Training Day 10/13/10

I feel as though I've lived this year in a series of fits and starts. I've learned a lot but I can't say I've ever gone so long without completing a race. Or at least that is the way it feels to me right now. I'd be lying if I couldn't, or didn't admit a big part of me wants to skip the rest of this season and just train to get ready for next year. But that's the way of things I suppose. We have goals or set intentions and life happens and we do the best we can. At least that's the way I'm going to look at it.

This weekend I'm doing the Longhorn 70.3 race in Austin. In some respects I feel completely under prepared for this race. The odd thing about this is I've been training consistently but with all of the changes I've made to my diet and lifestyle this year my confidence is all over the map. So far I've just decided to look at the bright side. And the bright side is I know my endurance is improving daily. I've been running consistently. And I'm leaner than I've been in years. My diet is good so I'm just gonna take those things and call my overall year a win.

Today, I had a pretty light training load. I slept in until almost 9am, got up and made a vanilla, avocado smoothie for breakfast (about 800 calories that took me the better part of an hour to finish off) then did some household chores. At about noon I took a nap. My first workout was at 3pm which was a tempo workout on the bike. This was 60 minutes and the effort was there whether I wanted it or not. It was pretty windy out and I worked with a larger gear than I would normally push under those conditions.

When the wind was at my back, I tried to spin out of my biggest gear to work my cadence. All in all the effort was solid. I could have done more but stuck with an hour and went home and had my first dinner before my swimming workout.

Dinner consisted of marinated mushrooms, lentil mash, mushroom gravy, some stuffing, and green tea. About 450 calories.

Swimming was about 90 minutes with swimming interspersed with a healthy dose of drill work mainly consisting of sculling and catch up drills with a bit of balance stuff thrown in for good measure.

After that was a snack along with my second dinner which was basically identical to the first dinner before my swim but the snack added an additional 150 calories. My total caloric intake for the day was about 2300. My calories expended during exercise were about 2000