The Bet

The other night on one of our doggy walks, Terry said out of the blue: "I think, I am going vegan!"

Me: Um... okay.
T: Yes, I don't need meat.
Me: Um... okay.
T: I can do that for at least a couple of days, maybe a week.
Me: Do you want to bet on it?
T: You are going to lose, I can easily live off omletts and stuff for a week.
Me: That would be going vegetarian. You said you want to go vegan. That means no animal products whatsoever.

Silence.

T: What is the wager?
Me: The hedge trimmer, that you have been talking about the last couple of days!

Silence... for the next 5 minutes.

T: Okay, I am going to do it.

Today is Terry's first day of a one week vegan diet. Yesterday, we made a huge grocery haul at Costco stocking up on fruits, veggies, oatmeal, bocca burgers and madras lentils.

Good luck, babe!! ;-)

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We are now at T -4 weeks for the Charleston Half and I hit some major volume in the last two days and this week is going to be even bigger in overall volume.

But before I get into this week's madness, let's have a look at the past weekend:


On Saturday, we met up with our friend Stacy (my partner in crime for AOMM) for 60 miles on the bike. She is currently training for Ironman Texas and had a cutback week... I see the irony in that! ;-) After the bike, Terry and I had a 4 mile brick on tap while she would have to do 8 miles.

The ride started out quite pleasant, the temperature was just right, the rain clouds moved out of the way and the wind hadn't moved in yet. Our first 10 plus miles were warm-up and then we had a 20 mile hard effort on tap. Later, I read in Training Peaks, that I was supposed to draft off Terry for those 20 hard miles, but I failed to read the instructions completely and ended up doing it without the benefit of the draft. By that time, the wind had kicked in and I was working my tail off. After those 20 miles (mile 31 of the ride) my legs just felt cooked. The next 10 miles, I just went through the motions, but eventually had to tell my training partners, that I felt less than stellar. We then stopped at a gas station and I had a huge Snickers bar, thinking that I might be fighting off a bonk, but even the Snickers didn't make much of a difference. I was one happy camper, when we finally got back to her house after 60 miles, but dang, there was still this 4 mile brick.

Since both Stacy and Terry are so much faster runners than I am, we split up for this brick after quick instructions from Stacy on how to get to a river path in her subdivision. The first mile through the subdivision was very hilly, but once I was on the river path, it was fairly flat. Instead of doing two loops around, I did one loop and then went straight down to the river again, to cut out one mile of hills, because my quads were screaming bloody murder at this point.

The drive home was quite painful. I just felt the lactid acid accumulating in my legs and didn't know how to sit anymore. We stopped to pick up some really unhealthy food on our way home and it took them forever to get our order done and I was just wiggling around whenever I wasn't completely zonked out. After our late lunch and squeezing myself into my recovery socks, we took the dog out for a 3 mile walk... That finally made me feel somewhat normal again. Still, I was dreading the 12 miles run planned for Sunday.

I wore my knee high recovery socks (sexy right?) to bed that night and felt cautiously optimistic, since I was sleeping like a rock for around 9 hours. After a light breakfast and skyping with my mom, I hit the bunny trail and wouldn't you know... I felt pretty good. Actually, I felt so good, that I decided to make a half marathon out of the 12 miles on the plan. Kaboom!

This weekend has me feeling pretty good about the half ironman training at this point. Even though Saturday was a rough day for me (better in training than on race day), I am very happy about how my legs bounced back. This week will have some serious volume and a couple of two a days, but it's now or never to get the high volume in. Before we know it, it will be time to taper.