Overcoming New Hurdles: First Coached Workout of the New Year

Welcome 2010, Year of the Ironman! It's been a busy week back home after the holidays. I had spent the past two weeks with my family in the Philippines, celebrating Christmas & the New Year. It was great to get a change of scenery, enjoy some warmer weather, and spent some quality time with my relatives. I was fortunate to get a few great workouts in during my trip as well: some gym time at the beautiful Edsa Shangri-La Hotel, a refreshing swim at my uncle's condominium pool at Fort Bonifacio, followed by a 5 a.m. 10K with my uncles around the University of the Philippines Campus.



After attempting (about two days' worth) to kick the jetlag after my return, I plunged right back into training by getting my rear onto the bike for an interval spin last Tuesday. It was a challenge to do it on my own, but after putting some good tunes on and transforming my living room into its very own solo spin class room, I got right to it and kicked some A. I'm truly discovering my love / hate relationship with cycling -- emphasis on both extremes. At times, when my legs feel heavy and I have to keep spinning, with increasing cadence and speed -- it feels like the most tedious task ever. And yet, once I found my groove & rhythm (much like running) and my adrenaline started shooting all over the place -- I found myself pumped and ready to tackle the next tough interval. Finished nice and strong. And sweaty. No sport makes me sweat as much as cycling / spinning. Love / Hate.

By Wednesday night, I was back with my mentor group, led by the lovely Michelle, and we were out for a brisk 5-miler in San Ramon. We were a smaller group in a dark area, which encouraged me to keep a pretty quick pace (so as not to get lost in the dark in an unknown area) :) Now there's a way to improve your time.

First swim of the New Year was on Thursday evening. Coach Mike told me I looked faster in the pool, to my own surprise. He said it often takes some time away from a sport or activity (and not thinking about it so much), before you see yourself improving and getting more efficient at it. Who'd have thought this would be the case for me and my swim? This set a great precedent for me and did wonders for my confidence in the pool!

...So much so, that I was feeling almost ready for Saturday's workout: A bike ride and a swim.

I can't tell you how much anxiety had been building up in my head over the last several weeks about riding my bike again. With having those first few negative experiences starting out, it was really hard to kick my set of irrational fears about riding. Remember: My first attempt at riding clipess put me off the bike (even spinning) for two whole weeks after injuring myself really badly. Soon after, I had my bike marker set, which left me bruised, swollen and feeling scared out of my mind. After all that, it's been so difficult for my mind or body to be convinced that getting on a bike would be a good idea. So I had all this to think about and anticipate for our Coached Workout in Pleasant Hill today.



But before the big day, I had a night together with some of my teammates: My Fundraiser at the Warriors v. Kings game on Friday. My first NBA game, and for a great cause! We had close to twenty IronTeamers & Friends come out and watch what I would call an excellent game. Exciting win for our Golden State, 108-101. With all your help, I'm inching closer and closer to my minimum -- with a current fundraising total of $2100.33!



So with bike in tow, I drove over to the Pleasant Hill Education Center this morning, preparing to swallow my pride. In my mind, whenever I see everyone else with their bikes, all clipped in and rarin' to go, I just get so intimidated. The majority of the Team has years of experience on me (completing Century Rides, and having arsenals of different thousand-dollar bikes of their own) -- so when I see all of that and just think of how INexperienced I am, well let's just say it's enough to make a small person feel even smaller.

But alas -- I needed to keep the comparisons in check and just focus on calming down, and learning as much as I could. Coach Mike was kind enough to spend some one-on-one time with me, breaking down a bike ride into successive "drills", like starting and stopping. Like anything else, starting and stopping a bike becomes so intuitive to most people that they don't even realize that it takes a few key steps -- pushing off with one foot, letting the bike glide, standing on the pedals, and gently placing your foot back on the ground. Without knowing all this at first, it was very easy for me to get overwhelemed (especially while clipped in the first few times). And so with the way MY mind works, it was key to really break it down into pieces and just repeat, repeat, repeat. With regular sneakers on, at a dirt track. Minus the pressure. Minus the anxiety.

