Week 12 Update - My Busselton 70.3 Training Log

Sunday, Apr 22, 2012 at 18:52

TriathlonOz - Michelle

Week 12 started out in much the same way as Week 11 ended - crazy busy!
After a 3.30am start to work at the Fremantle Corportate Teams triathlon for the first half of the day, the second half of the day was the TRYstars windup at Craigie and yoga. I was so looking forward to having a rest on Monday but work has got very busy so didn't feel very rested!

A bit of wet/cold weather made us put off our Tuesday ride but instead I got started on the treadmill while David did a wind trainer session together with me in our home gym. It ended in tears for me however - I had setup the program for 10k and really struggled. Normally, I set an interval program on the machine and I select Level 7 or 8 but given my setbacks I opted for Level 6 but I could hardly finish it and had to drop down some of the intervals for walking pace. At around the 6k mark the tightness started in my knees and soon it was full blown knee pain and tears and I had to stop the session - totally deflated and miserable.

I got to my computer and instead of work all I could think of was the bloody long 21.1km run in the 70.3 race ahead of me. I clicked onto Facebook and wrote "I think I'll pull out. I'm over it". Then I think I turned off my computer and walked out. I don't remember what I did the rest of the day but I wasn't functioning with positive emotions that's for sure!

I happened to glance back at Facebook later that day and found to my surprise a huge number of responses! And instead of the usual friendly but passive/supportive comments, I was challenged to re-think my decision! I hadn't expected that at all. I don't know what I'd expected actually. Nothing really. I just wanted to face up to my own truth and writing it was a part of committing to pulling out. But friends and people who I can really only call acquaintances through triathlon connections, were all describing how much worse I'd feel if I quit and encouraging me to rethink my attitude and to continue on regardless. It was just what I needed. It jotled me out of my depression and made me realise that yes I would feel worse if I dropped out. I couldn't escape the fact that the race would go on without me. So that day became a turning point for me in this journey to race day 5th May 2012.... I made a commitment to myself to accept that my preparation was not ideal and that would not be going there to perform a personal best. Once I got that right in my head, I had to refocus and find a goal that I was happy to aim for.... to start... and to finish, against all odds.

It wasn't something that I was proud of initially. And I had to talk to David about it, so that he could understand what I was aiming for. But in sorting all that out, I had to really take a good long thing about things and rekindle within myself some level of motivation and desire. I went to bed at 8pm that night and had the best night's sleep I think I've had all year.

The next day I joined up at 6am with Maren at the pool for my 2nd Deep Water Running session and because she's also been through a year-long struggle with hip pains that greatly reduce her training intensity, we had a good chat about things. She's also one of those wacky people that seem to make everything seem like fun, and DWR being a rather rididculous thing to do in a pool, we made a lot of fun out of ourselves and I made the all-important turning point in my attitude to the remainder of my training program.... program? What's that.... I actually haven't been able to follow mine, but let's just say I have a "routine".

I happily went back to the pool that night to do my swim session (missed from Tuesday). The nights are just glorious in the outside 50m pool at the moment, its quiet, the water is warm and the weather is clear and mild. Perfect training conditions. A new acquaintance there also asked if she could "give me a free tip..." with my swimming. I graciously accepted ... and was rather chuffed when she said "... your body position and technique is all perfect...but you must be getting cramps in your hands?" YES, I really struggle with that... and she showed me what I was doing wrong and voila! fixed it immediately. So simple. It was pretty hard to feel down after such a good day and when I got home David had made me a lovely dinner so all was right with the world once again :)

David suggested we do a wind trainer session together again this week (Thursday) but on this particular morning I happened to notice my runner's knee pain starting to flare up whilst I was on the wind trainer (using road bike). Then I mentioned that I still wasn't sure my new bike shoes were setup correctly when David realised that an incorreclty aligned shoe clet could well be causing some knee tracking problems so he immediately got me to switch shoes with my old ones and sure enough almost instantly the pain in my knees disappeared. After the session, he compared the two shoes and noticed that on my old pair (clets setup by specialist bike fitter), the two clets were not aligned with the same angle of rotation but David had setup the clets on my new bike shoes as per one of them, and the knee that is sore, is the side that was not copied! Huh!!! Back to my little checklist of causes of runner's knee symptoms and sure enough, clet angle is one of the contributing factors. So whilst David felt he was in the poo, I was actually happy to be finding simple things I could modify with my equipment that could help reduce the onset of this knee pain that is driving me crazy. It gave me hope that possibly I could solve this before race day.

Our Thursday interval sessions have changed venue and are now done on a hard surface alongside a busy road. These changes mean its no longer suitable for me and I can't take the kids either. So, without the need to run at night I switch my run to Friday and aimed just to do a gentle steady road-based run to test the knees. I actually did ok - just 7.5k in decent time, so regained a bit of confidence.

For Saturday's long ride on my TT bike I decided that after last weekend's 100k ride that I struggled with, I should do another 100k ride so put in a big effort and did 105km and loved it. Nothing much to say about the ride other than I have something going on with my TT bike - we just "click" and its always good times. I am considering that next year I'll going ATTA and try some time trialling?

So the week ended a little short, but better than quitting, with 9 hour 54 minutes and 3 runs, 2 rides, 1 swim and 1 yoga sesion and a new attitude!

I really want to thank those people who have helped me get this far. It's interesting how different people can contribute in different ways. I am very rarely a negative person but this week was probably the lowest I've been for 20 years.

Some wish for it, others work for it!
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