The insanity of what I have committed myself to rings loud in my ears. My road bike has a mechanical issue. I dropped it off at the shop yesterday so my favorite "Wrench" could attend to it. With my bike in my hands suspended directly over head, I stepped backwards from the passenger seat to unload it from my roof rack and my jacket got caught on the door. Worried about my bike first and my jacket last, my arms remained over my head, supporting the bike, and my jacket shredded in two. Worse, the loss of momentum threw me off balance and I landed hard on the inside of my foot with my ankle turned funny and I instantly felt pain. My mind turned immediately to the possible impact an injury would have on my training. Never mind the enormous bruise on the underside of my arm which hit the top corner of the open car door, the prospect of not being able to run for a few days, or more, scared me.
Alas, after some ice and Advil, I'm fine. But it goes to show that this endeavor significantly impacts my awareness and psyche. And because of this change in me, I find myself doing crazy things without a second thought. Among those things are getting my fingers pricked again and again to test my blood lactate level.
I already wrote about my first test, which was meant to determine my lactate threshold on the bike. Those results are helpful in designing the most effective training...on the bike. But that information is useless for my training on the run. So back to Coach Dan and his latex gloved hands for another torture session.
The process went much like the first, only, instead of riding I was running on his treadmill. Every few minutes he pricked my finger, tested my blood lactate level and then told me to run faster. As this progressed, Dan redid three specific tests because he initially believed that he was getting flawed results. Why? Even as I ran faster and faster, the blood lactate level remained steady. He finally determined that blood doesn't lie and this could only mean one thing- I have decent running fitness. The value only increased just barely until I reached a hard pace, at which time the jump was obvious, indicating that my blood stream was being invaded by lactic acid and that I had reached my lactic threshold. In other words, I started to hurt!
Coach Dan looked at all the numbers (blood lactate level, heart rate, pace) for a few minutes and told me that everything seems to indicate that my Ironman marathon pace was right around a 9 minute mile, or just under a 4 hour Ironman marathon. Then I remembered that only 10% of Ironman finishers complete the marathon portion in better than 4 hours. I must have made a funny look because Coach Dan quickly responded, "But we can't forget that you still have a head attached."
A head that reasons.
A head that bargains.
A head that understands pain and tries to avoid it.
A head that can do simple calculations like, "I've completed only 4 miles, and still have 22 more to go".
A head that begs to listen to tired, angry muscles, a racing heart and a beaten body.
So, in a perfect world, with good nutrition, a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike that doesn't totally destroy me, I should ideally be able to hold a 9 minute/mile pace at the end of a long day in Madison.
After Coach Dan reminded me of the head still attached, I offered, "I'll work on that part." And it occurred to me, I can toughen myself up as much as possible over these next 10 months of training. But I'll only have 1 day to prove to myself just how headstrong I can be.
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