Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Hills Hills Hills

This past weekend was my last big push in prep for IM CDA, and the theme was hills, hills, and more hills. I couldn't get to sleep on Friday night and I think it's because I didn't want Saturday to come. Saturday meant a 124-mile ride followed by a 30-minute run (broken down as 5 minute warm up, 5 minute build IM plus pace, 15 minute maintain, 5 minute warm down). Did I mention this 124-mile ride has about 14,000 feet of climbing? Well, I got about 101 miles, 12,000 feet of climbing, and 6.5 hours of riding before the rain fell and I had to head home. I spent the remaining hour on the trainer. The T-run went off without a hitch and I remember thinking, damn, I got this ironman run down! Confidence, I could use more of this. The next day was basically the same ride but shortened to 80 miles and about 5,000 feet of climbing followed by a shake-down swim. Monday was a double run day, consisting of 2.5 hours in the morn followed by 1 hour in the arvo. The plan was to make the first run very hilly to work the calves on the uphills, the quads on the downhills, and combined to give the overall sensation of dead, heavy, ironman legs. My OCD self got a bit fixated on the numbers in the morning, and I ran a tad longer so I could see the number 19 appear on my Garmin. I got home to some awesome messages on Facebook, and got really amped so I dedicated my second run (7.04 miles to make it a full marathon for the day) to Amy, who coincidentally was my girlfriend in the seventh grade (Facebook is so awesome like that). I was running on fumes but I got the work done, and so happy and relieved to bank all those miles. I have to admit that I'm walking with a bit more swagger today, and feeling much more confident than I was last week. Here are a couple of other observations I made over the weekend:

• When I was at my most fatigued, I pushed through to find that there was more energy in the well on the other side (well, I first learned this last year during the sabbatical but I was reminded this weekend)

• When I was feeling like I wanted to quit or I just wasn't having any fun, all I had to do was eat and my mood changed

• It doesn't matter that they are just little kids or cute puppies; when I'm low on sugar during a long run, I have thoughts of kicking them out of my way so that I don't have to take extra steps to get around them

• I still had some spunk in me after an 8 hour training day, making it all the way until midnight for a double birthday celebration. And FYI, that lady on the right in the pic below is actually a dude. If you've never been to AsiaSF, the catch is the servers are "gender illusionsists". It's good, but not the least wholesome, fun.

11 comments:

Beth said...

WHOA!!! HUGE training weekend! Awesome, awesome work Kiet. Just awesome!! You have to be so excited for CdA. Yahooo!!! Also, I would very much like to agree with you on point #3. I too would kick a cute puppy if it required extra steps and/or lateral movement on a long run... ;)

Jennifer Harrison said...

AWESOME!!!! GOOD luck at CdA!!!!! you will do great!

mtanner said...

Pau!

Teresa said...

Amazing training day...you will be SO ready come race day!

tn

Kim said...

i was going to ask if that "woman" was kim kardashian! whoops! hahahah! happy birthday and best of luck at cda!

Kim said...

What a weekend! You my friend are AWESOME! Super job and I'm glad you got to enjoy some friend time too!! Nice!!

Betsy said...

Niiiicce! 12,000 feet of climbing? I was happy with my 4500 in 80 miles. I had the same experience as you this weekend - threw some major volume at myself and was suprised and happy and relieved to see my body just kept coming back for me. T minus 25 days!

Matt said...

Holy crap, that some climbing! Gonna make the roller at CdA feel like nothing! It's all down hill down....literally ;)

Libby said...

super duper proud of ya. rockstar weekend. time to absorb. can't wait to track you in CDA!

BreeWee said...

Talk about fit and focused, I am already stoked for IM CDA with so many of you racing that I love to follow, but shhhhh-you get my most cheers! Nice work Kieters, rest easy, we will miss ya at Honu!

JC said...

OMG - I totally was thinking you were hanging out with with a bunch of hot chics and now I have to minus one:)))
You look like you have TONS of energy in that pic - CRAZY, that is what I will call you from now on CRAZY!
Awesome training weekend Dude - you are SO going to be ready to ROCK it out there!