And setting expectations...mostly for myself. Those of you that know me well, know I set high standards...for myself most of all. On one hand I'm not afraid to set the bar high - after all, if we are afraid to fail, we never really succeed, right? By the same token, type A's like me can tend to go overboard sometimes. :) Hey, I'm nothing if not honest.
And I did just that for IMC - a pretty aggressive goal of 12 hours for a first Ironman, and not the easiest one out there either. I'm sure there were lots of people who thought that was crazy and not achievable and what is she smoking and so on...and that's okay, I was certainly one of them in the final weeks. And then I went out there and achieved it.
So point being, I've already achieved, nay surpassed, my tri goals for the year. But my season is not over...I have one more race. I decided a few months ago that I would race Augusta 70.3, and see if I could piggy-back onto the fitness level I've achieved with the IM training. I need a third race to get ranked, so why not Augusta. This will be my first year getting ranked with only long distance, so that will be interesting, in and of itself. And I figured when I signed up, and in discussions with other athletes and coaches whose opinions I respect, that I had nothing to lose. If I blow up, I blow up and I chalk it up to experience. If I do well, who knows what that could mean.
As seems to be the way with me, I've had some unexpected complications get in the way. Had minor surgery last Friday, and although minor, and certainly nothing life-threatening, it was still surgery, and there is recovery associated with it. And of course, on top of that, recovering from IM. Surprisingly, the IM recovery has been much better than I ever anticipated. By Wednesday of last week (3 days post race) my legs felt fine already. Was pretty darn shocked at that. Aerobically, I'm feeling good. Hard to say overall what the impact is really, it's a new experience for me, but I can say without a doubt that I thought I would feel a lot worse than I do. And I've been able to pull out some pretty decent workouts in the last week, even though I haven't been able to do as much as I would have wanted to or my coach has prescribed because of the afore-mentioned surgery. But that recovery is going well too, and I think it will be a non-issue by race day.
So now that leaves me to decide my approach to how I will race Augusta. Try not to let my overactive A-type goal-setting competitive set-the-bar-high tendencies take over. ;) And my workouts yesterday and today have helped to knock that down a few notches. lol.
Went out with Chris yesterday to ride. Glad he was able to come with, because I knew I was going to need some pushing to get back to the speed side of the equation. And of course he did not disappoint. I was cruising along at an average 160 watts, feeling pretty darn good about that, given where I was in the last 6 weeks of IM training. So Chris asks what my power is, I tell him, and he says, okay, I want you to bump it up to 180 for the next bit. ACK!! Are you out of your freaking mind? My threshold power is only 187, and I've lost a fair bit of weight since that was set, not to mention, I haven't been training at that output for a while. But, OK. Damn him for knowing me so well, because once he puts it out there, he knows damn well I'm going to bust my ass trying to do it. And I did. It was f'ing hard, I have to say. Couldn't get it up there, and then I just wouldn't give up till I'd raised the average to 180. Finally did it. Thought my heart was gonna bust right out of my freaking chest. But, thankfully the fitness I've worked so hard on was there to save me, and my heart rate dropped pretty quickly again. We cruised along for a bit, and then hit Harold Road, and he says, okay - again. All the way along this road. This is your kind of road, he says. So I go. And there is one mf hill at the end of it, but got'er'dun. And then repeat - circle round, and bust it out again. And then we still had to get all the way home. Definitely dropped off on the power after that, I was tired, and the hills at the end were pretty brutal. Had to run after, 30 minutes. Plan was to pull out 7:45 if I could. First 2 miles were okay, last mile was pretty sucky. Only did 25 minutes.
And then today, what was supposed to be a 90 minute negative-split out-and-back run. Directions were to see a BIG difference in the "oot and back". Didn't eat enough yesterday, not nearly enough, and it messed me up for sure today. My plan was to do about an 8:15 on the way out, and 7:45 on the way back. Had a hard time reigning it in for the first couple miles, surprisingly, had to keep slowing it down a bit. But, 2.5 miles in, I started bonking. Shaky, faint, you know the drill. I'd only brought one gel with me, planning to take it at the turnaround. So, stopped, had the gel then, knew that would mean I likely couldn't do the full 90, so would go out 30-ish and try and bust out the pace on the way back to make up for it. The requisite couple of minutes passed before I started to feel the effects of the gel, and then I was able to get it going again. Ran out 4 miles, and turned around, picking up the pace. In keeping with my attempt to conquer the fear of not having enough in reserve, I decided to just give 'er, and see what happened. Was pretty surprised when the mile splits came up at sub-7:30. Last mile and a half were a bitch, and I was grunting and swearing with the best of them. Didn't quite get to Tracy's level of making up new swear words ;) but I came close! And yes, I did start to slow down in that last mile, but then pushed it in at the end to finish strong. Managed to bust out an avg 7:30 pace on the way back in, so better than I'd hoped for. But overall, not the distance or time I was supposed to do.
So, in the final analysis, what are my goals for Augusta? I'll take a cue from what Chris convinced me to do for IMC. Set layered goals. Bottom line is I've achieved my goals for the year, and anything else is just icing on the cake. So. 1) set a PR (better than 5:06); 2) run a sub-5:00; 3) finish top 5; 4) qualify. I'll be very happy with the first.
The next two weeks will be spent refining my speed, maintaining my fitness, and getting my mind into the right state to do two things. 1) lay it all on the line and 2) not give a damn what happens in the process. Time to conquer the fear of not having enough to finish, once and for all. If I put it all out there, and I blow up, then so be it, I will finally have found that line, and be better in the future for it.
Happy Training!
Kat
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