What a frustrating 4th of July weekend...
We decided to spend 3 days in Springfield, VT in order to
get some high quality, high intensity training in 4 weeks before Iornman
Zurich. We chose VT because the roads are nicer (less potholes, tranches, or
bumps on the side), with less traffic (no honking or aggressive drivers trying
to push you off the road when passing you), and with more climbing.
One important aspect was swimming. With this big weekend of
training, I needed to find a place where I could easily hop on my bike after a
long swim, which is not possible here in Jersey City. Stevens Swimming pool
does not open in the am. The Edgar May Rec
Center was perfect: it opens its doors at 5am on week days, 7am on Saturdays,
and 9am on Sundays. They were even open during 4th of July.
In preparation for the weekend, I subscribed to mapmyride’s
MVP for Mariesa so she can live track my progress and know where I am. I played
around with their “Genius route” tool as well to create rides and have an idea
of where to go. It lets you create routes based on various criteria. I have to
say, it is not 100% accurate. The intuitive tool omitted to avoid dirt roads. I
would stick to Strava, even though I am not sure if they have the feature to
create or search for routes (I’d be surprised if they didn’t).
Slight injury leading up to the weekend
All set to go, minus a slight pain in my gluts / Hamstrings.
I changed shoes as my old pair was completely worn, and made the mistake to
change them right before an intense workout. 45 min into my run, I started to
feel a slight pain in the gluts / hamstring area. I immediately stopped, and walked
home (2 miles). That was the first concern of the week, and the pain persisted
as we drove to VT.
We arrived in VT around 10pm, after our 4 hour drive turned
into a 6hr drive because of traffic. We stayed at the Holiday Inn in
Springfield. The room was nice, and the bed was big, with a lot of room for our bikes and training equipment.
A mechanical ruined my plans
Friday was not a good day, to say the least. It started off well, though. We had a great
swim at the Edgar May Rec Center on Friday morning, and had a good breakfast
after.
As I was prepping up for my ride, I realized that my crank was loose.
Furious, I tried to look into it, only to realize that the screw that I needed
to tighten up was completely rounded. I couldn’t do anything. You should have
seen me in the room, furious and pissed are understatements. I cursed, threw
things around wrongfully hoping that the crank will magically get fixed. I
could not believe it. We drove around on Saturday to try to find a bike shop to get it sorted out, but of course, being the 4th of July weekend, the mechanics were not around to help...they advised to come back on Monday (maybe not). The 90min tempo ride of Friday and 6 1/2 hour ride of Sunday are now gone, and with my leg not being 100%, I knew my long run was not going to be a quality one. 11+ hours of scheduled training done the drain in the most important week of training.
In Hindsight, I am ashamed of my reaction, especially with Mariesa
being around. I should be able to control my nerves better. After all, no one
died, but on the spur of the moment, I just couldn’t. I trained so hard for the
past 6 months, and marked this week in the calendar as being the most important
training week of the season. I was prepared for it despite the leg issue. Being
stopped by a mechanical issue, knowing that I brought the bike to the bike shop
twice in 4 weeks, did not help. It was the icing on the cake. I think a
combination of accumulated fatigue, stressful days at work, and a series of misfortunes
made it such that I could not contain it any longer. I am not trying to find any excuses for my reaction, but I just could not contain it.
The rest of the weekend…I’ll share it with you when I have
time to write it up, because it’ll take a while…
IM Zurich in 21 days now
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