Countdown 11 days...

Ok, so I haven't posted since last week. Lots has happened since then, kind of.

On the training front last week was a low week of training. Only 4.5 hours. I did a long run and a speed bike session and a run speed work session.

There was a number of reasons I didn't do more training. Fasten your seat belt for them all.

The first was I'm sore. Really sore. I really don't even know why I'm sore. It's not just muscle soreness it's joint soreness. It's like walking down the stairs or period I'm in a shuffle. My Achilles is also tight. My sessions this past week although not a lot of hours were intense. I figured I needed to give my body a break, at least until the weekend. Let the muscles recharge.

The second is I'm sick, I have this hacking cough. Alice has it too. I just can't shake it. We caught it from Alyssa and it's just not going away. I think I'm on week two.

The Third reason I didn't train on the weekend was it rained all weekend. I'm now made out of sugar and figured I'm not going to go out and train in the rain and do a long bike or run. Those days are long gone for me. I'm staying in the house.

Sadly the fourth reason is I fell of the wagon. Yes, I can't believe it. I was doing so well. On Saturday night we went to Yuk Yuks and I had a beer that turned into more than I should have.

I'd like to say it was fun. It wasn't. I didn't do anything stupid. Thank God. Why it was stupid was the way I felt the next day. I was a train wreck. My head and body was hurting. My body needed sleep and recovery it was so bad. It was like getting hit by that train in the wreck.

I know I swore of drinking beer and I'm not undeterred. In fact I think this is just what the doctor ordered. It reminds me of when I quit smoking cigarettes as a late teenager. I quit for a while. Then had one and it tasted so bad that second time after that I was just so turned off I never went back.

The following morning I was just in amazement based on how I felt that I even considered it let alone did it. Absolutely nothing good came of it. My body was hurting. I was dehydrated. I was now unmotivated, I couldn't train if I wanted to (good thing it was raining, I wouldn't have trained regardless), it seemed I gained back all the weight I worked so hard to lose, it overly shocked my body and of course the next day sore head and anxiety is tough to handle.

It was so bad that I sat down and wrote two lists. The first list was all the negative effects. It was long. Much longer than I wrote in the paragraph above. The second list was all the good things, it was incredibly short.

As much as I want to beat myself up I didn't. There would be no good from it. I just hung on to the post beer ride knowing it will be back to normal in 2 to 3 days. A main concern was getting rid of my dehydration and getting homeostasis again. I don't want injury.

The fourth reason I think I do this stuff, and I could be wrong. Is I put myself in these crazy situations that make it even harder and more epic to finish. There is an element of self-sabotage included in that.  I'm one of those people that won't text on a highway until I come up beside a semi-truck, then unconsciously I pull out my phone to text or check my Facebook or Twitter. I guess it's the added adventure and thrill.

And the final reason is my health. It can't be good for the inside of your body, your organs to be pushed from 0 to 100 miles an hour of processing toxins.

Good news is I'm back on track. Monday I didn't train, I got caught up with some work, I had to drive to Toronto to pick up Reid's car, which ate up over 2 hours of my day, and we had friends, Lindy and Reuben coming over for dinner. I lost the window to train, and frankly I was still on the tale end of my beer body detox. They did make me feel good when I opened the door to welcome them, Lindy said "you don't look fat".

I know I've said it before but this time I'm done with beer. Time will tell. I just feel differently.

Yesterday I got back to my training. With only 12 days left this is really the final week for me to train. The reality is I'm ready to finish. I don't want to say finishing won't be a problem because even if you are in superb shape finishing is a problem. I just know I have from these past 8 weeks of training built up a base that is suitable to finish and mentally I'm always ready to finish. My only concern is to minimize the hurt factor and this is really my last week to try and do that.

The reality is two weeks or less before an Ironman you are really not going to increase your fitness. If you do it's a minor minor benefit and probably in my case would be appropriate. When you are a lean mean fighting machine that has been training between 12 - 20 weeks before there is absolutely no gain in fitness and the thing you have to be most careful about is not tapering and getting an injury.

I do know my body and it doesn't need much of a taper. When I qualified for Kona only 3 days before the race I did a 3 hour ride and was training hard right up to that time. Mind you I did the same thing for Kona and it trashed my legs for Kona, even thought it was a respectable time in the 11 hour mark, I could have done better without that ride before.

So yesterday I pulled off near 5.5 hours of training. I did a 4 hour plus ride and an hour plus run in 33 C heat. Which reminds me I need to change my wheels, from my training wheels to my tubular racing wheels. I need to get in at least a few more rides to make sure they settle and and if there is any problems they are identified before the Ironman.

The run I did later in the evening. The ride I was near a bit of a bonk state afterwards. Residual effects from the beer. The run I came home "stinky" once again, it too was the last purge of toxins from the beer. That's also one of the negative effects from the beer, you know you are going to stink afterwards. This time I took a shower right after.

I did enjoy the run. No more speed work. I just did it an an easy pace with a 143 heart rate or less. It would have been even less normally but after beer it shoots up. Opps, another residual negative effect.

Diet wise I'm back on track. The week following I started going to the local yogurt shop almost daily and was falling off the eating track with some chocolate bars. My body was craving and the mind was week. Again, it's that living on the edge and making things a little tougher.

Good news is since Saturday it's like a reset button and that's the weird part and perhaps my unconscious. Doing something crazy like that, going overboard, resets my mind to be back to more determined.

I did weight myself this morning and I'm sure a bit of it is water weight loss from last nights run but I'm now down to 197.0 lbs. That near a 9.4 lb weight lost from my high about 6 weeks ago. That felt pretty good to see that especially with my body back to looking soft around the love handles after Saturday night.

By the way, Yuk Yuks sucked. I often don't have a lot to say good about Winnipeg where I grew up and moved from 10 years ago. In this case I do, they have awesome comedians come to down. Down right funny. In Ontario, and that includes Toronto, I've yet to have as much fun or laughs as Winnipeg. Rumours comedy club in Winnipeg is the funniest period. Now that I think about it even other Cities don't have as funny comedians. We did Myrtle beach comedy a few years back and it was better than Toronto but still sucked.

So here I am I have up until Sunday to get ready. I want to put in some mileage and get a little sore and then give myself the final 6 days to do light work. This week I also need to get into the pool, just to get the muscles somewhat ready. Not that the training for swimming matters. Speed is all about technique in swimming and I've never been able to master that. I don't really care even without much or any swim training I can finish it. From top to bottom time it would only be about 15 minutes difference. Not a big difference in the scheme of a 11 - 13 hour day. Hopefully for me it will be a 12 hour and something day.

I just want to finish in at least pain and suffering as possible, at least be able to run the first 13 miles of the run and then it really means you'll finish, even if you have to walk. To me the Ironman doesn't really start until the 13 mile point of the run. Unless you have to walk before that point, then the Ironman starts earlier.

Oh, I almost forgot, even though I bailed on some training (rain) I have been spending a great deal of time working and researching preparing to launch Salmon Social and promote hard in August and September. There is a big part of me that is comping at the bit to get back to my normal all out work pace.

Mod Bike - 4:13:13 / 113 km
Run - 1:09:53 / 11.08 km