Sorry to hear your race didn't go the way you wanted, but good on you for making the adult decision not to do any further damage. You'll kill it next time!
Last week's goals: run x 5: win with 7 swim x 1: win with 2 bike x 1: win core/strength x 4: win ..and I foam rolled again!
This was a tough week but held big rewards. I finally figured out I'd fallen into a nutritional trap again - in an effort to reduce my sugar intake and because my brain was telling me "it's winter; you don't train much so you don't need much carbohydrate" I'd moved toward a higher protein & fat diet, while putting in 12-14hrs of training per week. I know this doesn't work for me. I've tried paleo before, and the result was the same this time: steadily increasing weight with classic signs of hypothyroid. I finally put it together and started adding back starches last Monday; by Tuesday evening I was a whole new person, and I dropped 2lbs last week. Moral: don't let what other people say works for them cloud your judgement about what you've proven works for you.
This came just in time, too, as I ended up doing a big back-to-back weekend, just as winter came howling back. We went from 11c on Wednesday to a high of -7c on Saturday while I ran for 3h20m / 26km at Huron Natural Area, finishing at 6:30pm - just after sunset.
I got 6hrs of interrupted sleep (honestly, a cat who howls in the night and a husband who snores are a bloody trial sometimes), then was taking off at 8am (and -11c) to spend the morning straggling behind 50 or so people who came down to Dundas Valley for a sanctioned training run on the new Sulphur Springs course. I took 2h40m to do the 20k loop - slower than basically anyone else that showed up, so despite the "group run" I was by myself all morning in the frigid air. The sunshine was pretty, though, and I managed to keep my water from freezing.
Part of the reason I was so slow on Sunday was the mud had frozen with deep footprints in it on the Headwaters trail, so I had to carefully pick my way through to protect my ankle. Fortunately I was successful - it held up quite well, so I was able to get a double run in yesterday after clocking 84.4km/52.4mi for last week.
I also tried making Allen Lim's rice cakes - just with eggs and soy sauce, no bacon - to attempt fueling without sugar. I tried one per hour on Saturday and almost decorated the trail with the 2nd one, then ended up having nothing else but water for that run. Sunday I only had the 1 rice cake (slightly dried out and half-frozen; not an improvement) at 1h10m and about a litre of water. Don't think I'll bother making those again - I do like a turkey wrap a few hours into an ultra and have a favourite cookie for racing, but I have gels that work for me and I may just stick to them. I'll experiment a little more (partly because I hate the expense of gels for the volume of training & racing I'm doing) but I'm not willing to sacrifice a happy belly for lower sugar intake.
This week's goals: run x 5
swim x 1
bike x 1
core/strength x 4
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ill advised racing inc.