Ironman Brazil 2007: June 2007 Archives

Losing all this weight is a nice side benefit from training so much. But one downside is now all my pants don't fit me! I dropped one more inch off my waist so I went over to Gap and bought a boatload of new pants from them.

I can only hope that I maintain this waist size throughout the year. I think during the off season I may go back an inch, so I won't throw away my previous pants. But it is time to clean out my closet so many clothes need to leave and now it's more easier motivation to get rid of all these pants that don't fit no matter what!

It should be interesting to see if I've reached a new setpoint for my body in terms of its weight and overall size.

This year my recovery from Ironman is moving at a rapid pace. At my first Ironman (NZ), it took me 6 weeks to fully recover. Last year at IM Austria, it took me 4 weeks. And this time, I think it will be less than 4 weeks. On Friday, I went for a swim and only did 1600m, but I was able to swim with no aerobic problems. Only when I tried to do a fast set that I felt my body jump to LT only after the 3rd 50m of a 6x50 fast set. It was then I just decided to get out of the pool.

Yesterday the same thing happened on the bike. I went out for an hour ride on Foothill Expressway which is flat, gentle rolling terrain. While on that flat terrain, I didn't feel any discomfort at all. Maybe my HR was a tiny bit higher than normal, but I felt pretty good. It was only when I tried to accelerate up a small hill when I jumped straight to LT and I felt like I was exerting much more than normal.

I want to change my recovery from previous years where I went international and basically did nothing for a full week afterwards. I recovered, but the inactivity made it really hard to get back into the activity after such a long layoff. So now I want to try keeping sessions short, but testing where the boundary is between my effort level and when I hit LT. I won't push it too hard, but I want to keep my body stimulated so that it doesn't fall into that area where I can't really pick it up easiliy. I've got a longer season this year with IM WA at the end of the year and need to keep focus for many months after now. In previous years, it's been really tough to rally after my single Ironman and I need to change that.

I just weighed myself this morning (Sunday after Ironman Brazil, one week later) and I'm a whopping 145 lbs.! At NYC Marathon last year, I weighed in at 147 lbs. And now with all this training, I've dropped another 2 lbs. at race time. Amazing! At least I don't have to drag another 2 lbs with me while I run or bike. I wonder how much lower I will drop. It's not like I'm trying to lose weight. It's just happening naturally with all the training volume I'm experiencing.

Or is that a poplitius in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

I went to my Graston physical therapist on Friday and I told her about some pain I was having in the back of my knee. She starts touching the area behind there and I yelp in pain as she applies from massage techniques on my poplitius, this tiny muscle that runs behind my knee. She remarks that it is totally inflamed and very huge, certainly tender to deep tissue massage. Apparently it's a problem common to cyclists.

I've been dropping the heel to engage my hamstrings and glutes during the downstroke of biking. I was focusing on this during Ironman Brazil and it got painful towards the second half of the bike. But now I'm thinking that I shouldn't drop it so much, or otherwise, my poplitius may get overstretched and strained, like in my case now.

Ice and rest is the remedy for the short term.

Taken by ativo.com:

Here are the official pictures I bought of me racing. Look at that mass of swimmers at the start!