is the only course of hills in Miami. We go from South Beach out one causeway that has one pretty big bridge over the water, downtown to the other causeway which has 2 big bridges over the water, around North Miami Beach, and then back over the causeways (6 bridges total, actually 8, but one bridge isn't much of a hill). Going west, wind at your back, going east towards the beach was into the wind...but the wind wasn't as bad as it had been the days before. Coach told me to keep my HR 10-15 beats below threshold, so I was aiming for 160-165. Problem was that my HR monitor wasn't working half the time, so during those times, I guessed. When it would work, I was apparently a pretty good guesser! Felt strong, but all those boys I passed in the water were FLYING by me! So annoying. About 15 miles in, some of those quick girls were passing me to. I just tried to maintain focus. Thought I was really holding 19-20 mph, but apparently the average with 18.5, bummer. One of these days I'll be at 20 average (RIGHT?!). Tried to keep my RPMs up on the bridges and just held steady. Felt pretty good coming in from the bike, 25 miles is a short bike at this point! Finished at 1:18:10.

Another 2:30ish minute transition, and was out for the run. Here Coach told me to not stress about my HR...to just be "comfortable, but uncomfortable" for the first 3 miles, and then try to build into as fast as you can go on the last 3 miles. When I got out of transition I was at 1:48, so I knew if I could just manage to do 10 minute miles, I could PR! However, for me and a triathlon over the past 3 or so years, a 10 minute mile hasn't been very common. I just tried to stand tall and pull the shoulders back and run. Tons of guys and some girls flying past, but tried to focus on myself and my breathing. At first mile, was feeling comfortable, but uncomfortable, looked down and was right at 10 minutes (HR was around 165, so pretty good). I thought "I can do this." Its only 5 more miles. As people continued to pass me I felt myself pick it up a bit, but tried not to get crazy. Had to remind myself that 2/3's of the racers were only doing 4 miles, so relax (there was a Classic and an Olympic distance). Noticed at the 2 mile mark, I was under a 10 minute mile. Still feeling good all the way out to the 3 mile turn. Saw Christian with him having about 2.5 miles to go and looked at my watch, realized he had a good shot of getting his PR/race goal of 2:30! So, gave him a big cheer!

Started making my way back and just focused on pushing a bit more, nothing crazy each mile. Lucky for us the clouds kept cover over the sun the whole run, so it wasn't crazy hot! It was perfect race weather! Finally at the last mile decided to try and push a bit more. HR crept up to 180s, and I just kept saying its only a mile, less than a mile! Saw I was going to make a PR for sure, so that helped to...Rounded the corner and ran over the sand dune (that sucks btw!), to the finish line! 2:46:18! And a 57:41 RUN! WOOHOO! I was a 9:18 pace! I was ecstatic! Still pretty slow for most people, but I was so happy to finally have a good run. I stayed positive the whole race, and really had a good time. And actually I've only run one 10k ever, faster than that! So, all in all a great day! I was 10th out of 25 females in my group, but no issues there. The girls in front were pretty good! Christian however, was 2nd in his Thunderthighs division! And got his PR by 7 minutes at 2:30!

I hope this means that we're really heading in the right direction for August and we'll be ready then. Got a big week coming up, with 17:30 hours planned of training. Back to the grindstone!