Sunday, February 19, 2012

Countdown to Ironman, Week 18: Dancing on the Razor's Edge

To some extent, Ironman training is living on the ragged edge. You want to train as much as humanly possible, yet somehow manage to avoid overtraining and injury.Yesterday was a shining example of how not to go about this: Get up, down a ton of calories. Bike to the pool, swim 3500 yards. Focus on pacing for 200 repeats - 16 of them (some broken into smaller chunks, most straight). I'm happy that I kept mine in the 2:30 - 2:35 range, which bodes well for triathlon swim times this year. Bike to karate dojo, train with black belt partner. Bike home. Eat hundreds more calories. Robotics team arrives, we're in the middle of three straight days of work getting ready for the State Tournament. When they leave I hop on my bike on the trainer, knock out 1:20 with 8 sets of 2 minute ALL OUT intervals. Folllow that up with a Brick Run at an 8:23 pace. Cook homemade Chicken Pot Pies for dinner. Eat a whole one. Fall asleep watching old M*A*S*H* re-runs at 8:55 pm.

By my count, that's five hours of exercise for the day, but I woke up without feeling overly sore or tired. I am managing to sleep 7- 9 hours a night (good), eat mostly paleo with lots of fruits and veggies (good) and generally manage stress levels and other performance-wreckers with meditation when needed (good). I've only got three more weeks where the karate black belt confirmation training will overlap the Ironman training and then it's heads-down towards the Ironman all the way.

Here's to dancing on the razor's edge.

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