Friday, May 11, 2007

There's a Zone 4? What!!! A Zone 5 too!

This whole week has been training at way over my comfort zone. While the hours have been short compared to IM training, my body is already neuro-muscularly hammered. I had no idea my heart rate could go over 170 and I wouldn't spontaneously combust.

Thursday was to be a run and then swim. I got to the lake first and tackled a difficult 5.5 mile run with a steep 1 mile hill before the turnaround. I thought I would bust out a fast 1st mile to tax myself and then struggle through the hill for additional stress. Thats when I realized that I had not sufficiently recovered from a 5 mile track workout including 2 miles of bleachers that I did Tuesday, (3 minutes per mile faster than IM pace) after a 1 mile swim in the endless pool at 1:40/100 (again much faster than my IM pace). When I finished run Thursday I could not manage the swim. I was too exhausted, so I soaked my legs while Jeff swam in preparation for Escape for Alcatraz in three weeks.

Jeff reminded me that Ironman was only three weeks ago, that my body went through a very severe dehydration and I just balls'd out a hard International distance race the other day. Last night I wrote my goals for Friday on the bathroom mirror in bold, "Freaking don't workout today". I woke up this morning and tried to figure how to fit in a bike ride. This was before I actually got out of bed. Once I got up my body said, "HELLO" and the mirror said what it said.

Life in the Zone 5. Gotta love it.

8 comments:

Iron Pol said...

I find my life balanced between going to hard and going to easy. I spend quite a bit of time training others who are less experienced or considerably younger (like junior high/high school). When I'm with them, I have to go easy, because the goal is to keep them training.

So, much of the time when I'm on my own I find myself hammering away too hard. That's why I have gone back to the heart rate monitor. It keeps me in check.

Bill said...

Definitely love it.

In it's time and place.

But we've got to be careful piling too much of it on too quick. Otherwise it's nothing but Zone -1 for a long time.

Brent Buckner said...

Fun times!

I'm just starting LT work - first time in 8 months for running, longer for cycling. Nice change.

21stCenturyMom said...

That's funny. Next time mistress says, "You never listen to me" you can reply, "That's okay, honey - I never listen to myself, either."

Good thing about that mirror!

S. Baboo said...

Oh for those lazy days of IM training...I think we must have the same sadist, er, I mean coach.

Bigun said...

love those freaking days off!

tri-mama said...

Good to know when to call it a day. have a great weekend

SingletrackJenny (formerly known as IronJenny) said...

I never could figure out why anybody would want to go into those zones on purpose... you are brave!
Missed you at Wildflower - take care, friend!
Jenny