All you can do is tri

Last night I met up with my team, Emerald City Multisport, for an OW swim at Seward Park.  There were tons of women out last night.  Most of them (not part of our group) were getting ready for their first Danskin in a couple of weeks.  It was fun to see, since that was where I raced my very first tri.  Then there was our group, where only three of us were from our club.  The rest were a Team in Training group that our President coach’s. 

I got there a little late since I rode my bike in. More on that later.  Once I was finally ready to go, everyone had left already.  I waded in and joined them.  We were swimming to the farthest bouy to stay out of the way of the newbie swimmers and their noodles (to give them confidence while being in the water and security that they won’t drown) on their way to the first bouy.  Rumor has it, it’s 1 and 1/2 miles out and back.  Thus the farthest I have ever swum.  It felt great too.  Just found the zone and focused on form and enjoyed the whole thing.   I would have to say this was my first perfect swim.  The last four have been good as well, but I’ve been so focused on “Are we there yet?” that I haven’t been able to find my zen.  My stroke felt great, solid.  The deltoids are still a little sore, but not like before.  I guess I may just have to swim OW more often throughout the week rather than just on Saturdays. 

So the bike out to practice sucked.  Hard.  It started out okay, but all hills basically wore me out.  I was carrying about 20 lbs or so more than usual with my pannier bag and my wetsuit, bike lock, etc., in it.  Oh and water weight of my bottles.  I’ve come to the conclusion that my sleep habits suck as much as my shift work.  I work nights.  On my last day of work, I stay up for a few hours (as many as I can) and then I crash for 24 hours.  I tend to wake up every four hours for a bathroom break, a snack and maybe a glance at email.  I either feel like I need this much sleep or sometimes I have to force myself to sleep that long in order to stay up all night because I need to sleep all the next day in preparation for work that next night.  Hope that makes sense.  Sleeping that long can decondition you.  Take your strength away because you’re just laying there and not using your muscles.  8 hours worth is recuperative.  More than that can decondition.  This is what I believe happened, because it’s happened before and I’m just now starting to put it all together.  I think I only have 5 more weeks of night shift left before I start the day shift, thankfully.  But I can’t go letting that happen again.  It’s so discouraging to get out there for a workout and have it feel horrible.  There’s no speed, no endurance, no energy.  Today, I was so close to turning around and going home. “I can’t believe I did a HIM 6 weeks ago.  What the hell am I doing out here?”  I forced myself to just do it.  There was this portion that has this unbelievably steep hill.  I pushed so hard up it and only made it up half way on the bike and had to walk the rest.  As soon as I got to the top, I felt like I wanted to puke from the effort.  Again, “Who am I kidding?!”.  I rested for a few minutes and got my breathing back to normal and carried on.  I wonder why I was late??    Anyhow, I finally got to the swim and went into automatic - well after settling some tummy discomfort from the ride.  My legs were happy for the rest that the swim brought.  After the swim, I felt good on the bike.  I was able to ride with speed and consistency.  It felt like the ride out to practice had never happened.  ???  I even caught up to and passed two of the other women who were at the practice and had biked in as well.    

So a bit of revelation and some zen to finish it off.  Man, endorphins rock!  Too much sleep does not!     

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 6:12 am and is filed under Training, Swimming, Biking, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.