Unfortunately a familiar episode especially while being trated for cancer. Frustration!!! It takes your breath away, it prevents you from thinking right and it allows all the negative aspects of your life to take over and fuel your imagination. Today I have serious doubts, not of my commitment but of my ability to pull this off. Today was track day. I went out very positive but to make a long story short I just could not run my reps regardless of how hard I tried. It would be dificult for anyone to imagine what it feels like but I will try to explain. As you increase you effort, being running swiming, walking, or whatever phisical activity it is, your muscles need more oxygen to do their work properly. Oxygen is carried by the blood and that is why your heart starts to pump blood thru your system at a faster rate. As this happens you start to breath harder and faster also because you need to take in more oxygen so you can satisfy your muscles demand for oxygen. If and when oxygen supply is not sufficient your muscles will fail in terms of the work they can perform and you would feel weak or lets say you are running you would have to walk or if you are running up stairs you would have to walk or if you are chooping wood you would need a break etc. The combination of breathing and the capacity of the heart to pump the oxygen thru is crutial and if one of them fails or lags behind you will not have the output you requiere or want. Getting in shape is just a way of doing more work with less oxygen. As muscles get used to working at a certain rate they start requiring less oxygen to do the same way. This is measured in the speed of a runner or a cyclist etc. I am sure my explanation is at least somewhat corect but you get the point.
For many years I have been battling with high blood pressure. When you have High blood pressure your heart works harder to satisfy your body of the blood it needs. One thing that happens is that the heart can start to work at a higher rate than normal causing many health risks and since it is working harder it can weaken over time and any high heart rate can cause problems to the person. I take a pill to treat my high blood pressure that works in preventing my heart from raising its rythm regardless of the requierement. In my case about 155-160bpm. No matter my effor my heart would not rise from that number. When I train I have gotten fitter and stronger which means that I can go longer and faster than before just as long as the oxygen requierement is below the need of my heart to pump at 160 bpm or higher. As I do rep work in running or trainer exercises on the bike, my mind says go, and my body which is now stronger feels fine, however as I run I start to breath hard and fast making available all the excess oxygen I need to continue but my HR will remain very low and the heart wil not accelerate to supply the oxygen demand my muscles need. If I keep going I would most likely pass out because my brain which feeds from that same oxygen would be deprived of oxygen and I would go to sleep face first!!!!
I ran today 2 reps of 600 meters which turned out to be 400mts. I could not continue as I was breathing as hard as I could and I was getting the light head. As I looked at my heart rate it was 145-155bpm. I was forced to walk. I summary I ran as hard as I could and my average HR was 130bpm. Needless to say I am extremely frustrated. I had never quited in my life and as I have said before this will not be my start to that. Me of all persons know that Gods will is what really matters but him willing I will do this regardless of the concequence and frankly the more my body screws with my training the harder I will work it.
I stopped taking this pill a week and one day ago. Relax, I am taking my other pills so everything is fine. However I am know thinking and wondering for how long will this effect last in my body and if and when it goes away, will my heart cooperate with the new requierements it will have to meet? These are all questions at this point. In the end all I need for my heart to give me enough speed and power at 140-160 for 17 hours. That is it. Coach K was worried about my frustration more than my condition. He feels pretty confident that we will be fine come race day. I truly trust his judgement so that kind of makes things better. There are things that I control and others I dont this is one of them so it is hard to deal with it.
I have to find away around this rather than thinking it wi go away. In the end if my blood pressure does not cooperate this pill might be in play even as I do the Ironman. That means I have to get fit to the point where I have the necesary speed to complete the event in 17 hours at a heart rate of 155-160bpm maximum. I am no expert but that means that I would have to train longer rather than harder. A wild guess tells me if I will be swiming 3000mts I will have to practice at 9000mts, if I am going to ride 112mile I will have to work at 300miles and so on. In all I need to swim, bike and run, at the minimum speed the cutoffs will allow while not going over 160bpm. Volume and training time will certainly increase dramatically. It will requiere an aditional effort on the part of everyone involved especialy from me. As far as I am concern this is what is all about. I have to get back to a positive thinking mode and very quickly before frustration takes its toll........
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