Week 2 of 16 Ironman Arizona Training – Size does matter

 

Week 2 is in the books! Unfortunately it ended on a bad note.  Overall I managed the training fairly well. I found myself exhausted on Wednesday so instead of driving into Santa Monica for a Tower 26 swim, I slept in. Until 7:30!! That is unheard of. My body needed sleep and I listened. After that little blip, the rest of the week went well.

I took the Garmin Virb to the pool for a little fun! I also finally made an effort to learn how to use the tempo trainer in the pool. Wow! That little beep can really kick your ass! I used the stroke rate setting (#3) to work on varying stroke rates with pulling. What was fascinating to notice was how much harder swimming with paddles is when you are maintaining the same stroke rate. It was also interesting to see at what point in an interval it gets hard to maintain the same stroke rate. I know I need to work on my stroke rate so this tool will be used much more often!

Saturday night Stuart and I got to dress up in something besides Lycra and spend time with some friends to celebrate a wedding! Love this guy so much!

But Sunday was when things got bad. I headed out for a 4 hour ride to be followed by a 30 minute run. About 1 hour into the ride my knee started hurting. My knee has NEVER hurt while riding my bike.  Ever. It got so bad that every single revolution hurt. Problem was I was 25 miles from home and Stuart was out riding as well. I finally called a very sweet friend who drove out and collected me and my bike. Later that day I was trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I thought maybe it is the bike. Maybe my road bike won’t hurt. So I took it out and as soon as I got out of the saddle for a little rise the pain was back. I went home and decided to test running. No issue running. At all!

The pain is very much like an IT Band problem I have in the past. I have just never had the pain on the bike; it always shows up when running. Racking my brain today trying to figure out why this is happening I figured something out. I recently switched running shoes plus I have been running a lot!. I am trying to run in shoes that have a 4mm drop as opposed to the 8mm drop I have been running in for the last 3-4 three years. Last time I tried to switch shoes like this and work on my running form, my IT band gave me trouble for months. So my non-expert analysis is that the shoes are the culprit. Size does matter! Even if it is just 4mm!

So I have ordered new shoes with an 8mm drop and I am going to do all the exercises and stretches that are good for IT bands and HOPE that is sorts itself out.