All Systems Pissed

Perhaps it was my decision to do an Ironman-style workout weekend last Saturday and Sunday--without any buildup--that led to my demise.

3 people joined me on a grand cycling loop from Stanford to the ocean and back last Saturday, totaling 70ish miles. I sent out an email to the Stanford Tri Team, and got lucky--the people who came were all excellent cyclists who proceeded to kick my bum.

In my mind, of course, I had excuses for my sluggishness: I just ran my first track workout of the last half a year on Friday, after doing a 1000 meter time trial in the pool, my first swim in a month.

Sufficiently fried Saturday night, I did not sleep. I'm not sure why. You'd think a few days like that would knock a girl out. I then woke up Sunday morning to go with two highly esteemed tri-team members to Castro Valley to run a 17-mile trail run.

Yes, I was prepared to do that--I'm training for the California International Marathon on Dec. 6. No, I wasn't prepared to do that within several hours of leg bashing in the pool, on the track, and all over the South Bay.

I'm in debt to the creators of Red Bull.

Here's the kicker: My legs are still pissed. In normal Ironman-training mode, this would not happen. I would recover. But in sleep-must-go-because-I'm-doing-super-cool-stuff-for-school-that-is-more-important-than-anything-else-but-I-will-not-cut-out-training-anyway mode, my body has imposed a 10-minute mile minimum on my legs.

This speed will not get me to Boston.

I now, however, have a much greater respect for the corporate bigwigs who do Ironman--fast. They are far more important and busy than I ever was while I was training for an Ironman, yet somehow manage to get their training in, then run a Boston-worthy marathon time to cap of their IM.

Amazing.