No Pain, No Gain

It's been a busy week here at BS&B. Work, firefighter school and training (both for racing and the fire department) have kept me swamped, but this week marks the end of classes so at least that frees up my evenings two nights a week. I've been struggling to make everything work and it's been tough some days to leave the house at 5:30am and know that I really won't be able to relax until 10pm that night, but I've managed to get it done somehow - and by "somehow", I mean with the help of the most awesomest person in the entire world - SJ.

As I've said in previous posts, I've never exactly set a workout plan for myself in terms of training schedule and mapping out A races vs. B races, etc. etc. I have always been a "sporadic trainer", meaning that if I felt like going for a bike ride that day, then I went for a bike ride. If I felt like swimming, then I swam. But creating a training schedule and then sticking to that schedule was never a huge priority for me, and I always seemed to do decently well in races so I never really bothered changing anything.

This year was different in terms of both work and what I was training for. Taking the jump to do a fall marathon meant that I had to find a training plan that worked and stick to it. The marathon is far and away my A race of the year, but I also have the Nation's Tri in September that is an A race as well, which meant that I had to build in days for biking and swimming. This forced me to design a schedule and, more importantly, stick to it. Working off of a couple different marathon training plans, I was able to come up with a weekly training schedule that fir and I feel like I am better trained and more focused than I have been in any racing year.

I was supposed to swim yesterday morning, but getting a phone call at 5:00 am to let you know that the person who is supposed to be working is, in fact, not at work I decided to go back to bed after sorting it out. I had a long enough day yesterday without adding to trying to squeeze a swim in would have provided. Sometimes you can't win them all. However, I  was able to get in my planned 30-35 mile bike ride with some decent elevation. I try to do at least one hard ride each week - whether it's hills or a flat out time-trial or some kind of speed work - and then do an easier ride and maybe a brick workout. I picked out a ride that would take me down near the water and then back up and over the Tobay course so I could hit Moore's Hill - a brutal .28 of a mile that climbs almost 200 feet. It's not long, but it's hard.

As per usual, I was on a time crunch so I couldn't extend the ride as much as I would have liked. I had to be at HQ by 6:15 since we were leaving for the Yaphank Fire Academy to go over live-fire training scenarios, and I knew it was going to be a long, hot night. At least it was a decently cool night and not as brutally hot as it could have been for the middle of August. Having come off a hilly ride and going straight into training, my legs felt like jelly when I got home last night and the beer I poured myself (Blue Point Toasted Lager - always a good go-to in my book) couldn't have been more refreshing. The fact that I only finished about half of it before falling asleep is just pathetic, but cheers to me!

Hill repeats today - let's see how the old legs survive this week of endurance and pain. If I come out of this triathlon on Sunday feeling like my legs weight 800 pounds each, I won't be surprised. But this is what's meant by "training through it", sucker.