Weekly Recap – Competitive Week #10

Competitive Week # 10 went well.  I skipped one running session, a swim session, and a strength training session.  I skipped running because I could feel my knees starting to get a little tweaked from all the running from the previous week.  I skipped a swim because you know how much I love to swim.  I just wanted the extra sleep .  And, I skipped the strength training because I knew I would be doing a lot of crawling and pulling myself up and over things during the Highlander III Adventure Mud Run. 

But, here’s the recap with the Garmin links:

Tuesday: swim, bike

Wednesday: tempo run, long swim

Thursday: Davis Island bike

Friday: off

Saturday: Highlander III – recap in yesterday’s post and can also be found on the Recap page

Sunday (65% of full distance trial run): swim, bike, brick run

Sunday was a planned trial run of doing close to 3/4 of the full distance triathlon.  For the swim, I put on my wetsuit and swam around the little pool that I have at my place.  It’s really important to get used to wearing a wetsuit before the race.  When I get into the water, I want to make sure that I’m focusing on my breathing because I want to be steady as opposed to I can’t breathe at all.  I’m swimming tomorrow at LA Fitness and will be doing about 20 minutes in my suit.  I don’t want to ruin it with the chlorine…  I made sure to plan out my nutrition as if it were race day as well.  I’ll summarize that below.  The bike was 70 miles (well, 67 and change), and the run was exactly 16 miles.  I stopped 5 times.  The second stop was a about 5 minutes longer than it should have been because I got stopped and was chit-chatting with someone.  The very last stop I didn’t even stop my watch because I wanted it to be a quick stop-and-go.  All I did was re-fill my water bottle with cold water and went.  I was very happy with my overall finish on this trial run.  So, on to nutrition:

Breakfast (about an hour before swimming):

• 1 cup of peanut butter cheerios and 8 oz of So Delicious Unsweetened Almond Milk with Protein – 170 calories
• After swimming – 2 Powerbar Oatmeal Raisin Energy bites, 1/2 bonk breaker – 205 calories
• On the bike – 2 scoops of infinit (200 calories) with 3 squirts of MiO Energy, 1 Clif bar toffee crunch (240 calories), 1/2 Honey Stinger (80 calories) – total calories – 520
• Execution: Sip Infinit mix every 10 minutes.  Every hour on the hour eat instead of drinking Infinit.  Wait 20 minutes after eating before continuing to drink Infinit.  Hour 1 – 1/2 Clif bar, Hour 2 – 1/2 Clif bar, Hour 3 – 1/2 Honey Stinger.  Sip water along the way.
• Transition from bike to run – 1 Clif Shot Espresso – 100 calories, 100 mg of caffeine
• On the run – 4 gels and water 
• Execution:  I was going to have a gel every 3 to 3.5 miles.  But, I was still full from the 1/2 Honey Stinger and Clif Shot.  So, I took the first gel, a Clif shot Strawberry flavor, at mile 5.  This was also my first stop. 
• Stop 2, mile 9.5, Roctane Blueberry Pomegranate
• Stop 4, mile 12.5, 2nd Surge Double Espresso – 100 mg of caffeine + 3 g of protein

Amazingly I only had to pee once and that was during my transition from the bike to the run.  I spent 7 minutes dropping my bike off, using the bathroom and getting my run gear on. 

On an even better note.  I didn’t have any stomach issues after the run.  Normally I have to run to the bathroom immediately after I eat something.  But, felt fine the whole day.  After the run, I took a bath and kept my legs up for a little while to let the blood flow back the other way.  When I got out, I put on my compression pants and calf compression sleeves.  I rewarded myself with a turkey burger from Green Iguana and two Guinness’  .  I felt pretty good today and I am ready to get this week over with to get to the real stuff on Sunday (Augusta HIM) and then focus all my attention on one last century ride and then the highly anticipated tapering period.

Good night!