April 8-14: So Maybe That's Why I Feel Terrible

I was back on the road last week, which I really, truly, tried to manage in a way that didn’t result in running myself ragged again. I got as much work as I could done in advance, communicated with my coach about my work and travel schedule constraints, and drank a lot of water.

That last point is key.

But, there’s only so much you can do when things look like this:

• Tuesday, 1 pm EDT: Leave for Greensboro, NC
• Tuesday, 4 pm EDT: Take work conference call from the car
• Tuesday, 6 pm EDT: Arrive in Greensboro, NC, coach
• Tuesday, 9 pm EDT: Bed
• Wednesday, 4:30 am EDT: Wake up, run
• Wednesday, 7 am EDT: Begin coaching at national meet (just a little stressful)
• Wednesday, 4:55 pm EDT: Swimmers finish competing. Run to airport.
• Wednesday, 6 pm EDT: Flight from Greensboro, NC to Charlotte, NC takes off.
• Wednesday, 7 pm EDT: Flight lands in Charlotte, NC
• Wednesday, 8 pm EDT: Next flight leaves Charlotte, NC for Phoenix
• Thursday, 1:30 am EDT: Land in Phoenix
• Thursday, 3 am EDT: Finally get to hotel, sleep
• Thursday, 6 am EDT: Wake up out of habit. Work.
• Thursday, 11 am EDT: Begin all day meeting, including presenting in front of 50-some fellow engineers
• Thursday, 8 pm EDT: Finish all day meeting. Aimlessly wander "downtown" Tempe
• Thursday, 11 pm EDT: Go to airport
• Friday, 1 am EDT: Board flight for Denver
• Friday, 2:30 am EDT: Arrive in Denver
• Friday, 3 am EDT: Leave Denver for Charlotte
• Friday, 5:30 am EDT: Arrive in Charlotte having slept possibly 25 minutes total on previous flights. Work during layover.
• Friday, 7:30 am EDT: Finally board flight back to DC
• Friday, 9 am EDT: Land at DCA
• Friday, 10 am EDT: Get home, just in time to start running teleconferences and responding to work email.
• Friday, 12 pm EDT: Get violently ill. Hard to say why.

And I wonder why my body is giving out on me…

Anyway, here’s how the training fit in there.

Or not.

Monday: 4000 meters of swimming, swum as 4x1000 (long course meters) in 16:08-15:47-15:48-16:18. Because that 4.4 Mile Chesapeake Bay swim isn’t getting any farther away.

Tuesday: In the morning, a 90 minute trainer workout with 45 minutes at tempo effort (168 Watt average) and 3 2 minute VO2 max intervals done at 250-252-252 Watts. The target range for those was 240-300 Watts, which seemed a little to challenging to me in advance, but I just went for it because, what the hell.

Of course there is a graph. 

Otherwise, there was no point in hitting those VO2 max intervals so precisely. I mean, except for the fitness gains that come from them, which are obviously secondary to the goal of making pretty graphs.

Wednesday: Early in the morning before coaching at Junior Nationals in Greensboro, NC, I hit up the treadmill for a 1 hour progression run, moving from 9:23/mile to 8:42/mile for the middle 30 minutes. Then coached the whole day and spent the entire evening flying out to Phoenix.

Thursday: “Rest” day before the hellacious 3-leg redeye home.

Friday: Spent most of the day sick and/or running teleconferences for work. In the evening, stumbled over to Wilson for 2800 meters of easy swimming to make myself feel human again.

Saturday: About 25 miles of easy riding at Hains Point around sunrise with Rachel. No exciting power graphs, just a fun morning workout that left me free the rest of the day.

Sunday: A run-brick-run workout done with Rachel and Mia as follows:

• 3.35 miles of running at 8:55 pace
• 24 miles of biking at an average power of 158 Watts, including 30 minutes done at “race pace” (19.5 mph, 168 Watt average)
• 4.08 miles of running at 8:34 pace. This is OBVIOUSLY totally appropriate, since we’ll DEFINITELY be going and dropping some 1:51 half marathon splits after biking 56 miles this weekend.