Ironman Training Update: It’s about the Journey

So April is the hardest month of training, both mentally and physically.  The long workouts are challenging but then planning the time to complete them while trying to avoid this horrible spring weather has turned into a logistics nightmare.  Physically, I’ve been killing my workouts!!!  However, last Saturday I was in a boating accident.  I was thrown from the boat and on the way out I hit my arm and knee.  My shoulder and arm were a little sore but they are OK.  The knee is not doing so well.  It felt fine the morning after and I completed an 18 mile run but then it really started hurting during the next 2 days.  So no running for me. L

I’m a little worried about the knee, but the only thing I can do is ice and rest it and complete more bikes.  This weekend I will be racing the Galveston 70.3 tri.  This is the half ironman distance so I will be swimming 1.2 miles, biking 56 and running 13.1.  This is also a recovery week, yes; only in Ironman training is racing half the distance considered an easy workout.  J

 This past weekend we were supposed to complete our longest bike (110 miles).  We planned to complete a group ride in Longview but the weather forecast was not good so me and 2 friends (also training for Ironman) decided to ride in Nacogdoches on Sunday.  Our coach mapped us out a route and we planned to ride the route then complete our first open water swim at 3:00 pm that afternoon.  Well, let’s just say the map/directions were a little off and we ended up down a dirt/gravel road that was closed due to recent flooding.  I think we rode at 5 mph for around 45 minutes and at one point we had to get off to get across the mud and water.  Every time we stopped to regroup and look at the map we were attacked my huge mosquitos.  I can’t believe our tri bikes made it through all that mud.  Sometime during our off road journey my friend made the comment, “Don’t they say it’s not about the race, it’s about the journey?”  Well, we definitely took an unexpected journey but we survived and had some good laughs!

We also got our cleats full of mud and it was difficult to unclip.  I did take a spill at a red light, but I only bruised my arm.  After returning to our coach’s house to get more food/water and wash the mud out of our cleats we rode for another 2 hours then met up at a local lake to swim.  The lake is spring fed and it had just rained a lot so the water was COLD.  It was a shock to the system but I’m glad I got an open water swim completed before Galveston 70.3.