No idea what’s going on

My swims this week have been the worst swims ever. I was not able to hit any of my send-offs this week. And I am not talking about missing few send-offs at the end because of fatigue. I am talking about not being able to hit the send-offs already in the second interval! Whereas I had no problem to hit those numbers 2 weeks ago. Plus my arms always start to hurt badly after around 1800m, I am unable to hold the elbow high, pull strongly whatsoever, totally losing control over my arms. It was so bad that yesterday I cut the workout short after 2300m because I was just pulling down with the straight arms. It was little better today though. Arms were still hurting but was able to do 3000m. Weird thing is that I do not feel any soreness or fatique after the workout. I do not understand it. I would understand if I was tired or something. But I swam only 9k last week so the arms should be super fresh and ready to hit some nice numbers. Instead, my swimming is worse. I wonder whether it can be in fact due to swimming only 9k last week, but 9k is still pretty good so I should not have lost all my feel for the water or got out of shape. 

I am perplexed!!!

Other than that, everything is going smoothly.

I did a big gear intervals workout on Wed. I was very cautious because such intervals used to trouble my ITB but it felt ok. The only problem is that there are no hills here. Hannover area is even flatter than Michigan! There is only one hill around (there are other hills too but I would a car to be able to get there) and it took me less than 2min to climb it (climb” might be a slight overstatement though), plus the road is quite busy and it starts right on a curve so you basically do not see whether there are any cars approaching from neither direction. Thus not ideal and I am not sure whether I will do it again. I will probably just stick to my 1min falling-off-the-bike-effort intervals on Wednesdays. Unless it rains, than those intervals might be slightly dangerous and I might hit this hill.

I was wearing my new Erdinger biking vest and I loved it. It is totally windproof, which is great. It is little too big because I ordered Large but I can deal with that. And of course, it gives me a look of a freaking fast German pro. (Well, they should have given me something else if they do not want us regular folks to wear their team gear…But I did not wear their shorts and arm warmers with that vest, I do not want to overdo it:))

Finally a good run!

I finally had a running workout that I am satisfied with. Not only I ran on a measured course but I am satisfied with my pace and how it felt.

Ok, it is not track so it is not 100% accurate but I used both gmap-pedometer (or whatever the name is) and Garmin, so it must be close. Few meters plus or minus do not matter, as long as I always use this very same route so I can compare my times.

25min w/up, 10min tempo, 3x1k w/ 3min easy, rest c/d.

This time I actually calculated my tempo pace before hand. It was supposed to be 10sec per mile slower than my 10k pace. I used 42min as my 10k pace, which is 4:12/k, which is 6:43/mile, +10sec is 6:53/mile, which is 4:18/k. Phew. This imperial and metric mixing is making things confusing:)

I did not feel super fresh (must be those bike intervals I did yesterday) but I got into groove after few minutes and finished the tempo with 4:15 pace average. You see, the problem is that I am always worried that I will slow down way too much at the end and therefore I like to give myself a cushion. I did not slow down as you can see. Although it probably felt little harder than it was supposed to feel.

Then I took around 5min rest and off to 1k. Those were great. 3:56, 3:54, 3:53. I tried to remember to keep my stride shorter and engage my core and whatever else needs to be engaged. However it is hard to do when I do intervals. But I am able to make sure I keep a good posture during the easy jobs between. I have to force the stride, otherwise it would be just a slogging with a broken form.

I was able to actually jog the whole 3min easy inbetween! And those intervals did not feel like I was going all out and die at the end. Sweet!

Then had just enough time to gulp down two slices with cheese and hurried to meet my biking buddy for an easy bike ride. 2h45, the last hour in a pissing rain:( Two days in a row riding in rain. Grrr.

Clearly it was not as easy as I would like it to be because I was watching TdF and I fell asleep on a floor, missed km 48.3 to km 10.8, then the commentator got excited about something that Nabali did and he woke me up.

Finished the day with a very easy flop in the pool, could not do anything faster. I am surprised that I did not drown.

Shopping diaries

Not a fan of shopping. But there was no other way. I had to go shopping today morning.

It was quite warm so I was wearing jean shorts. Since I was at PT on Wednesday I have a kinesio tape all over my right hamstring, knee and ITB. The tape is bright pink. And my casual shoes are black and pink (the same pink as the tape!). And I was wearing pink shirt. I always get stares from people (mostly from little kids) when I walk around with that tape on my leg but today not only was I walking around downtown Hannover all taped up but I was wearing outfit that matched with my tape color…. Dork look! 

I bought a new swim goggles yesterday but although they seemed to fit ok when I tried them in store they turned out to be too big when I tried swimming with them last night (which by the way means that now I am 9k behind my weekly swim goal. Lost cause.). So I was forced to buy goggles for kids because it seems to be the only size that fits me. I hope it fits! Now I have goggles that have little baby dolphins painted on them.

