Feed Me, Seymour!

Now it is human nature to want to eat to one's fill when hungry, to want to warm up when cold, to want to rest when tired.  These all are part of people's emotional nature. -- Xun Zi

Last week, I was tired.  I wanted to rest.  I think it's because I did speed work (like, actually did it - and worked darn hard) on Monday and Tuesday, but it pretty much wiped me out the rest of the week.

This week, I am hungry.  I'm not sure if my body is realizing I'm starting to go into taper mode for Raleigh or if it's trying to make up some calories from last week's hard work or if I breathed a sigh of relief when one of my cute skirts fit loosely so I must not be as heavy as I thought I was.  No idea, but I am starving!

But it's weird, because I'm mostly hungry in the morning.  At night, especially if I've worked out in the afternoon, I'm actually not too hungry - possibly because it has felt like August the last couple days, instead of May.  Who wants to eat after they spent an hour or more out in the heat training and then another hour at a kid activity like a soccer game or bike practice?  Honestly, all I want to do is guzzle water and sit under the fan.  Not eat.  But when morning comes around again...you can't put enough food in front of me.  Grrrr.

The Fatigued Fool

Fatigue makes fools of us all.  It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions.  It's the best-conditioned athlete, no the most talented, who generally wins when the going gets tough. -- Harvey Mackay

I am certainly not the best-conditioned athlete right now...more like the fatigued fool.  Ugh.  Soooo.  Tired.  I am trying to incorporate more speedwork into my training so that I can get faster...but it's killing me.  My legs for my long run this morning were like lead.  I got a good night's sleep, I ate a decent breakfast, I'm hydrated...and yet, I had a terrible run.  All I can figure is that it had to do with actually doing my speed workouts on Monday and Tuesday.  See...here's the thing.  I'm usually lazy about speed workouts.  If the plan says run 4 miles, including x of speed work, just run 4 miles and call it good.  But I've decided if I'm ever going to get faster, I should probably start following the plan and do the speedwork as written.  Well - that felt awesome to do my workouts as planned...but today I fell way short.  I just couldn't finish my long run because...tired.

I know that if I keep stressing my body this way, eventually I'll adapt.  But in the meantime. ugh.  I think I'll go take a nap now.

Hills. That is all.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. -- Nelson Mandela

Hills are speedwork in disguise. -- Frank Shorter

I am fairly certain that Nelson Mandela has not trained for the Raleigh 70.3 course, but he's kind of spot on.  There's hills, hills, and more hills.  And then there are some more hills.  And just when you watch says you're almost into T2 and you can get off your bike, there's another damn hill.  HILLS.

You know those silly word ladders that you do in elementary school where you change one letter of a word over and over to get from one word to a related word?  Like getting from WORDS to BOOKS?

WORDS->CORDS->CORKS->COOKS->BOOKS

Well, hills make it easy.  Watch:

HILL->HELL

Yep.  No intermediate step needed.  I hate hills.  Unfortunately, where we live, to bike anywhere interesting requires hills.  And since I'm racing Raleigh, that is probably a plus, not a minus.  Except I don't like them.  I do not like hills.  I do not like to go up.  I do not like to go down.  I do not like them, Sam I am.

I guess I need to tell myself that hills are speedwork in disguise, because my other problem is that my bike is pretty darn slow.  (Actually, in all fairness to my bikes - it is I who is slow, not them.)  Anyway, if riding hills will make me faster, maybe I should think about them in a more kindly light.

I didn't actually solve these myself, because I'm not in elementary school and I have better things to do, but check it out - you can get from HILL to FAST in either 4 steps or 7 steps.

HILL->PILL->PILE->PALE->PACE->FACE->FACT->FAST

HILL->HILT->HALT->HAST->FAST

I'll have to admit I'm partial to the longer ladder, because I don't really use words like HAST all that often, but hey, maybe that means hills can make you faster faster.  :)

You know you wanted a little Miley, right?  Because everyone sings "The Climb" when they're riding hills, right?  Right?