doing a good job of kicking my own ass

Apparently I need to learn lessons more than once.  Two weeks ago, I had a big back-to-back training weekend and on Sunday, Palmer Lake kicked my ass.  Most likely due to crappy recovery practices and crappy nutrition during the day prior.

Last weekend was rockstar awesome, probably due to good recovery practices and good nutrition.

This weekend was another big back-to-back weekend:
Friday - Masters swim in the AM, 1 hr fartlek interval run in the PM
Saturday - 50 miles on the bike
Sunday - brick: 2.5 hrs bike / 1 hr run

This week was my recovery week.  "Week" meaning 4 whole days.  The swim workout Friday morning was great.  The run on Friday evening started iffy.  Recovery weeks are funny.   My body was protesting the run because it hadn't run hard in a whole 5 days.  An eternity!  But once I warmed up, I actually did really great.  I had 10 x 2 min speed intervals with 1 min rest.  The first 5 were at my 10k pace, the second 5 were at my 5k pace.  And the kicker?  The last 5 were mildly uphill, which made keeping the 5k pace even more fun.  To my suprise, I did really great and ran my fastest 1 hr split this year.  Sweet!

Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be a Brick on Saturday and a long bike on Sunday.  But my friend wanted to ride in Boulder on Saturday, so I swapped them around.  No harm, right?

Saturday was a busy day.  I was up riding around Boulder having a great time while Will was at my mom's doing a whole long list of chores.  And we had my tri club's season kick off party that night, starting at 5.  I picked Kelly up at 9 AM, thinking that we'd get up to Boulder Reservior by 10 and on our bikes no later than 10:15.  One bathroom break and then a stop on US-36 to adjust my bike rack, which had come loose at 65 mph (scary!), and it was 10:30 before we started riding.  It was a fantastic day.  Sunny, warm, and not windy!

downright horrible conditions along 75th

Added bonus / interest feature - the Haystack time trial was also going on.... on the same road we were riding on.  So I guess is simulated race-day conditions with these huge guys on their disc wheels and aero helmets zipping past us.  We were riding the Boulder 70.3 course, so my friend could become very familiar with it and get nice and comfy before her first 70.3 in August.  The first loop felt ok but not great.  Maybe I was holding back because I couldn't remember exactly how "bad" the hills were (they weren't) or maybe I wasn't warmed up yet.  I do know that the second loop was amazing and I felt good.

riding in Colorado really sucks

This ride was great.  I definitely felt like I could knock out a 13.1 mile run.  We rode 53 miles in what was probably 4 hours. (I did have to stop and wait a lot for Kelly, which is totally fine.  Today was more about getting her comfortable on the course.  And its a bit of pay it forward since I've had countless people wait on my slow self in the past... on this course even!)  This was Kelly's longest ride EVER and the idea of running a half marathon after doing this ride is well, terrifying.  I told her that she's got until August and by then, it will only be slightly scary.

It was now 3:15 and I had to be showered and party-ready by 4:45.  And drive back from Boulder to my house.  Maybe someday, I will actually get to stalk the pro triathletes in Boulder.  But today was not that day.

I managed to get home at 4:20.  I had to leave no later than 4:50.  Guess what that meant?  No icebath!  And I knew I was going to pay for it.  (although, I did plan enough ahead and had my recovery drink waiting for me in the truck for the drive home).  I begged Will to rinse out my bike bottle while I showered.  When I got out of the shower, Will alerted me of a bunny situation:

this is one our basement window wells.  Also known as the Bunny Pit or Sarlac Pit

We discovered 3 melted dead bunnies in one window well last July and well, it was disgusting.  An interesting science project, but still disgusting.  We put chicken wire over that well and so far so good.  Guess we have 2 more windows to wire over.  Will wanted to somehow rescue them from above, but I was being lazy (time-crunched) and we opened up each window, cornered the bunny with a box, and took them outside.  Suprisingly, they jumped right in the box.

this is a 12-pack beer box.  the other bunny was even smaller

This made me late, but OF COURSE WE HAD TO SAVE THE BABY BUNNIES!  Poor little things.  As a thank you, they're probably out eating my tulips right now.

Then we went to my tri club's kick-off meeting at Lone Tree Brewing Company.  These guys were SO nice to us.  We bought 2 pony kegs and drained them in the first hour or so... or at least one keg was drained EARLY.  The brewery was so worried about us running out of beer that they gave away free samples of other beers until we got our act together and bought a 3rd keg.  We also had those giant subway sandwiches.  I know I said I'm not eating grains and bread and whatnot, but the only solid food I had all day was an apple and almond butter for breakfast and a few fruit snacks.  These sandwiches were the best sandwiches ever to exist in the history of sandwiches.  Or at least they were that night.  I ended up eating poorly, drinking too many beers.  Not enough to get drunk, but enough to make me sleep something awful.

And then I had to get up at 6 AM to coach swim practice and do a medium brick on Sunday.  Can you already see the fail?  I could too, but I was going to give it a go.

Swim practice was fine.  I stopped by Starbucks for a huge latte and things were ok-ish.  Then at 8:45 it was time to ride my bike up the lovely hills by my house.  Within the first 10 minutes, I knew it would be a long day.  My legs were definitely unhappy.  Somehow the ride wasn't entirely awful - I climbed the hills ok, maybe a bit better than last time.  I should have been out 2.5 hours but knowing that I also had to run after, I cut it short to 2 hrs 10 minutes.  I did ride up all the "quality" hills, so I didn't feel too guilty.

Then I started the run portion of my brick.  My legs were flying but my heart just wasn't in it.  I resolved to run out 1.5 miles then turn around and evaluate.  When I got to the rec center, I could have ran further but I decided to call it a day.  Just because your legs can go farther, doesn't mean that you should go farther.  I will have many more opportunities to do so.  And maybe I'll actually take proper care of myself when I do it.....