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!   

102-mile Bike Ride Nutrition Review

Saturday night Daniel and I went to The Rack. I knew they had sushi so I agreed to go. I ended up eating 6 sushi rolls, edamame, 2 hot wings, and a few cheesy nachos with chicken. I know hot wings and cheesy nachos are not a good idea. I'm a sucker for finger foods and I love spicy foods. I was only going to have one hot wing to try them, but they were so good I had another. Thankfully the sushi came out so I could munch on something else. I also drank about 3 glasses of water.

This is what I had Sunday:

4:30 AM - 2 cups of Multigrain Cheerios with 1 cup of Silk Pure Almond Unsweetened Vanilla almond milk. I normally eat the Peanut Butter Cheerios, but I was was trying to be a little healthier and go with the less sugary stuff. What can I say? I've gone peanut butter and I'm not going back!

6:00 AM - just before taking off on the bike - 2 Powerbar Oatmeal Raisin Bites. These things are so good. I know you can easily make them yourself, but I am not a baker. I probably need as much training cooking and baking as I do for the Ironman triathlon. I can do, it just takes me forever.

6:00 AM – 11:30 AM (during the ride) – I tried to take a sip of my Infinit concoction (16 oz. of gatorade, 2 scoops of Infinit nutrition powder, and 1 scoop of BSN Amino-X) every 30 min.  I also took a sip of water every mile.  I went through 84 oz of water in the 5 hrs and 15 min I was on my bike.   

• :45 into the ride I had half a Bonk Breaker Almond Butter & Honey
• 1:30 I ate the other half
• 2:15 into the ride I ate a whole Honey Stinger Waffle Strawberry
• 3:00 I ate half of a Bonk Breaker Peanut Butter & Jelly
• 3:45 ate the other half
• 4:30 ate a Honey Stinger Waffle Vanilla

I didn’t have any stomach issues with any of the above.  A major plus.  I did have a little bit of an issue with the Almond Butter & Honey Bonk Breaker.  It was too dry to get down easily.  The PB & J Bonk Breaker was awesome.  It tasted delicious and was moist enough to swallow easily but not too gooey to where it stuck to my everything in my mouth.  The Honey Stinger Waffles were the same.  Those were even easier to get down because there wasn’t as much to chew.  The only thing that had any caffeine in it was the Infinit mix.  I don’t know how much caffeine is in the two scoops because it doesn’t say anywhere on the packaging.  I’m assuming it can’t be that much.  I was exhausted at the end of the ride.  I was full, but exhausted.  I bought some MiO energy to add to the mix for the next ride.  This has caffeine in it and will add flavor to the mix so I don’t have to use Gatorade and chance having issues with too much sugar.  I think this will be a win.  I’ll confirm or deny this next week.  I didn’t run after the ride so I couldn’t test the full effects of everything. 

Overall:  I think I took in enough calories (in – 1013; burned – 1,582), but not enough caffeine.  This is the first ride over 20 miles that I have not taken a gel and this is also the first ride that I’ve taken in more than 100 calories every hour.  I felt more tired after this ride than I have any of the others, except for the 100 miler out at hilly San Antonio.  Saturday’s workout was a 13 mile run, .75 mile swim, 20 mile bike, and ended with another 7 mile run.  I know that this had something to do with me being tired as well.  But, the tired I felt was more like I needed to take a nap immediately, like a just-ate-Thanksgiving-dinner need to take a nap feeling.  I didn’t even want to run 2 miles after the bike (when I had originally planned for 8) because I all I could think about was going home and sleeping.  In fact, I only made it about 3/4 of the way home before I started dozing off.  So, next time, I think I’m going to try and take in the same or about 100 less calories, definitely no more, and add the MiO and a couple of gels.