Week 7: In L.A.

This will be short. I am tired. Have I mentioned I’m racing my first 50K in three weeks? And we’re in the ‘you really need to run a lot’ period of training.

I went to L.A. this weekend on a whirlwind 52-hour tour to visit some friends. That meant I wasn’t exactly “plugged in” so to speak. I sort of zoned out, instead, ate a lot of cookies, did some running. Friday afternoon, after I met a friend for lunch, I rolled over to the Coliseum pool (relic of the Olympics, now a $3.50 public pool, L.A. for the win). And I could not figure out what length this goddamn pool was, why they had put the bulkhead in somewhere weird. The lifeguard said “it’s 25” and I said, “no, it’s not.” I can close my eyes and swim 25 yards. This was not that. This wasn’t even 25 meters, I was positive. It was something weird.

Turned out it was 27.5m. But my workout and intervals and times were all set for 25y, so I had to swim almost 20% more on everything. Ugh. I can not even express to you how much this sucked. I could tell you “it sucked but I got it done and it was a total slog.” Except, seriously. I almost got out of the pool and gave up. And then when I didn’t get out, I felt like I was swimming in place. And then I got it done eventually. Not amazingly. I had to burn a lot more matches, though, than I wanted to burn on a random middle-of-the-road workout day.

And then on Saturday I ran 16 miles from my friend’s house to meet her for a hike in Temescal Canyon. It was a classic L.A. beach run, down the beach bike path all through Venice, Santa Monica, almost to Malibu. It was also a bit of a slog. I actually got the iPod out, that’s how slog-y it was. I’m sure there are people who love running along the beach. Or, rather, I think there are people who think they like running along the beach. But in reality it’s a mindfuck and the cement path just pounds your legs and everything hurts and it never ends. Trust me. I’ve done a lot of beach path running. It’s not as awesome as it sounds.

But it also got done. And my legs never really felt worse. Actually, they felt OK, and I felt OK. And then I ran “fast” on Sunday and weighted backpack stair’d today.

A lot of days I don’t really know how to explain what I do or what I want to do or anything about my life. A lot of days it feels like I’m just sort of dicking around and like I should PULL IT TOGETHER ALREADY. But then sometimes I tell myself if you just do the workouts, it doesn’t matter how you feel about them. Just keep logging the work, the days, getting it done. Eventually it’ll click. I hope.

You can read all my weekly recaps of being a second year pro triathlete.