quandry

I got maybe 2 hours sleep last night and then another (maybe 1.5 to 2). I had 40 km bike and 13 min run planned for today. I'm thinking of blowing off the ride and moving my 39 min Friday run to today and doing today's run tomorrow, or I could take the day off. Looking over my calendar my last day off was 2/5 (I only ran 10 min).

Should I do Friday's run today, do today's run and skip bike, HTFU and do both run and bike or take a full day off? (last full day off was Jan 24th - when I was recovering from my hospital stint)...

FEN and me inscribi!

I'm not sure why all the neonatologists use that abbreviation for Feeding and Nutrition, but I hear it all the time. Some use it for Feeding, Electrolytes and Nutrition and that makes perfect sense and it is a huge challenge for me. I figure out finally I need to eat before a bike ride. For some reason I don't bonk, but I have little to nothing left in the tank on the backside (return) of each bike if I don't eat first (and we always ride first thing in the am) so I started experimenting. I found 1/2 a scoop of Cytomax does nothing. I found eating right before exercise is a bad idea. I did, however, find that a bowl of oatmeal (or cereal) 1-2 hours before a ride gives me energy (or at least, I'm not STARVING and dead) on the backside of rides. Which makes the bricked run all the better. I tried yesterday eating too close to the bike and only puked a little bit but was nauseous the whole time. So now I just have to get the electrolytes dialed in. All our water is dead here (purificada) so when we sweat a lot we have to take in some kind of suero to replenish the electrolyte deficiency. Jamie uses Cytomax but my stomach can only handle 1/2 scoop per bottle of that stuff and that is not enough. I am going to experiment with Electrolit (along the idea of pedialyte) and see how that goes.

I FINALLY got signed up for the triatlon! So now I can officially worry. It is only a sprint (750m, 20k, 5k) so it should be a blip on the radar but the weather has been so awful this last week I've only been in the water twice. And I have no idea WHAT to wear. I'd love to just change clothes for each event (swimsuit, bibs and jersey, running shorts) but I think I'd get laughed at for that and the event is so short (just over an hour, I'd guess) it really would be laughable to do all those clothing changes. But I'm horrified at the spectacle of my ass jiggling all over in spandex on the run. Sigh. Yes, these are the important things. :) I'm thinking of using the top in this picture but (and thus the reason for the blurred pic) is that headlights seem to be an issue with this one and I wonder about chafing during the swim.

Today should be medium run and swim day but the sea is still a whirlpool and wind is super high (so you actually get a "current" both ways - wind pushes top water one way and current takes you the other) so I have my doubts. Also Jamie insists I should be taking 1 day completely off everything (and I have my doubts about that also) but he's a cyclist so that probably applies to cycling but I'm not sure about triatlon.

kilometers under the bridge

That was a long week of riding for me, and I feel like such a poser for feeling like that. I see other workouts/weeks that are much harder than mine but all I can do is to continue to plug along. I don't know what happened to swimming this week - Jamie talked me into an extra day of riding and by the 4th day (in a row) my legs were pretty dead but I could also feel added strength that had not been there before - like stressing them with hard days (I had 2 days were I PR'd the turnaround each day) only made them stronger. Weird. I feel like I *should* make up my swim workouts this week but during my run this morning I decided to just do my normal 3 and see if there is time on the weekend for a 4th. So I'm "behind." Who really is keeping count? We're into our windy season too which makes the cycling a challenge. Pic below is from the "long" ride turnaround (59 km RT) and shows the wind (which is a headwind on the returns). Jamie had a challenging week with 2 flats and a broken seat rail.

I had been a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to FINISH the sprint coming up (and finally, last week they got inscripciones so I just need to pick one up now) but my running legs made an appearance last week and I started negative splitting runs again. Nice to find those guys again. I missed them. I've been keeping it super slow - last week was 12-24-36 and this week will be 13-26-39 but the legs are feeling much stronger and I think I'm probably picking up the pace. Running with a purpose instead of just plopping along.

It has been alternately cool and dry (desert dry - hovering between 40-65% humdidity - INSANELY dry) and we're finally getting some warm weather. We had some days where I had for it to warm up to exercise and a couple days I was sleeveless. Must be spring. Mozzies are coming back and the DDT truck has already made an appearance.

Hoping to bring swimming back this week (the water is UGLY though) and keep the cycling strong and keep the running strong. I've also been rolling my legs once a week in the hopes of preventing another tear.

Stats:
Swim: 2487 m
Bike: 212 km, 7 hr 18 min
Run: 2 hr 12 min.

the earth is flat!

because for about a week I fell off the end of it! I think I've exhausted my picture options and can't think of different ones to take so I had no reason to post. My swim partner (my 14yo) had been sick earlier and missed a few swims, but he did go out on one very rough sea day. We've had (actually typical for this time of year) rough seas far too often that make for really squirrley days. First and foremost in my mind is the recent shark attack and when the seas change from crystal clear (normal) to anything non-crystal clear (what I would call murky but the tourists claim is clear) I get super squirrley.

