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.