back in the saddle

It's 2 weeks post Vineman, and I'm officially back to training. This week I logged 2 swims, 4 runs, and 2 rides. Yay me!

What am I training for? In part, I'm training for the Colorado Relay - a crazy 170 mile jaunt across Colorado with a team of my fellow Outlaws. The crazy part of it (as if there's only one) is the nature of the thing: we'll each run 3 legs of varying distances and difficulties and they'll be at weird times of the day. We start at 6-ish am, we run until we've hit the end, 170 miles across Colorado.

Two of my runs this week were Relay training runs. Thursday, we did a night run. I'll admit that although we probably don't need to practice running at night, it's still a lot of fun to run at night with a group. This was my completely un-subtle ulterior motive for arranging this particular run. OK, so it's probably practical to test out headlamps and reflective vests and all, but you don't have to practice running at night to run at night. The truth is, it's just awesome to run with the coyotes and bats and toads and spooky noises - and far safer to do it with a group.

Yesterday I had a brick - a 2.5 hour ride (which turned into a nearly 3hr ride) and a 30 minute run (which I turned into a 20 minute run). I can tell I'm still recoving from Vineman - my top end was not what it was a month ago - it was used up. Hurting. The tank was half empty. It felt half empty when I started, and the needle just moved down.

Was it the lack of sleep from getting back into the super early morning thing (masters swim)? Was it the shift back to training? Note to self: Ironman recovery is a long process.

The other relay run this week was today - our crack-headed trot back to my favourite trail in town - La Luz. At the county line, I said (with authority) it's about 2.5 miles to hit the trail and go up a wee bit, then we'll turn around and come back. it'll take roughly 40 minutes to go up, 30 to come back. Yeah. Sure.

2.5 miles up I realized I had miscalculated the turnaround point by about a mile - so we'd run about 7 miles for our 5 mile run. Oops. Still, it smells gorgeous up there, and the views across the city in the early morning are just amazing. And the temperature was beautiful and cool.

I followed up this morning's run with a second trot on the treadmill later in the day. This is the training I thinkI've needed to do in previous years - the multi runs per day. This, I think, is the most useful training I'll do - and I'll do this several times before the race. I don't know how much is because I'm still recovering from Vineman, how much was yesterday's ride or today's run, but that second 30 minute trot was really taxing - in spite of the big nap I took. I felt that one.

OK, so, the running thing. Yes, I'm training for that -- but what else? Well, aside from the fact that it's way easier to maintain a high level of fitness than it is to start over, I'm mostly training for sitting on the sofa and eating more pizza. As you know, these are activities which take a lot of calories, so I'm doing my best to keep myself fighting fit.

Speaking of which, I think there are leftovers in my fridge right now.

BRB...