Repetition of starting, gliding, getting a sense of balance (and contol over) of my bike, and coming to a smooth stop did WONDERS for my confidence level and comfort with the bike. That blockage and mental hurdle I had about riding slowly dissipated and I was back to making jokes and being myself again ~ rather than feeling the terror of two wheels and a handlebar. Never did I think I'd reach the point of actually being able to laugh at how I racked myself on the saddle weeks ago, got all torn up and bruised and swollen and have lived to see the day I could actually ride a bike, past the age of seven.

Shortly after, Coach Mike and I went on a little ride. Not quite into full-fledged traffic, but for a short route around some residential, including a few speed bumps and a moderately sized hill (a "pleasant hill" as I coined it, during our climb). Of course, on the way down, I had forgotten all about my anxiety about descends and found myself scared to fly down the mini-hill. But Mike went ahead of me and once I saw how fast he sped down (and that he was okay) I was able to loosen my grip a bit more from the brakes and just ride the hill. The second time around, I just let myself go and I went for it without tensing up.

Before I knew it, our bike clinic and mini-ride was over and I had felt truly accomplished, knowing my biggest fears were now gone. Mike said it was just a matter of spending that time working on the basics, and with a few more focus days like that, I'm not far off from added the clipless shoes into the mix and getting the whole thing down. Success!

After that, we had one of our more challenging swim workouts. Two 50m pieces (2 laps) building up on the effort levels of our stroke, followed by a 100m piece (4 laps) at a high effort level, followed by a 300m piece (12 laps) at a mid-level pace, two more 50s (2 laps) to build again, ending with another 100m (4 laps) at a high effort level. All this, with about 15 second rest intervals in between. Coach Sedonia emphasized that these are the kind of workouts that especially focus on building endurance in the water: Long, continuous pieces, throwing in extra hard and fast pace increases. Again -- if I were given this workout to do on my own, I have no idea how I'd manage. But our coaches (and being in a pool of my teammates all doing the same thing) were like the magic ingredient. My mind literally said: Alright, Maria, this is going to be challenging, but you're going to do it and you're going to be awesome. And just like that, I did it!

To add even more success to the swim workout, our coaches asked if any of us wanted to learn how to do flipturns. I've always thought flipturns are the coolest-looking thing in the water but have always been so afraid to try it. Again, takes me back to the childhood days of summer camp. My friends would show off in the pool, doing all these summersaults, trying to get me to do them too. I'd try one and get all this water up my nose and it would sting so bad. Another try, and it was even worse. And no one seemed to have that problem but me. So again, with an experience like that, why would I ever want to attempt doing that while swimming several consecutive laps during my Ironman training?

Alas, there I was, with another subset of fearless IronTeamers, determined to get this down. I refused to be afraid of summersaults in the pool! After the first couple, sure enough, water up the nose. Coaches Dave and Sedonia said, "Maria, you don't have to learn how to do flipturns. They can be helpful for lap swims but are not a requirement for your open water swim, come race day". It made sense, but something was just telling me to keep at it. I didn't want to have this one box unchecked on my To Accomplish List.

After about five to eight more trys, venturing close to the edge of the pool, flipping and missing the wall, re-flipping after one more stroke and missing the wall again, in one final attempt, I got super close to the wall, did one swift flip, pushed right off the wall, glided on my back, rotated forward and started my freestyle stroke... I did it!!

About twenty minutes or so of core exercises later and the day was done. Another iron day complete and although tired, with a giant smile on my face.



Coach Mike said something earlier in the day about learning to trust myself. So much of building upon one's confidence level -- on the bike, in the water, or anywhere else, surprisingly, is based on how much you're able to simply let go and trust yourself. It's taken an open mind, and will likely take more repetition and practice ~ however slowly but surely, I'm getting there and couldn't be any prouder of myself for overcoming today's personal hurdles.


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Week #9 Workout Summary:

Swim: 3 hours and 0 minutes
Bike: 2 hours and 0 minutes
Run: 2 hours and 0 minutes
Core/Strength: 0 hours and 30 minutes
Total Workout: 7 hours and 30 minutes