Weeks 14 and 15 were the first two weeks since getting back from Vacation in Trinidad. My training went well except for the swimming.
One of the weeks was spent in FL for work. In the past, I would swim in the small hotel pool, but for the last couple trips, this was hard as the pool was normally rather busy with kids and vacationers. For this trip, I decided to try a pool that wasn’t too far from the hotel but which had proper swim lanes. The pool was very nice with a lot of available lap swim lanes. The downside though is that it was closed for 2 of the evenings due to weather. So for that week, I only did one swim. It was a long one though. I plan to continue to use this pool for future trips and hopefully the weather will be better.
For these two weeks, I had two long bike rides of 4 hrs each. On the first one, I started to get cramps at around the 2.5 hr mark. I had a bottle of HotShot which I decided to try for the very first time. In all, I was quite happy with it. The cramps didn’t stop instantaneously, but by about 15-20 minutes are drinking it, my legs felt normal. The taste was interesting!
For my other long ride, I started to get cramps at around the 2 hr mark. Rather than wait, I drank a bottle of HotShot immediately. Again, the cramps didn’t go away instantaneously, but after about 15 mins, my legs felt normal. I did start to feel the cramps coming back at around the 3:30 hr mark and so I ended up cutting the ride short and only riding for 3:45 instead of the full 4 hours.
While the HotShot seems to help, I’m very concerned about cramping, especially since they came back about 90 mins after drinking the HotShot. I hope this is only due to the hot and humid weather and that once the cooler weather returns, it wouldn’t be an issue.
My running has not been going great either as I seem to be unable to run for any length of time without taking walking breaks. To offset that, I am doing a lot of run/walking, but for the runs, I pick up the pace and run them at a 8-9 min/mile pace. So in the end, my average pace per mile is around the 12 min mark.
My training is now at the half-way mark with 15 weeks down, and 15 weeks to go. At a time when my confidence should be high, it is very low with a lot of doubts starting to creep in as to whether I can actually do the Ironman. While the running has been hard, I’m not too worried as I expect the run leg to be a lot of walking anyway. I’m happy with the bike except for the camping. The real concern is the swimming!
This week I’m going to try and different poo at a 24 hr Fitness where I’m not limited to a one-hour lap swim time as I need to stat swimming for longer than an hour.