I Want To Be an Ironman – Week 28

It’s TAPER TIME!

Technically, this week is more taper-ish. Although the workout totals are cut down by 2.25 hours, which should seem significant, when you’re already up to 14 it doesn’t feel like as much as you’d think.

I am, unsurprisingly, still tired.

Monday run/swim. 60 minute run/6.2 miles/9:47 (ish) average/64 degrees. Oh hooray its finally COOLER outside! I split my run again and did 2.6 miles with the dog and 3.5 with the twins. I’ve never been more excited to see an average under 10. Seriously. 60 minute swim/2500 meters. I swam faster this time, but thats because I was tired and wore fins for the whole thing (shhh).

Tuesday – ride. 60 minute ride/17.42 miles/17.4MPH/68 degrees. Not much to report here. Still tired so took it easy. This is also the day that South Carolina really started getting panic-y about Hurricane Matthew. My final kid of the day called and told me they were evacuating the next day and wanted to cancel. This turned out to be a good thing, because it took me the next hour to fill up my gas tank and get money from the bank in case we decided to stick it out and lost power for more than a couple days. Schools closed for the rest of the week and I obsessively checked the weather.

Wednesday – swim/ride. 60 minute swim/2400 meters. I got up EARLY for this one, because as luck would have it, the new masters swim team in Summerville kept the pool open JUST for masters swim since everything was closing down for the hurricane. I forgot I need to allot more time for talking though, because I ran out of time and swam a bit short. Oh well.  45 minute stroller run/4.56 miles/9:53 average/66 degrees Although not THAT many people had evacuated by this point, the run still felt a little creepy, partly because it was such a  nice day outside but we all knew what was looming. I think it was Wednesday that the forecasters changed the track where the eye was pretty significantly off the coast. To be on the safe side I bought water, batteries and some non perishables before heading to work that day.

Thursday long ride. 3.5 hour ride/61.24 miles/17.2MPH/64 degrees  I hadn’t planned to do another long ride on a weekday but with the hurricane threatening to strike over the weekend and the next two days off work because most of the southern part of the state was shutting down, it seemed like a good day to get it in. A small group came along. We were supposed to ride 4 hours but the whole ride was windy and it was the worst on the last 20 minutes back to the car where we were going to refuel so we all cut it short. (I did 20 more minutes to make it an “even” 3.5 hours) On the plus side, it was good practice in the wind. I continued to check weather obsessively. By today, the forecast was much worse – the eye was expected to track not far off the coast, though as a Category 2 at least and not 4 anymore. I spent most of the rest of the day prepping by cleaning out the area  under the stairs in case the winds got bad, so I counted that as my missed half hour.

We are either dedicated or totally insane

Friday long run. 2 hour 10 minute run/12.6 miles/10:20 average/73 degrees The pending storm made this yet another hot, humid and sticky run. Apparently those days were not over.

Saturday/Sunday rest days. Technically I still had my quick change workout left but I opted to skip it. The storm started hitting late Friday night through late afternoon Saturday. At one point, they were predicting some possible 100+ MPH winds but I don’t think we ever ended up with gusts that high. I did see where someone recorded about 65mph, and I know we had sustained winds of 30-40 MPH for several hours. Interestingly, areas like Columbia and into Fayetteville NC almost had it worse than we did with the way the storm ended up hitting. It made landfall not far from Charleston. Charleston did of course flood, as did some areas in Summerville. There were downed trees and power lines. Some houses were damaged or destroyed. It was a serious storm but luckily not a Category 4 like Haiti and the Bahamas experienced. We were lucky. We had a leaky window but no other damage. We did hang out under the stairs for a bit but more because it was fun and not because we had to. In the end, I was tired from several days of not great sleep and anxiety about the storm, so I rested.

Hanging out in “Narnia” (under the stairs)

Total Hours: around 11 including hurricane prep (I’m cheating a bit here)

Distance Traveled: 105 miles

Training Thoughts: FINALLY we are at a place where the training hours start to go down more significantly. The hard part is REALLY over. I am hungry still all the time but I am tired of about 90% of food because I’ve eaten it so much.

On an unrelated note, the twins’ Halloween costumes showed up this week which I was REALLY excited about. Miles refused to put his on, so I did.

Nemo grew a bit