Seven Days Away

It all comes to a head this week at the

Almost six months of Crossfit training, four months of Crossfit Endurance programming and a lot of unanswered questions about how it will all turn out.

Here's my pre-race update:

I'm feeling like my strength and power are greatly increased. I've done some hills on the bike recently that used to seem tough that look like tamed lions now. My leg strength is definitely dramatically increased, and it's really starting to show up in my swim stroke as well. I did an interval workout last week with a friend and easily held alternating 1:15 and 1:20 pace per 100 without too much effort. People have asked me what my secret weapon is, and there's no doubt in my mind that I owe all newfound power to Crossfit. It's definitely a program I would recommend to triathletes looking for all-around total body strength and core conditioning, not to mention to anyone at all looking to get more fit over a broad range of conditions.

Endurance, I'm not so sure about. I am still not feeling like I have a handle on how well I'll be able to last through a 2.5 hour race. I ran a 10k this week at about 85% effort and to be honest it kind of sucked. On the other hand, I usually run better off the bike (emphasis on usually) and usually the longer the race, the better I feel. We'll see if that still holds true.

Taper: I only did two Crossfit workouts last week and none this week, and I'm tapering the Crossfit Endurance workouts this week. I'll do some transition work this week too.

The course:

Hilly.
That's one of three loops on the bike, each of which gains close to 700 feet. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was just a teensy eensy bit worried. Normally, I'm good on flat courses, great on flat windy courses or rolling hills where power works for me and weight doesn't work against me. But the bigger and steeper the hills, the less advantage I have. I don't really know how to predict my times on this course, what with the current on the swim in the river and the hills on the bike.

Looking at times from people I know who have done the course (and who I've done other courses with, so I can get a relative triangulation on what times I might do), I'm going to say I would normally (with my normal training and speed that is) be able to do:

Swim: 23:00 - 25:00 (giving myself a little extra due to current from the river)
T1: 00:2 (Swim and T1 times seem to be long from previous results)
Bike: 1:20 - 1:25 (I'm giving myself 10 - 15 minutes over my usual Oly distance time)
T2: 00:1
Run: :52

Total: 2:38 - 2:45

I have no idea if I'll be on this time, faster than it, or slower than it. It will probably come down to whether my extra power on hills will give me a faster bike time, and whether or not my endurance is compromised and my run time will be slower than usual, or not. My last Oly run time was :50, but I haven't come anywhere near that in workouts in the last few weeks. So it's all up in the air. I'll probably be very nervous this week, so keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well on race day!

New Workout: Running on Water

This is a great workout for working on your foot speed turnover, but I'll warn you it's pretty advanced. You have to really get your legs moving to stay on top of the water. Just kidding, but I thought this pic that hubby took of me at the river this weekend was funny, it looks like I'm running across the water. In actuality, I'm just about to hit the snow-melt cold water and freeze my a** off!

While camping up near the pass, I had an awesome bike workout - intervals on an empty forest service road that was uphill all the way. I did my rest intervals headed downhill, then turned around and hit the uphill for the hard sets. It was a Crossfit Endurance set:

4min on, 3min off
2min on, 30sec off
1min on, 3min off
2min on, 30 sec off
4min on. Done!

Tough!

Then on Sunday I took a great trail run in my Vibram Five Fingers shoes. There's something about trail running that just makes it so much more fun for me than running on the street. It engages my whole brain and nervous system (otherwise you trip over too many roots) and pulls me right into the moment. It is hot, hot, hot here (and even 1,000 feet higher in elevation at the campground it was still roasting) but I'm making myself try to run when it's hotter and get better acclimated to dealing with the heat, so I went around noon. Another ice-bath in the creek and I was done for the day!

The Great Experiment Update

I'm about halfway to my Oly triathlon on solely Crossfit and Crossfit Endurance training. The hard part is I have no idea how to gauge my progress at this point since everything feels completely different and I'm not doing the same workouts that I've used in the past as baselines. I could be doing a bike ride and have done a CF workout that morning where I was squatting heavy weights and in the bike ride I'm supposed to be doing 2 minute sprints. So I really can't tell within all of that where my overall endurance fitness is at.

I haven't done anything over about an hour until a tempo ride I did earlier this week. I really felt like I fizzled out once I passed the hour marker, but I can't tell whether this was because I had been doing some heavy duty Crossfit leg work earlier or because my endurance past an hour is no longer what it used to be. It's hard to say what I'll feel like once I start the pre-race taper and let my muscles fully recover from everything I've been throwing at them.

