Monday, December 11, 2017

Disney Training - Week 9 and 10

Week 9 was a rough week. My ankle and foot have been acting up, so I had to take some extra rest days. However, I was able to complete my 18-mile long run, which was a really great accomplishment. As usual, I had no time to fit in strength and cross training like I need, which isn't helping my recovery. Week 10 was even worse. Now another one of my cats just got diagnosed with kidney failure, and we spend most of the week at the vet hospital. I at least got two moderate distance runs back-to-back days for the weekend. Although my foot and ankle feel fine now, my legs are extremely sore because I need new shoes. Hopefully they arrive before my next long run, but probably not.



Swimming
I didn't get any swims in.

Cycling
I didn't get any rides in.

Running
Week 9 was plagued with ankle and foot issues. As I noted, I was feeling better towards the end of the week and was able to get in my 18-mile long run. It was pretty tough and I was extremely exhausted afterwards, but I still did pretty well. In addition, even with my foot and ankle giving me trouble, I still managed to get in a 7-mile run with a 3 x 1-mile repeats baked in, as well as a 9-mile run with 5-miles at marathon pace.

Week 10 was spent making trips back and forth from our house to the vet hospital. I just wasn't around enough to have any time to run. Fortunately, I got in back-to-back runs on the weekend, which was really great! I did an 8-mile easy run on Saturday, followed by a 14-mile run Sunday. This is one of the first weekends I have successfully gotten back-to-back runs in. My 14-miler was extremely tough, but I felt good overall and was really excited that when I was done, I knew I could have easily pushed out another 4-5 miles with no problem.

Strength
I didn't get any strength sessions in, but I was able to get a handful of stretching sessions done, which did help a lot.

Nutrition
Despite everything going on, I have been doing a lot better at watching what I eat and cutting out excessive snacking. An interesting thing I noticed is that even though my wife and I did a lot of baking and seemed to eat a lot of that stuff, like brownies, pie and pepperoni bread, by cutting out the typical snacking we do I lost some weight. I am not completely sure why, since I know they are higher calories than what we usually snack on. I'll hack to investigate to figure this out.

Final Thoughts
Overall a very rough two weeks and this week is going to be just as bad. I am not ready for Disney, but I have a 20-miler this weekend and if I can survive that, I will be lined up to do another 20 the following weekend. That should have me ready enough to complete the four races. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

My Journey to Ironman - Build Phase

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