Yesterday was a good day except for all the soreness and awkward feeling of having used every muscle in my body to the maximum. Today I experienced the most sarcastic workout I have ever seen. Today we had an open water swim and a "recovery ride". Recovery....what does that mean.
First to the swim. I am indeed proud again of what I accomplished today. I swam 900 meters on open water no rest!! We are not talking 1/4 now but almost 1/3 the iron man distance. i was always wondering after all that pool swimming what I could do open water. I found out today.
It was after my swim were I started having problems with the terms used. "Recovery Ride" of none the less 2 hours. Well lets just take that in for a moment. Until yesterday my furthest ride had been 20 miles and I was never on top of that bike for more than 20 minutes at a time. Yesterday I rode 33 miles, and did not stop for 2 hours. Yep 2 hours of butt rubbing with that ity bity tiny hard seat. So I guess today I was supposed to be ready for a "recovery" ride of the same amount of time in the very same seat. Right.... actually wrong!!! The reality of the matter is that for all those athletes in the team it is a recovery ride but for me it was yesterday all over again. I said at the beginning I was not going to question my coach and I still think that way so I was a good boy and sat on the saddle and started riding. i must tell you I was hurting for a while trying to find the comfortable place but it was kind of hard, Now, recovery speed for these people is 16 MPH my racing all out speed is probably 16-17 MPH so you see that is where that recovery term confuses me. In all case I did not complain I took off and was determine to stay with the peloton as long as I could. I was still very sore and my right knee started acting up a little bit and I just could not get rid of the paid. I did my best for about 40 minutes until I drooped back because by now my back and my knee were starting to worry me. I kept telling my self that at some point I will have pain so I just needed to go on and suck it up. However I also thought that if I got hurt then it would be a lot worse. I rode 45 minutes and stopped to stretch my back and hydrate a little bit. I was then joined by coach K and one of the girls from the team who is starting out riding the bike. She can swim and run but was new to the bike. She rode well but looked a little bit insecure which is normal as she told me it was her second or third time on the bike. We continued heading back and after a few minutes she was ridding fine. We talked all the way back about Jochi and how he got started on the sport and a little bit of what I was doing. We had an easy 12-13mph ride back with a total time of 1:38:00 and 20 miles. Not bad for a recovery ride. My back felt fine but my knee was still a little tender.
At the end I was very happy with my swim and amazed at my bike ride. Right now I am very sore and I can feel my body all broken down. I have taken my recovery drinks and Amino pills but still I can feel it. I will continue to press on, after all this is the IronMan not the boy scouts. Every day that passes I can feel the changes going on. I can feel my body breaking down even further after every work out but I can also feel that when I get rested properly I will be that much stronger. I can already feel that. Next Saturday we have a long ride again. I can't wait.
As off today I weighted in at 256.2 pounds. That is 14 pounds less than 2 months ago and 3 pounds less than when I started. By know I am almost getting used to my diet but it will still need to be improved with different types of food. I f I can keep this up by the next time I see Winter on October 2nd I will probably be around 250-245. I want her to notice the change, this girl means business when it comes to training and competing, so I want her to notice that I also mean business just like her.
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