Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The good and the bad

Things have been going reasonably well the last couple weeks.
After changing my training plan to let me get more sleep and eliminate a workout or two as needed my running has gotten much better. I'm not nearly as tired and have been able to do more interval work. All very good things.

Unfortunately on Sunday I had another crohns attack. It's been about 6 weeks since the last one, and to me, that is too close together. In fact I haven't had two that close in a long time. I think there are multiple culprits:

First, recently I have been a little lax with my medications and other supplements. I know they work and have kept me healthy. Yet I forget or get lazy. That needs to stop.

Second, diet. In this instance I had my attack on Sunday morning. It was very odd because I usually have problems at night after a meal, not prior to. However one of the issues here may have been that I ate near 1,000 calories worth of peanuts Friday night. (that may be a slight exaggeration. Anyway, I know peanuts can be rough on the gut. I almost always limit myself to an ounce or two...so why I felt the need to fill an entire cup full Friday night is beyond me.

Third, diet in general. Frankly I have not been behaving or showing any real self control. While I might maintain a calorie defecit or break even, in many cases its crappy food.

Fourth, stress. The first attack was most likely stress induced. This last one felt more like a diet induced attack. In other words, my own stupid fault. Although stress from work could easily be a factor.

In either case the impact is the same. Sunday I was out of commission. Monday I was able to ride on the trainer in the afternoon and Tuesday I rode and did a light run. I lived on McDonald's double cheeseburger and a chocolate shake. Why on Earth the unhealthies sh*t is the sh*t I can tolerate the best is beyond me.
And get this lovely tidbit. Prior to the attack I was sitting at 200lbs. Today, despite calorie DEFECITS over the weekend, I am at 202.5.
That tells me a couple things. First, nothing is getting through my system properly, not good. But the second piece is just how CRAPPY McDonalds is. I think they are lying about caloric content or the food is just so crappy it sticks to you.
But, unless I want to live on chicken noodle soup, I'm stuck. I need solid food.

Anyway, a couple things have changed. I am looking at some coaching software to help me manage workouts. WKO+ by training peaks. I've had it for a few days and it looks to be extremely valuable now that I have the Garmin/Quarq. It can tell me how much time I'm spending in my different zones, it can graph my enery expenditure, and most importantly it can begin to graph my training load over time.
In other words on a day-to-day - month-to-month basis I can see my training loads quantified, correlate those numbers to how I am feeling and make adjustments to my plan. It gives me a chance to guage my fitness and adjust workouts to improve fitness. It will be interesting to see what I notice as I get more data into the system.

Training last week, up until the CD attack, was very good. I was well rested on Sunday and got in a 2hr ride followed by a 30min run. Monday I did a 50 minute interval run, Thursday I was fine for my long 90 minute run and then on Saturday I did another interval run and hard swim. All in all it was a solid week.
I was hoping to do a 3hr ride on Sunday, but I was sick all day.
This week I have done two days of zone 3/4 rides. I missed 2 days of running, but plan to make up the time over the course of this week.

All in all I am on track. My running is really coming around. I only have a couple irritations.
On my intreval runs, without fail, I hit a hill or climb in the middle of my interval. So I don't stay at my designated pace of 6:50ish and slow down depending on the hill. I don't have a real problem with it, it's just annoying.

And I have realized that riding near my house is no longer adequate. There is too much traffic, the roads are too crappy, and there are too many stop signs. The first 30 minutes of my ride at home has at least 7-8 stops that I can't simply roll through. They are all bigger intersections where cars are almost always around. So I have a little plan that will require some preparation.

I am going to do one or two weekly rides on the CT to make sure I hit the wattage and continue to improve on the bike. But on the weekday(s) where I do plan to ride outside, I am going to bring my bike and fluids to work as well as running shoes/shorts if necessary. I will then go from work to Southwest YMCA and leave from there. It is much easier to ride the TriWi course at higher wattages and not have to stop all the time or swerve around giant potholes. It will also allow me to do a lot more climbing like Tans hill and others.

Riding from my house will be reserved for active recovery type days.

That of course assumes the weather improves a little bit. I like running in the rain a bit, but not riding with all the traffic.

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