Week 23: Time to go back to basics

I missed the post for last week because I was in Florida "previewing" the Gulf Coast Course which is kind of a joke in the sense that I'm doing the swim part of a relay and didn't need to bike or run the rest of the course.  But it is good previewing for IMFL.  And the swim was quite the eye opener.  I never imagined that there would be so much fog that I would be unable to sight.  And we stopped so many times that I became seasick.  So Gulf Coast really will teach me what IMFL will be like.

With that said, the buoyancy was out of this world.  Between the wetsuit and the salt water (and the current), I don't think I was actually swimming.  It was more like steering.  I wasn't kicking hardly at all.  I had to remind myself to kick.  And each pull of my arm sent me skyrocketing forwards.  It must be what its like to do Augusta 70.3.  We were swimming parallel to the beach so if we had been swimming out to sea, it would have been different.  I didn't do the 2nd swim but my friends told me that when they reversed direction, it was swimming as hard as they could just to "stand still". 

So I'm ready for rough waters, yes it was pretty rough, and FOG.  I don't know if I'm ready for 1.2 miles of it but it's coming soon.  I'm quite comfortable doing 1.2 miles in a pool or a lake.  I'm just wondering what it will be like in the open sea.

Now on to the bike.  We decided that riding a bike in aero position with lots of drunk and crazed teens around us was not a good idea.  So we drove out to the tail end of the course and did 8.5 mile loops until we got dizzy and decided a 4 mile stretch of freeway would be ok to get to the next 8.5 mile loop of the course.  The first one was Pine Log Road and it is NOT smooth sailing.  It's ok...just not as perfect as the other road, Steel Mill, was.  Steel Mill was like a dream.  Florida is flat.  It is not false flat like Silver Comet.  It is FLAT.

There was a lot of wind but somehow it only bothered me for very short sections.  The part on the highway was very fast both ways..kind of weird...how the heck did I go 20 mph both ways?  And I was not riding aero.  I ended up averaging 16.5 mph for 52 miles.  It's the fastest I have ever gone for that distance.  But the most interesting part to me is I didn't push.  I kept my heart rate at 5-10 beats under LT.  I was never breathing hard or really even sweating.  Low gear and high cadence and low heart rate.  The ride was my favorite part of the weekend.

So why did I name this "back to the basics"?  The IMFL course is where I messed up my ankle.  It was over 5 months ago.  When I was down there and realized it had been 5 months, I knew I had to get my act together and get my ankle fixed.  Although I have been to two "doctors", a massage therapist and an acupunturist, I have never been to a REAL doctor.  An MD.  Tomorrow I go back to the basics and see a Sports Medicine Doctor.  I'm going to find out what is wrong.  And together we will fix it.  I'm not about to give up what I love most doing.  There has to be a reason for the pain to continue this long.