We had a ray on one swim that really drove my son nuts. He HATES those rays. I've seen super giant eagle rays and a baby ray, but this was just a normal either manta or sting ray and we saw him on 3 or 4 laps. He was just swimming (flying) around and I'd always see the long tail first. These days with these old eyes, I see lots of "tails" that turn out to be simply floaters in my eyes. Yesterday we had a baracudda follow us one lap to the reef (6th of 7) and my son was REALLY freaked at the cudda. I've seen them a number of times before but this one was swimming with his mouth closed and didn't bother me that much. I hate it when they just hang out in the water with their mouths wide open, showing off all those terrible teeth. I make a HUGE detour (even though they supposedly don't bite) and always make sure I'm not wearing anything that sparkles.

So yesterday when we got a calm day in the water (the photo above is from my morning run and it was a little more choppy when we swam but nothing like the huge waves and chop we'd endured the past week) it was absolutely lovely. My shoulder has been bothering me the more mileage I add and I finally figured out it must be an AC separation. However, since it happened decades ago I don't have much hope of 'fixing' it so I guess I just keep the swim mileage down as much as possible while continuing to train.

We never made it to the Operacion Periferico - last weekend Jamie's back was too hurt for the 5 hour drive to Merida and this weekend just doesn't work so it is looking like that will be a bust. I'm also not going to register for the 5K swim on the 26th, but have been patiently waiting for the inscripciones for the triatlon on the 13 of March to arrive. Even though it has been open to inscripciones since beginning March, they just don't have the paperwork here yet. All pictures are from my run route. It is always a crapshoot if the shot will work or not so I just take 3721 pictures and hope for the best.

I've also had my first week where I wasn't chomping at the bit to go out. I'm not sure what I would have done yesterday if my son hadn't come down to drag me away from work and hit the water. I just wasn't looking forward to it. Too many injuries - shoulder for swim and 2 weeks into my BarryP plan I'm waiting for the ax to drop on my calf. I've stopped expecting I will be injury free for the run, but keep hoping.

So, this week by numbers (I'll add in today's workout even though it is early):
Swim 8840 yd.
Bike 180 km 6.5ish hours
Run 107 minutes.

I finally looked at training plans and I think I'm going to loosely combine Trifuel and BT HIM plans and then see what happens after June's HIM.

total bummer, dude

So the ice storm (or whatever) that hit somewhere up north apparently pretty much closed down all consultations at the hospital I work for so Tuesday, Wed and early Thursday were such busts in work volume that I added some more workouts. I did a full triatlon on Wednesday and it really hammered home the realization that maybe I bit off a LOT more than I can chew. I have to keep reminding myself I'm no longer in my 20s or 30s (or even 40s) and can't expect my body to do now what it did then. Then I smack myself upside the haid and tell my self to stuff it.

We were supposed to head to Merida this weekend for Operacion Periferico (80km bike) but Jamie's back seized up last night and he can't even tolerate the 5 hour drive there. Jesse is off school on Monday (signing of the constitution today so holiday is bumped to Monday) and it would have been a great long weekend. Plus there is some athletic event to be watched via satellite (we don't have here) in the middle of North America or something - I'd have to ask the Wisconsin-born husband exactly what it is. :)

I'm really surprised that I'm bummed about missing etapa dos of the ride (they'll have stages 3, 4 and 5 on the weekends to come) but I didn't want to go by myself as I was looking forward to a family weekend and I need a driver so I can work on the drive home. So I'm hoping for next weekend.

January wrap up

I'm very slowly finding local events and adding them to the sidebar and wishing there was a central location for all this. I just today found a swimming event that apparently has been open for a while and the price has jumped $50 after 1-31. Swimming season apparently runs Oct to something here. I've been out of swimming so long I don't even know what it used to be when I was a swimmer in the US. I'm also having a really hard time afiliating myself. FMTRI has a website for afiliacion but it isn't working. The local QRoo contact says it should be working yesterday. The national site doesn't work at all. I asked them for bank info (it is very common here to make a purchase by going to the bank and depositing the price of the item in the holder's account and then sending them the transcription info) and am still waiting. I think I'm going to have to try loading the site on my laptop (and XP versus W7) and see if that does the trick. Meanwhile I'm still pondering the 5K on 2-26 as the incripcion price is $450 now, $100 to FMN as I'm not affiliated (but an aguas abiertas or masters afiliacion would cost $300 anyway) and that is a far cry from the usual under $100 I am used to for 10K runs. Running is definitely cheaper here than swim or tri. Course, Jamie and I are planning an 80km ride this weekend in Merida and that is only $40 so I suppose both bike and run are cheap here. I have to be honest that I'm a little skeered of the bike ride - it is a 5-stage event and I'm worried they'll all be fast pro boys and I'll get left in the dust for 2 hours.

I'm a mess of nerves lately - can't inscribirme, worried about that ride this weekend and most recently we had a shark attack 80km north (Cancun). SO not looking forward to today's swim. Pretty much all we have here are bulls and they are territorial and I'm really hoping they AREN'T temped to head into our bay (though they tend to like shallow water). Now I'm really obsessing.

So, January by the numbers...
Swim 16,380
Bike 231.23
Run 2 hr 45 min
Super low numbers but I do still have that hospital card...
lastly yesterday reached 77.5kg (from 80kg roid weight)

Heading out for my run and since it is only 29C I just can't justify sleeveless. Since all the nortes the warmer weather feels so much warmer than it really is. Should hit 33C today though.

Can someone do me a favor and see if you can get this to load? I cannot select "selecciones" there is nothing to select (and thus I cannot afiliate myself)
FMITRI afiliacion