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| New Route, went by this Scouts Canada Camp.... |
We'll today was my SIU Baby, SIU.
First off I woke up sick. I tried to go to be earlier and get a good night sleep and initially I thought I shook the cough. Nope. About 30 minutes after being awake I was hacking and even spit one big, nice, brown coloured loogie into the toilet.
I then slithered down the stairs. My legs are so sore. I'm perplexed? I didn't expect the soreness. It's not normal based on the hours and intensity I've been putting in.
It's getting to close to race day and everyday is critical to do the proper training. There is no wiggle room to miss or shorten a training session.
I will say after yesterdays awesomely fast run, by today's standards, I was feeling pretty good about training today. I was thinking I just came off a great running speed work session and earlier this week a good speed bike session, so maybe I've turned the corner and my old speed is going to pick up.
The plan was for a 6 hour 45 minute bike ride. I was up earlier and then saw that our development team uploaded a new build of the Salmon Social app and needed me to check it. With time being of the essence I postponed my ride and put it through the paces. That took about 3 hours and it was past 1 pm and I had a long ride to do. My morning resolve to get it done was now waning.
Undeterred I filled my water bottles, pumped the tires on my bike and headed out for a long ride. In hindsight I was glad I spent the time reviewing the app and getting back to the team. What takes me so long is I record my findings, then I edit them in iMovie, then upload to You Tube unlisted and then record the comments with the You Tube links in the data base. I do it because otherwise the guys are clear on my written instructions. I call it my beautiful mind.
Instead of listening to music I put on the Seth Godin podcast. If your in business or marketing and haven't heard of Seth Godin you are living under a rock. You probably haven't heard of Oprah or Tony Robbin's either. Seth's experience and wisdom is amazing. I've listened to a couple of his books, the Purple Cow and Dip. I don't say this lightly, for what he does he's definitely a god among men.
I love listening to Seth. He has great lessons wrapped around great stories. It's as entertaining as it is learning. He's a very unique person in that he's got an extensive business background, started many non-tech and tech businesses, and is a prolific writer. Often his name is used along side Malcom Gladwell. The interesting part is Seth is brings his wisdom from real world and personal lessons. Yet if you didn't know this you would just think he was a great writer.
It was a nice warm sunny day and I felt pretty good. In the beginning I was even faster than normal. It was good to see and I was thinking maybe I turned the corner. That ended about 90 minutes into the ride.
It was a moment of truth.
The big devil and little devil were having a discussion in my head. There is no Angel in there when it comes to Ironman training.
It was so bad that the little devil wanted me to give up and not only give up but have Alice come and pick me up. It was telling me this is crazy. You should have retired from Ironman's after the last one. Why did you sign up to raise money for Doctors without Borders? Why don't you just phone a friend and have Alice pick you up? You have at least another 5 hours to go and you are going to suffer, why? Why not just not train and show up to suffer at Ironman Boulder and not worry about doing all these long rides and suffering as well?
The hamster was on the wheel in my head.
So then the Big Devil gave his argument. SIU Baby!!!
It was short and sweet and to the point. He knows, like me that the real Ironman is in the training. The race is just the victory lap. It's moment's like this that separate the men from the boys.
So I just kept pedalling and then tried to focus on the podcasts I was listening to and forget about the pain and don't let the little devil talk.
My riding is so slow. Strange part is that if I didn't have a speedometer I wouldn't know I was going slow. I still putting in the same amount of effort I did when I was in the best shape of my life. Looking at the speedometer I say two things to myself, first is "man am I slow" and the other is "man was I fast!!!"
To try and make the ride a little bit more enjoyable I turned off about 3 hours in and took a different route. Then a quick stop at a Hasty Mart and had a slushy. I wanted a Slurpee but it was one of those marts that was low end. Stopping was step one in trying to enjoy the rest of the ride as much as possible and to make it epic. Seeing new sights makes it more enjoyable in that you don't know what's coming up next. I ended up going through the town of Rockford. Right out of a Rockwell Painting.
