The human body is remarkable. Three weeks ago, I was doubting my ability to fully recover from the 100 miler I did over New Years. I knew that my heart rate was higher than usual, and that running at a slow pace, and cycling at a low wattage, brought my heart rate up. My coach also talks about how years of base training really help, and I believe that is true. The body’s ability to adapt is remarkable, especially when it has something to fall back upon. So, here I was, putting in nearly two hours on my bike to conclude a 15 hour training week. My legs were tired, and my glutes were sore from yesterday’s uphill and downhill hard run. Despite that, after a good warm up on my bike, I was able to go thirty minutes at wattage that is close to my ironman wattage, all the while keeping my heart rate at a relatively reasonable level. Significant progress in just three weeks, and with Ironman Boulder still 16 weeks away, lots to work with. I followed up my bike workout with a short 2 mile run to keep my daily run streak alive. While slow, my heart rate also stayed down, which may have just been due to fatigue, but I’ll take it.
It’s also important to recover from workouts, and Saturday was a pretty solid run day, hence, overall, I tried to keep today pretty tame. One of the interesting challenges that I will have is that I really want to get in training every day, and in fact, must train every day if I’m going to run every day no matter what. With that said, training doesn’t mean pounding on oneself. I’ve found easy cycling to be healthy and I’ve also found walking to be incredibly productive, while at the same time maintaining a low level of exertion and muscle stimulation. Finished the day with my grandson and his mommy and daddy, which is a joy!
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