IM Canada- base building week #3: late entry + VEGAS

Posted by Rachel

Last week was a "step back" week so I've opted not to post all of my workouts, but trust that I am very good at stepping back. I'll also randomly interject pictures from the girl bloggers' trip to Vegas, since surviving that was the main accomplishment of the week. I remember a time in a my life when I could drink more than two nights consecutively, but this is not that time.

We've all run multiple marathons, but we can't manage to walk or ride escalators in heels. Oh yeah, and we like to keep it classy by hanging out in the beer fridge at Walgreens.

When you're in Vegas but you can't handle having even one more drink, what do you do? The Mandalay Bay aquarium, of course. 

Katie wanted to try to gamble a small amount just for the Vegas experience. I have never played any Vegas game without someone who knows what they are doing by my side (my Dad or Travers). I already know from past experience (with my Dad's money) that I suck at roulette so we went 'balls out' and each put $20 on the Black Jack table, fully prepared to lose it all. In reality, the opposite happened- I came out with $16 more than I started, and Katie with $20. We are the champions of Vegas!!

We bought a drink at the chandelier with our massive winnings.

I suppose I should talk about the Ironman training now, given the blog name. Instead of listing all my workouts, I'll just give an example of a 'good' and a 'needs improvement'.

What was good about my training last week? On Thursday evening I did a 7 mile run with 4 miles at tempo pace and averaged 7:20 for the tempo with a "comfortably strong" approach rather than a "run until you die" approach. That was a better pace than expected for the effort, which is a pleasant and welcome surprise in any workout. 

What could have used improvement? My swim Monday, the day after the previous week's 16 miler, was THE laziest swim I've had in a long time. It's not even that I couldn't move faster, I just lacked all motivation to do so. But since swimming is the least of my IM concerns, I just coasted through the 2400 yards and picked it back up with a tougher workout again Thursday morning (pre- tempo run).

We had an awesome beautiful ride in Red Rock outside of Vegas. Sandwiched in between two trips to Dunkin Donuts, of course. 

(caption not needed!)

This week it's back to hard training, although I'm still recovering from the Vegas weekend where my hours of sleep were half of the amount I would have liked them to be. Then again, at least we got great food while we were there! (Shake Shack meal not shown- devoured too quickly.)