On the plus side, I feel like I've really adjusted to the Crossfit side of things well and have been feeling strong there in most of my workouts. I'm "making the board" pretty regularly (scoring in the top 5 women at our gym, which is who goes up on the board for each workout), and in workouts as diverse as the 2,000 meter row (1st on the board at 8:12 - our coach took that cute photo above of one of the little ones watching me go at it) or the "Crossfit Total" which is all heavy lifting (total of your Deadlift, Back Squat, and Shoulder Press, mine was 3rd on the board at 410). So I can see myself improving at a broad variety of exercises, many of which I had never done before a few months ago. Today I even got two full body weight pullups in a row! I couldn't even do half of one when I started, couldn't even budge myself toward the bar. For that alone I am super excited!!!

On the "dunno" side, I have no idea yet how effective the Crossfit Endurance thing is going to be for me. I will be very nervous and very much interested to see how this Oly race will go for me. Nervous because normally I know exactly where I'm at training-wise when I toe the starting line, and this time it's a total crapshoot. I could feel totally strong and just bust the course wide open, or I could just totally choke from lack of long-distance endurance training. Once again, stay tuned....

Discouraged

So yesterday's run was supposed to be a 10k time trial. I did my warmups and planned on doing 6 laps + 200m around the 1 mile bark loop trail. Starting off, I took it a little easy at an 8:45 pace, which felt okay. My 2nd loop was about an 8:50, but the 3rd was a 9:07. After that, my legs had nothing left in them at all. Last 3 miles were 9:20, 9:43, and 9:58. Total: 55:37 or a 9:16 average, but it felt like HELL. Just a bit over a month ago, I cheerfully ran an "easy slow" 9 miles at a 9:22 pace and felt great. My last 10k in an Oly triathlon was 50:29 (8:24 pace), and that's after over an hour of biking and some swimming thrown in, not just a running time trial. WTH??

So I'm left wondering what the heck is wrong. I slept well, ate well, I feel healthy and rested. Why is my endurance shot to hell? I'm in my 5th week of the Crossfit Endurance plan, and I was hoping that I would at least be on par with what I was doing beforehand.

I've got a couple of theories going, but only time will tell which is right:

1) It was a fluke, we all have bad days and heaven knows, I've had bad workouts before

2) My body is still adjusting to the much higher intensity of the Crossfit Endurance workouts. Given another month or two, I will have adapted better and will be way faster

3) Intense workouts are great, but my body is really built for endurance, it's what it does best. So I'm short-circuting my natural abilities by focusing on faster work, and that's why I'm now slower.

4) All this short fast stuff has just shot my endurance to hell and my Oly triathlon in August is going to be a death slog of epic proportions.

Needless to say, I'm hopeful that it's #1 or #2. I've committed to this CFE plan until my Oly triathlon on August 23. If I'm wrong, that means I've only got about 3 weeks afterward to try to regain some endurance before my half-Iron in September. It's a gamble. Stay tuned and we'll see how it turns out...

Committing To A New Plan

So those of you intrepid readers who actually attempt to follow my meandering thoughts here probably fall into one of two categories. One who are already experiencing, or who are interested in the concept of the new workout experience in my life that is Crossfit. And the others, perhaps dedicated triathletes or other endurance athletes who really could care less to hear about lifting big hunks of iron or throwing medicine balls at walls.

If you're in the second group, you can tune me out about now, because I'm about to throw even more of my training eggs into the Crossfit basket. I'm embarking on full-scale Crossfit Endurance training, replacing any of my LSD (no, even though I live in the hippy holdout capitol of the universe, that doesn't refer to a mind-altering drug, it's Long Slow Distance training) with much more focused, targeted, shorter, more intense triathlon workouts. The reasoning behind this? As the Crossfit Endurance (CFE) website claims:

Studies demonstrate that the adaptations caused by anaerobic training are similar to high volume endurance training, however, this adaptation comes at much lower training volumes

As a very busy homeschooling mom, I'm extremely intrigued by the concept of training for endurance and ultra-endurance events on a much lower time commitment in terms of training hours. I'm willing to up the intensity of the hours I put in if it means more time with the family. But does it work? That's the big question of course. So since I have a good long-standing baseline of my triathlon times in various distances, I'm giving it a go for this summer's Olympic distance triathlon. With several months of CFE training under my belt, as well as my regular Crossfit workouts, I should be able to tell whether I'm: A) At par with my regular performance, B) Blowing my regular performance expectations away on a shortened schedule or C) Whether there really is no substitute for putting in the miles.

Based on the results of my Olympic triathlon, I'll decide whether to add back in some distance work for my September Half-Ironman.

So far I am on Week One of the total commitment to the CFE schedule. So instead of my usual Sunday Long Run (I'm sure you're all familiar with that one), I headed to the marked mile loop to do short time trials at high intensity. I have to say, the feeling afterwards with only 40 minutes of running was similar to last week's 10 miler, so maybe there's something in it after all.

Stay Tuned as the Experiment Continues.....