Can it be true?

I have a recognizable recovery week this week. The funny thing is I don't really feel the need for one this week, but I am grateful for it nonetheless.

Last week was my highest volume week yet - about 16.5 hours of training. I had some ups and downs in all three, but felt victorious by the end of yesterday's training.

Saturday, I got up and was on my bike before 5 AM for a 90-minute hilly ride. I hurriedly ate and showered, then headed across town to my coach's house for a nutrition seminar led by the lady who writes for Ironman.com - she's also my coach's dietitian. I learned a good amount during the seminar and truly appreciated how practical her advice was. She didn't advocate following some crazy, strict diet. In fact, the message was "eat healthy foods most of the time and bad foods a minority of the time". I can buy into that. She also eats Lucky Charms occasionally, so how can you not like her?! : )

After the class ended, Sam and I headed out for a run in the Rocky River reservation. It was tolerably cold until the wind blew and we froze our butts off. Sam literally was freezing her leg off, because her water bottle slowly leaked down her leg and formed an icicle. After my hour run, I stripped off my tights and had her put them on over her frozen ones, so she could complete the rest of her run. Luckily, I had warm-up pants in the car, so no naked driving for me! : ) I am pleased to report that my IT band was just fine during my hour run, which was a vast improvement from the day before when I had to do the elliptical rather than run on the treadmill.

On Sunday, I had a 3-hour trainer ride of the Lake Placid course, followed by a 40-minute run. I was dreading the whole thing. Heck, an 1:50 into the ride, I was still dreading it, but eventually the time passed and I was off the bike. That Lake Placid computrainer course is brutal. I barely averaged 15.5 mph and hadn't finished the climb back into town before the time was up. Again, Matt assures me that the course in real life isn't that hard (maybe due to being able to coast downhill). Climbing hills and getting my HR down on them has to be a priority this summer. I learned in the nutrition class that once you deplete your glycogen reserves through high HR efforts, that they cannot be replenished through nutrition. I want to use those reserves wisely.

After the bike, I contemplated driving to the gym to do the run on a treadmill. I mean, I had never run in weather that cold before (barely above 0 degrees and negative windchills) and didn't know what to expect. The meteorologists were talking frostbite occurring in a matter of minutes. But, getting the run over with and completing it as a brick won out. About 10 minutes into my run, my husband turns into the development (he ran his 2-hour run on the treadmill - smart guy). I tell him that I can't take my usual path, because of the snow cover, so will be running alongside a busier road. I know he was worried, but he just told me to be careful. Not long after running on that busy road, I found a sub development that had plenty of empty roads to run on. Unfortunately, I was heading out with the wind at my back. When I turned around, I was hit by the full force of the arctic-like wind. My eyes were tearing up, but it certainly was motivation to get my butt back home. I had a nice negative split against the wind and my IT band behaved. I felt like a road warrior! Of course, I did see a guy on a bike when I was running. Now, that is impressive!

So, the schedule for the week came out today and it is just over half the volume of the prior week. I'm heading to Houston this weekend to see a friend, so there are no weekend bike rides, let alone bricks. I'm sure the volume avalanche will hit again next week, but in the meantime I'll enjoy getting more sleep.

Good times!