On Becoming Durable

My list of things to do is two pages long so clearly I should just resort to blogging.

This week just flew by. I think because Monday was a holiday and since I'd been away from Moana all last week, I didn't work at all and we just played all day. In the afternoon I took Moana to the beach where we met Zach and Angela and their family... The whole time in the car on the way over Moana practiced saying, "Hi Zach!" and then of course when we got there she put her shy hat on and wouldn't even look at him. After a few minutes though they warmed up to each other and then it was the funniest thing- Moana was completely showing off! She would look to make sure Zach was watching and then she would just run fearlessly into the waves and then look at him again to make sure he saw. Crack. Me. Up.

Tuesday evening before dinner Moana got to meet Zach one last time at the park... it was cute to watch them interact again. Zach was practicing football drills but Moana just wanted him to smell the flower.

They attempted a hug goodbye but it didn't really happen. They did get a High 5 in though. :)

It's been fun to read a bunch of Ironman Race reports. And then to get some phone calls from eager triathletes wanting to qualify for next year... Putting my coaching hat on, it can be hard to strike a good balance between being realistic without completely squashing someone's goals.  What do you say when someone calls you out of the blue and enthusiastically says, "I really want to qualify for Kona next year!!!!" Well, ok, tell me a bit about yourself and your training/racing history... and then you have to gently explain how competitive it is to qualify... more and more every year... but 1800 people do it every year so it's not like it's impossible, but it doesn't just happen because you want it to... For most its years and years of consistent work... I feel confident in my ability to help just about anyone finish an Ironman.  But finishing and qualifying for Kona are two completely different ball games and the chances of qualifying your first time out trying are, well, slim. But not impossible. It happens. But rarely. Anyway, it's been an interesting week on the coaching front.

On the training front, things are going fairly well. It's tough b/c I'm training for a marathon that is 7 weeks away... and the Double Roughwater swim which is 8 weeks away... so while in my head I don't feel like I'm doing all that much training (it only feels that way bc there's no biking involved) in reality I'm actually doing quite a lot... My shoulders are barking at me for sure! My swim volume is not normally super high... I normally try to keep it at about 10,000 meters/week year round, then when building for a key race maybe up it to 12,000 meters... but this year we're actually training for the Double Roughwater (vs doing one or two 5K swims and calling it good) so weekly volume is now up in the 16,000M range, which really is a lot for me! This morning we were finishing up our swim and as I was flopping around in the cool down I had this flashback to high school days when I was swimming a ton and always felt like my arms were just as useless as wet noodles. I don't think all this extra swimming is going a long way toward making me any faster, but I do think it's making me more durable, and that's really what is required when training for a 7K ocean race.

Same thing with marathon, right? The key is to be durable. And since I'm not spending any time on the bike right now, I have this extra time to put into running, so I'm keeping my run volume 50-60 miles/week, which again is a lot for me. I've been able to string several 50+ mile weeks together before and I swear something magical happens for me when I do that... I actually start to feel really good with the higher run volume (I know this is not the case with everyone but I've noticed it for sure with myself). I like running a lot. So I'm sticking with it and becoming good friends again with my Trigger Point system. Trigger point is like magic.