Ironman training week whatever OMG it's almost race day

No I'm not freaking out you're freaking out. Shut up.

Swim: 7960m
Bike: 223 km
Run: 42 km

So this week was kind of it, really. Now into the true taper. The fitness is either there or it isn't. Time to cut back a bit, organize all my gear, and attempt to avoid too much panic buying of all sorts of random things I might suddenly decide I simply MUST HAVE (uh, yeah, I did place a $100 order with triboutique yesterday of random nonsense, why are you are looking at me like that?) (oh god I hope it ships in time)

And hey look, a proper week of running! A couple of sessions with my physiotherapist and I'm feeling back to normal on the back/shin/lower body side of things. Of course, I woke up yesterday with my shoulder just killing me (WTF) and it's still sore today, so that's a whole new issue I get to deal with. Fortunately I have physio again tonight and a massage booked for tomorrow. It feels like a pinched nerve/muscle tightness type issue (pretty sure I found the trigger point and was able to get into it and relieve it semi-effectively, but it did mean I skipped swimming this morning because fucking hell, body, could we maybe be fully healthy a week and a half from race day? Please?)

Anyway. I am zen and confident this will resolve itself shortly.

Monday: TR - Sierra

Motivational towel

Knocking out the threshold/VO2s on Monday because I had a physio appointment on the Tuesday and it was fairly likely I would be in no condition to try and do a tough bike workout after having him beat my cranky muscles into submission

Tuesday: 7k run; 3000m swim

Up early to try a cautious run, which felt fine (yay!). Physio was not nearly as painful as the prior appointment, so I headed to the pool after and knocked out 3000m feeling really good.

Wednesday: 8k run; TR Tower

Lengthening out that run a little bit, still feeling good!

SO HAPPY that's over. Please ignore randomly stored crap in the back of my pain cave.

And then a very silly stair-step TR workout in the evening. I swear Coach Chad is just fucking with us with these ones. Challenging but felt good to finish it off.

Thursday: 1700m swim; TR Whorl

just keep swimming

Little cutback on the swim plan and an easy spin in the evening. Quite a relaxing day, given that it had two workouts.

Friday: 10k run

Not really sure what I was going for with this picture

Again extending that run out a little bit and no negative consequences! Also had physio again in the evening. I was really tempted to push this run a little longer but I'm trying to balance being smart and not risking injury with the urge to run all the miles and cram in some last minute run fitness (which would be dumb. But it's tempting).

Saturday: 116k ride + 5k brick

God I'm sick of getting up early. No, I really am.

Met up with Christina for 90k where we chased down sunflowers and chatted and just had a lovely time.

Super happy to have had company on this ride because I'm pretty over it, you guys. After she left I still had to do another hour and it was tedious and boring and hot and I was cranky and I knew I would have to run after and and and.

(it's a good thing it's taper now)

The only 100m or so of trail that was shaded in the whole 5k run.

Anyway, finished the ride, did the 5k run and it was so hot in the full sun and the humidity and if race day is like that I may cry (and then suck it up and get this shit done anyway, because what the hell else are you going to do).

Sunday: 11k run; 3200m swim

Up early to try and beat the heat (lol no). 11k felt great. I almost wish I'd pushed this one to 15 but erring on the side of caution. And yeah I'm being super cranky about the heat, but really I do feel like I've at least somewhat acclimated this summer - it sucks and I hate it but I feel like I'm handling it better than I ever have before. So I got that going for me. Maybe because I'm not trying to hit any paces at all but just running what feels easy.

With Irina (who is so generously lending me her wetsuit for Tremblant, although given current Tremblant water temps I'm not sure what's going to happen there nope not even going to worry about that right now) and Amy pre swim

Then it was off to Brampton to join FMCT for their Sunday morning swim at Professor's Lake, which I highly highly recommend. Easily the best open water swimming I've done around here. Nice mostly clear water, a marked out course, and awesome people. What more can you ask for? Plus I was able to draft Zindine for a bit so if he could just jump on in at Tremblant and let me hang on his feet, that'd be helpful. Somehow I don't think that's happening...

Post swim with the other folks training for IMMT - including Jana, who I haven't seen in ages and it was such a nice surprise to see her!

Solid 3k. I had time to do another loop before the lifeguards came in and pulled out the buoys to get up over Ironman distance, but decided to call it at that point because I was getting some tension in my left low back and didn't want to aggravate anything needlessly. Close enough.

So that's a great week to start the 'taper' (if 15 hours of training is really tapering...). Now to get this shoulder straightened out (it's about 80% better just from the time I started writing this blog post, so that's promising), plan a last long ride with Fab on the weekend for strategizing and calming each other down from various freak outs, and figure out how I'm going to handle this week's running. It's SO tempting to try and cram in a long run of 20k this weekend but I'm not sure that's a smart idea. Will have to see how things go.