Ironman Arizona Training update: Week 11

I ran half a mile yesterday, and it hurt.  A lot.  But I was happy to be able to do it.  It happened like this...

When last we visited I had just finished week 7 of my training program and was feeling pretty good about my level of fitness (notwithstanding certain challenges in getting in some of my longer workouts).

Week 8 was recovery week for Base 2 of the training program.  Backed off a bit on my distances (though not the intensity).  The highlight of the week was Saturday's 1:30/0:30 brick - got in 30 miles at 19.5 mph on the bike (time was 1:32) and just a hair over three and a third miles on the 30 minute run (an 8:45 pace).  Swam that evening, and got in a nice relaxed 7 miler Sunday morning to round out a very pleasant weekend of training.  Helping Peggy with her homework pushed my Sunday swim into Monday, but that turned out fine.  The only bad part was that I noted that I'd not recovered my speed in the pool.  I need to be more consistent in getting into the water and getting my work done.

Week 9 started out pretty nicely, up at 4:00 on Tuesday so I could get in 1:45 at high aerobic on the bike ahead of work.  Got 16.5 miles on the outbound leg of my out-and-back, feeling slightly annoyed at what felt like a pretty slow pace, but confident that I'd pick up my average pretty quickly.  Sure enough, after averaging a hair under 18 mph to the turn-around point, I was up to 24 mph almost instantly heading back to town and was keeping a pace fairly close to 30 mph as I tried to keep my heart-rate up in spite of riding downhill.  Then at 1:04:37, disaster struck.

Ugh, so slow.  Woohoo, getting better.  Oh, crap...

Just south of the traffic light in Farmington there is a gas station that always has crap hanging out into the bike lane.  Most of the time it's a flag that says "Open" or "Welcome Bikers" or some such.  But this year I've been successfully dodging a reflector pole that was bent down into the bike lane pretty much since the end of winter.  I don't know why, but on this day it snuck up on me.  I was lost in my head, humming along at about 28 mph, thinking about whether I could make it to the base of Rochester Hill in another 15 minutes, and came up on the hazard unexpectedly.  I did manage to swerve to avoid it, but I lost control of the bike and went down.

Looks a little defeated, doesn't it?

Happily, this time I hadn't crashed in the middle of nowhere with no one to see, and I had a nurse and a volunteer firefighter on top of me almost before I finished shedding strips of skin across the pavement.  They successfully kept me from getting up before the ambulance arrived, and the VFF very kindly offered to take my bike with him to work at the tire shop so that I didn't have to worry about it while I was at the emergency room.  I called Peggy to let her know I was being transported to the hospital from the back of the ambulance.  First time I'd ever been in an ambulance.  I'd be fine with it being my last.

Peggy met me at Frisbee where we spent most of the day being ignored by the ER staff (in fairness, probably in favor of people who needed more urgent care).  The upshot of a series of x-rays was that my thumb was NOT in fact broken as I suspected it might be, but that I did have displaced fractures of 4 ribs.  Happily the ribs weren't bent in so far that I needed surgery to keep them from puncturing something important, but unhappily it's made things very uncomfortable for the last three weeks.

Plus, you know, road rash...

The rest of week 9 was dedicated to figuring out how to get out of bed without moving my rib-cage at all (a comical looking maneuver that involves using my leg as a counterweight while rolling over to the opposite side and levering myself up from shoulder to elbow to hand).  Week 10 I did essentially nothing.  All week.  Well, I did get to do a lot of 2500 mL repeats on my incentive spirometer to stave off any potential pneumonia.  It...sucked.  But not as bad as week 9 since I was able to move around a little bit.  We went to Portsmouth for dinner on Friday night, but that turned out to be a mistake.  I shouldn't have been sitting up unsupported for that long, and I was definitely achy by the time we headed for home.

Incentive spirometer.  Turns out deep breathing is HARD

So, week 11.  Two weeks to the day after my crash I decided I should put the bike on the trainer and see how long I could ride.  Turns out the answer was a very discouraging 20 minutes.  My breathing felt OK, but my ribs became increasingly sore from the stress of my arms holding up my torso, and I eventually abandoned the ride in favor of allowing additional time for healing.

Nobody finds this impressive.  Not even a full episode of OITNB

Wednesday I stayed still all day.  Then on Thursday Peggy had the excellent idea of having me walk to at least get back to moving.  I put in 2.6 miles (and managed to run a couple hundred yards (ouch, fuck, too soon... )).  Friday I did the same walk, only without the trying-to-run part.  These two walks went a long way towards clearing the bruised feeling from my chest and lung.  Then Sunday I headed out for something over 3 miles.  After half a mile I was feeling pretty good and relatively pain-free, so I figured I'd try to run again.  I made it almost a half mile, down Rocky Hill Rd, past the farm, and up the steep steep hill to Otis.  But running up that hill made me breathe very deeply, which pulled at my ribs.  And running downhill on Otis started jarring at my side, so I stopped running and just kept it at a moderately fast walk (~16 minutes/mile).  I made it 3.5 miles averaging just over 15 minutes/mile when including that half mile of running.  Progress is good.

See that hump on the left?  That's actual running :)

Next week I'm hoping I can put in some actual time on the trainer, and maybe actually run a bit rather than just walking.  It feels like I'm going to be able to get back to tri-ing pretty soon, and I don't think that IMAZ is in jeopardy.  With 90 days to go until race day I have time to get my aerobic base back, and have a shot at a reasonably good race-day.  It's not going to be as fast as I was originally planning, but I'll assess where I am as I get closer to race day and formulate a plan to get me across the distance.

More to come...