At around hour 4 I turned on to a new road and stopped my bike. My head was hanging low. I was tired, my legs were sore and the road I turned down was nothing but up and down hills. More up than down. I took a deep breath, SIU'd and started riding again.
This happened around 4.5 hours as well. Stopped. Big breath in, big breath out and back on the bike.
I had my lunch break at 5 hours 10 minutes at a gas station with store. It was some chocolate milk, gatorade and half a bran muffin. I stopped for about 15 minutes. When I got back on the bike I was seized up a bit but with some more clarity from the sugar rush.
By this point I exhausted all my Seth Godin Podcasts and started up Tim Ferris Podcasts. Tim is the guy who wrote the 4-hour work week and others. He has an amazing podcast. What makes it interesting is he has awesomely interestingly guests and lets them talk. Many of the people are Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or leaders. Others have started some cool businesses and have interesting life stories like the guy who started the Spartan Race.
As a side bar, this was the first time I head about this race and they've had 1 million people participate. The guy who started it has a great and very interesting story. Kind of a kindred spirit to myself as he too is an endurance athlete and has done some pretty crazy long running and adventure racing. A guy with issues for sure. No one, myself included, does endurance events because you are normal. There is something that drives you.
The podcast was so interesting that when I got home there was about 5 minutes left and I kept listening until it was finished. Then I asked Alyssa if she's ever heard of Spartan racing and she said yes in such a way that I'm a moron if I'd never heard of it. There you go, I learned something new today, there is a new obstacle type race series call spartan. The moron thing I new about already so that wasn't the learning experience.
I decided not to do a brick run after todays run. I ran yesterday and I'm running long tomorrow. Running three days in a row can be dangerous. It increases your chance for injury. In not doing the brick run I was fully supported by the Big Devil. The little devil was having a shower and getting ready to tempt me with eating non healthy foods and have me constantly snack all night so he wasn't part of that discussion.
First thing I did when I got home was log my training, check email and facebook comments. Then it was the making of a nice big protein shake with fresh banana, pineapple and strawberries. It's so tasty and filling. Then shower and shave time.
This two day beards is killing me. Something has snapped in my head in the past couple weeks and I feel so lousy if I have two day or more stubble on my face. I feel like a bum. The kids have always said I look like a bum with the stubble. I used to like it and think it was cool. Now it annoys me. I was so excited to have a show and shave.
Before showering I asked Alice if she wanted to go to a movie tonight. She would have but it was now 9 pm and most of them didn't start until 10:30 pm and that would be a late night. She figured we could just stay home and watch a movie. I'm totally cool with that. I was just trying to bring some normalcy into my Ironman training.
I know so many Ironman that wouldn't even have asked their spouses if they want to go out. I know others that would have trained early in the morning so they could finish by 2 pm and still have a lot of time to spend with spouse and family. I'm no saint. I'm in the middle of the Ironman continuum. At least today I am.
So the take aways of todays training.
- I SIU'd it up Baby!!!
- I can't under state how I SIU'd it up Baby!!!
- I multi tasked and got 6 hours and 45 minutes of good, relevant learning that was entertaining. Essentially today went from 24 hours long to 30 hours and 45 minutes.
- I increased my fitness, albeit it slow.
- I felt like I accomplished something.
- I turned a regular day into an epic day. It was like being a kid on a Saturday afternoon neighbourhood adventure.
- I'm one closer long ride to not having to do anymore long rides.
- I'm zen.
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| Barely got a smile out of bike. I'm tired. But I SIU'd BABY!!! |
If I would have let the little devil have it's way I'd be having all sorts of negative thoughts and self-talk right now. The ride beat me up in less time than my mind would have if I decided to bail.
Now I can relish in my win for the next 12 hours and then it's a clean slate and I will then have to motivate myself and push myself to do a long run.
6:45:14 / 177 km (110 miles)
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