Saturday I’d planned to write about what a great training week I’d had. Because I do want to mention something else, this summary will be a bit abbreviated.
Normally my weekend training starts on Friday, with everything building up to my swim Friday, bike Saturday and my run on Sunday. With a race last weekend we moved around the training somewhat and my weekend started on Thursday with a brutal ride and run combination. Either workout was difficult on its own, but with both in the same day it was a solid start to a 4 day training weekend.
Having had a rough swim at my last race, I pushed pretty hard on my Friday swim, and finished the 3000 meters in 5-7 minutes faster than normal. It could be due to the actual workout that I finished earlier than normal, but I went to bed that night with very tired shoulders.
Next on tap was a 3 hour bike ride. I figured it would be hot, so my fluids were loaded with electrolytes, and I brought a frozen bottle of water for after the ride. There was road work on one of the roads I normally ride that I didn’t want to traverse twice, so the out and back became a loop, a loop of whose distance I wasn’t really certain. The hills on the new roads are a bit better than my normal route. They also have less traffic and more shade as I rode through the state park. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed this course. It is also longer than my normal route. I ended up going 3:23 hours. The entire time I repeated to myself that I’d rather do a longer ride than have to go over that rough road again. It’s about one hour from my start to Grimes county where the road work started, so anything longer than 2 hours will have to use some other route that I’ve got to figure out.
Before I jump into my Sunday run, I need to disclose the chain of events that got me where I am now. Wednesday brought Houston the first real rain in almost 150 days. It was a wonderful feeling running in the rain. Many years ago I hated it, but after running in the heat for so long it was a welcome respite. Unfortunately my shoes didn’t dry in time for my Thursday run and running in wet shoes gave me blisters (which popped and tore up) on both insoles.
I made sure that my shoes were good and dry before running again on Sunday. I also started out with band aids to protect the raw areas. As I stepped out of the house I couldn’t believe how humid it was. It wasn’t hot, but it was like a steam room. Within minutes I was soaked, and not long after that I could feel new blisters developing and the old ones flaring up. I’d planned to run to the trail, do 5 loops, and then run home. Halfway through my second lap I knew I was tearing up my feet. I decided to run one more lap and see if it was getting worse or had stabilized. I’m not sure if it got worse or not, but I knew that doing two more laps was going to do me more damage than the extra 3 miles would do good and abandoned the run. It was a good thing too, as the first step on the hard road surface really started doing damage.
After limping home I removed my shoes only to find them soaked. I’d sweat enough to make them as wet as earlier in the week when running in the rain. My feet looked exactly how they felt, with new blisters and callus damage now on the heels. The band aids I’d put on as protection didn’t stay adhered to my sweaty skin and those areas were exposed and more torn up.
Needless to say I won’t be running sockless for a while so my feet can heal, especially with camp coming up in two weeks and Nationals not much later. I’ll be working up a plan to deal with this in the next few days/weeks, but it is suffice to say that I’ll be wearing socks on my longer runs, and trying different things for race day.
Ah, the joys of being a triathlete! And to think that a full Ironman may be on the horizon makes me wonder what other tortures I will put my body through.
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