13:30

With just under six months to go until Ironman Canada, I'm in my second base-building week and am starting to adjust to the volume. Maybe this thing is achievable after all....but there is still lots of work to do.

This past week I logged 13 hours, 30 minutes and actually enjoyed most of it to boot! Having the winter Olympics in the background was a great motivator as well as the unseasonably warm weather.

I spent 6:30 on the bike, 5 hours running and 2 hours swimming, including a 100k ride on Saturday morning and a 20-mile run on Sunday morning. Admittedly, I freaked out a little early in the week upon realizing that I only have 7 weeks to go until the Boston marathon with no 30k+ runs under my belt, but am feeling a little more confident about my race preparations after having put in the 20-miler on Sunday at a 4:57 pace.

Last year this time I was logging 100+ km weeks, so it will be interesting to see how the lower run volume and massive amounts of cross-training impact my marathon. It is really strange to me to spend more time on the bike than running :) Somewhat interesting, however, is that my average run pace is faster than in previous training blocks - this week was 61 km at 4:59, the previous week 57km at 4:38. I attribute this to more high quality run workouts and fewer recovery runs. Only time will tell if this approach translates to success on race day.

Pre- and post-workout nutrition is still a challenge, and I am struggling a bit to manage my diet. So. Hungry. All the time. I feel like I'm eating constantly and yet still having hunger pangs pretty regularly, which is really surprising because I estimate that I am consuming in the neighbourhood of 2800-3000 calories a day. It's also really hard to juggle eating well with the training volume, full-time work and life in general...damn those gummy bears!