And while I was there…they had running shoes on sale. Nike racers. 109Eur down to 77.90Eur. Wouldn’t you buy it?!? (Originally I wanted to buy NB, the same model that I had last year and this year, 125Eur down to 85Eur (they are 100USD in the US) but they did not have my size). 

The last stop was bike store to get CO2 cartridges. Female customer in a bike store staffed with 3 males. I was the only customer. One of them immediately asked me what I needed. I said I was looking around. Then the other one came over as I was looking at shoes and started telling me something about female vs unisex shoes. And then the 3^rd one started asking me what kind of biking shoes I wear and some other questions. “Please leave me alone”. I could not even remember what shoes I wear…I said Specialized, hm, something, hm, I do not remember. They were looking at each other, smiling. “I need to get out of there before they ask me anything else!” I grabbed the first cartridges I saw, paid and ran out. Then I realized that I bought a set of 5 non-threaded cartridges and I need threaded ones. But there was no way I was going back there to return them! 

Then I went to do my bike intervals. Plan was 5x5min at 240+. I had just enough time to finish the fourth one and then had to sprint to the nearnest town where I spent over half an hour under the bus stop shelter waiting till the storm is over. Lighting, thunder, hauling wind. We had it all. Totaled 3hours of riding (1h w/up, 4x5min hard w/ cca 7:15 easy to get back to the start, 1h c/d).  

Training update, racing, plus some random observations

If I felt that my ITB was 100% I would do a lot of races this summer. Because races are not very expensive here and I need racing experience eventhough I would be having my butt handed to me. For example there is a triathlon race in August in a nearby city and it is only 25Eur. Or running races for 6Eur all over the place. Damn you ITB! It is not that it hurts, but I am worried that it will flare up if I do a lot of races. Although maybe doing a 5k or a 10k is not that much different from doing an interval workout. I do not know. I cannot decide whether I am careful or plainly whimpy.   

Anyway. This is a stupid “swim” week. At first I tore my swim cap on Monday (although that’s not a big deal) and yesterday my goggles broke, which mean that I swam 1 stroke (yeap, one stroke and then the part where “nose” piece attaches broke off. I loved those goggles. This was my second pair of this model and I have had this pair for almost a year. They were Speedo Women’s Vanquisher and they do not have this kind here:( I need to find something similar and something that will not cost me 20+Eur because sporting goods are so freaking expensive here) instead of 3000m. And since I did not have any money with me I could not buy a new one on my way home from work and therefore today I had to use goggles I had at home but those are no good (by the way, is goggles “it” or “they”? I do not know therefore I used both “it” and “they”. To give me 50% change that I get it correct.) so today I swam 100m instead of 3000m. (I cannot swim without goggles.) Combine it with a very short group swim on Tuesday (coach decided to videotape us so we swam less than usual) and I am 7000m behind on my plan for the week. And it is Friday. Saturday is something going on in the pool, so I have Sunday to make up for it.  I will do my best but I will not be able to swim 7000m without doing it in 2 sessions (not that I do not believe that I can do it. I sure can:) but I do not think that I can came up with a decent 7k workout) and weather is supposed to be nice so I doubt I will be able to get any swimming at all over weekend. 

But I guess that swimming 10k instead of 17k this one week will not be the end of the world. And if it is, then I sincerely apology to the all the living creatures on Earth for bringing the end upon us.

At least running and biking has been ok.  Although I have only run once (PT on Wednesday and I have to give my ITB around 48 hours to recover from the treatment. By the way, the PT digged in to my right quad and it was even worse than when he uses that sucky/splunger thing and that thing is a sucker! I was very close to telling him to stop, it was so painful. I need to pay more attention to rolling out my quads more, not only ITB and hamstrings) and biked only once this week so far. 

Bike was quite brutal. I did the “short intervals” session yesterday (remember my plan? One short intervals, one longer intervals, one easy long session a week) and it was the first one in like 6 months. 20x1min hard (at 300+ W) with 1min easy. It was ok at the beginning because holding 310-320 for a minute is no problem but then the wheels (not bike wheela, my leg wheels) fell off with 5 to go and I had to work really hard. I was channeling Sagan (oh well, he is THE talk in Slovakia these days, what do you expect?) to get me through it when my poor hamstrings were ready to cramp after 40sec. Which does not make much sense since TT bike should make me use hamstrings less but I think that it is because I was working too hard pulling pedals up and I need to increase my seat height a little bit. So, it was hard, but great at the same time! And I LOVE having powermeter to keep me honest in workouts like this one. 

