Week 12 - Preventative Rest and The Amazing Weekend

This week felt like 2 weeks wrapped into one.  Monday through Friday was some well deserved and overdue rest.  The weekend was enough activity to make up for the rest.

On Monday I started scaling back by shortening the planned swim and weight lifting.  Tuesday was a rest day.  A bonafide sleep in and do no exercise rest day.  It isn't that I feel like I *have* to workout everyday it is just that I do.  I'm a big fan of active recovery and I almost always feel better after a swim than I would after a day off.  So, on Tuesday after I slept in and got to work early I went ahead and updated my training log.  My old school, Excel spreadsheet of a training log.  I marked Tuesday as a "rest day".  That got me curious.  When was the last time that I had done that?  The answer was November 14th, 2019.  103 days earlier I'd taken a week off trying to heal my ankle and then later learned that rest was bad for tendinosis.  I guess I took that NIH article seriously because there was no rest for the remainder of 2019 or the start of 2020!  Wednesday was Body Pump with my wife, because that is still reserved time for us to be together.  Thursday?  More Rest.  Friday?  Another rest day and one heckuva commute.

Friday I hopped onto a flight to Atlanta.  A friend (Amy/DrBart) got me the honor of helping at the Olympic Trials for the Marathon.  She went out of her way to make my life easy.  I took a train out to her part of the suburbs where she picked me up from the station and welcomed me into her home for the weekend.  It was great seeing her husband and kids again.  The boys are adorable!  Saturday was technically a rest day.  Or at least as much of a rest day it could be when we were standing on our feet for 8+ hours in the cold while creating memories that will last forever.

Sunday kicked my ass.  We started off with a super hilly 13.1 in Atlanta, followed by a cool down run of 2.5 miles that hurt way more than I would have expected.  After the race we commuted back out to her part of Georgia where there was about 1 hour of downtime before she loaned me a bike, shoes and a helmet.  My legs were cooked.  I was cramping here, there and everywhere but there was no way I was going to miss out on an opportunity to get outside onto a bike this time of year.  I think I fell asleep in the truck for the last few minutes of the drive but I never get to ride outside at the beginning of March so this opportunity would not be missed.  The beginning of March is when I normally get to cross train by shoveling feet of snow from the driveway left behind by a pissed off old man winter.  After a quick ride around the neighborhood and some seat adjustments we were off to join the famous Ride To The Goats.  A group of about 40-50 riders gets together at the same time every Sunday.  They split into about 5 or 6 different groups and ride various distances and speeds yet all still somehow manage to wind up at the same farm.  They then feed the goats.  The goats like it!  I think this one might have been named Kevin?


I kept getting dropped on the ride.  The pack was nice enough to wait a bunch of times for me to catch up.  It was a humbling experience.  The ride itself, like the 13.1 earlier in the day was hilly.  It was relentless.  I was unprepared and still hurting from the race.  There are a dozen excuses I could make but the reality was at this point in time I just flat out couldn't keep up.  It was a good experience for me.  My legs were toast.  It wasn't that I didn't have the will to keep up, I was just physically spent.  At the same time I didn't like people having to wait for me.  They didn't care.  I did.  I pushed as much as I could and it was not going to be enough.  Not even close. You know what?  I think that is just about the best experience that I could have had on this ride.  If I had showed up and it was no big thing that wouldn't have inspired me to keep grinding and improving my physicality in time for the 444.  So week 13, which is almost over by the time I got a chance to write this, will be back to normal.  I'll put in lots of work, do my best to stay healthy and hope that this wild journey to the 444 works out in the end.




Weekly Stats

Swim - 2000 yards
Bike - 40 miles
Run - 16 miles
Body Pump - 1 times
Heavy Lifting - 1 times
Duration - 6:42 hours

Physical Therapy - 0 times

Body Composition 

Weight - N/A pounds
%Fat - N/A
%Water - N/A
%Muscle - N/A

Overall Plan and Progress

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