It takes me around 25min to get to the empty road where I did these intervals (a nice wide smooth road leading to some kind of above-ground mine. I would not do anything like this on a road with cars on it because I do not concentrate too much on what’s going on around me when I work hard so that would be dangerous. Too bad this road is not long enough to do anything longer than 1min intervals) so it is a good warm up and calm down.

I was considering to go to Frankfurt to watch IM this weekend but honestly, the only reason why I would go is to get a glimpse of Andreas Raelert and I will really only be able to get a glimpse so it is probably not worth it.

Then I was thinking about going to see a motoball game on Sunday. Which is basically a soccer on motocycles. These crazy Germans and soccer! But going there alone will not be too much fun and I need to get that 7k swim, 3h ride and intervals run in, so that’s not going to happen either.

What an exciting life. But since I do not have any friends or family here, my life revolves around work and training.

Game plan

It became official last week that I need to stay here in Hannover until the end of September so I can actually plan my life now. Woo-hoo.

The plan is: Hannover Tri on Sept 2^nd. Olympic distance. 

I met five or six people on TT bikes while biking this weekend (I usually do not see any people on TT bikes) so it means that people are gearing up for the race so I better sign up before it fills up.

But racing when I know that I cannot kick butt/get PR/racing series points/etc  is no fun and I know that I cannot achieve any of those goals unless I switch from my very mindless training to more mindful one.

Therefore I have devised a new game plan for the next 2 months (only 2 months?!? That’s like nothing. I better not expect to kick any butt but hopefully I will be able to pull off a decent result):

Run: I will let awesome PPC to guide me. All I can do is to do my best to stay ITB-pain free.  Which means not to do anything stupid, pay attention to my stride, do strengthening exercises and visit the sadistic PT every few weeks even if everything feels good. Prevention! I am slowly getting to ~3h30min of running/week. Wow! That’s huge.

 I saw an orthopedist today to go over MRI results and there is nothing wrong in my knee (although there are some “fokales Knochenmarködem in medialen Femurkondylus lateral” (whatever that means but I saw some white spots on the bone) that the orthopedist said are probably the signs of overuse/too much training in the past but they have nothing to do with this pain). Which is good on one hand, but not so great on the other because it means that I still do not know what the trigger is. He prescribed running shoes orthotics for me but I am very cautious to try them because I am worried that it might cause more bad than good.

 Swim: Just continue doing what I am doing. I have committed myself to 17km/week for next couple week and I am sticking with it. I have finally learnt to chill out and adjust when people in the pool are a$$es. Now I deal with the pool situation much better and am less anxious. Plus I have adopted the “bit**” attitude: I was here first, I swim faster, so move out of my path or I will kill you (not intentionally of course but who knows what happens when I swim into a 90-year old grandpa). I am doing much more real workouts now, harder and faster efforts.  (This 17k+ swimming is part of a long-term plan, and it has really nothing to do with the tri in Sept.)

Bike: I must make huge adjustments here! I have been doing only long slow rides until now, usually 2x/week. I gave myself an option to do the third ride but I very rarely did because well, I had an option not to. And even if I ride 5-6 hours/week, it is not going to cut it. Therefore I need to commit to more riding (unless I commit to it I am never going to bike more, I am too lazy for that) and to doing intervals. I have already started on Sat, I did 4x5min hard efforts (230+ Watts). I loved it! The only problem is that the road where I can do anything like this is 1hour of riding from my house but can’t do anything about that. So the plan is one long easy ride, one longer intervals ride and one short intervals/or big gear intervals ride in a week.

PS(es):

Tour de France! I was never able to watch because I either did not have TV or I was at work but I watched both Prologue and the last 40km of Stage 1 over the weekend. Of course the only reason why I watched was so see what Peter Sagan (because he is from Slovakia) can pull off.  And sure he did great. Ok, not Prologue, that did not work out very well, but in Stage 1 he did great. Smart guy. Sure, I felt sorry for Cancellara when he was doing all the work the last 200m and even gesturing Sagan to pull for a bit to get more time on the others and he would not, but everyone knows that Sagan is after stage wins and does not really care about overall placement and how much time he puts on other rides so it was clear that he would not pull. 

EURO 2012 is finally over and Germany will start talking about something else than soccer:) Although I like soccer very much. The only problem is that the matches were at 8:45pm. What were the organizers thinking???? At least the final could have been earlier. I am sure that there were a lot of little boys or people like me who have to get up very early in the morning who wanted to watch the finals but could not. And do not tell me that it is because of summer heat. I remember watching the final couple years ago and it was during the day!

I officially withdrew from Ironman Mt Tremblant today:(  I waited until today not because I was hoping for a miracle thinking that I can still do it. I was waiting until the last minute hoping WTC changes the rules for the Americas region refund/withdrawal policy.