No one told me that somehow every street in Clermont is called Struggle Street?!? Indeed it seems that every one I have traveled down is, at least . . .

The track only had one road connected to it and turns out that it, too, is called Struggle Street.

We are training here out of the NTC in Clermont and even though my suffering to output ratio has been way out of whack pretty much the entire time I have been here, I am so grateful to have this time to work with Coach and have him check out the swim-bike-run in person. It’s been since my time with Sutto—three years now—since I have really had hands-on coaching and it is so, so fantastic to have a coach who is involved at that level again.

Coach is on deck with the stopwatch during all of our swims, in the car and/or on the bike with us during our rides, and same for the runs. It is so awesome. This morning he put me through an extreme sufferfest treadmill-track combo; I think he wanted to know if I was exaggerating about those “dying animal” noises I refer to here.

Let’s just say that I don’t think he would question that any longer. It was not pretty.

But I always remind myself that quality time on Struggle Street just makes “normal” feel that much better when it returns.

The pics above are from one of the lakes around here (Lake Minneola). They tell me that these signs are up because of gators. Tomorrow we have a lake swim on the schedule. Pretty sure I am more scared of gators than I am of tiny ITU people, even . . . Wish me luck!

Sorry to go MIA! I have been on the road and getting connected to the internet in Clermont, Florida has proved to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated. I think half the issue is that the places where I can get online don’t allow these things:

Yep—Missy Moo, the bike and I are in Clermont for a little visit to Coach Joel’s training camp. Turns out that traveling solo with a puppy across country is fairly challenging. Add a ginormous bike case to the mix and getting here felt like an ironman.

I arrived at my cheap motel on early Wednesday morning and set the alarm to get up for swim practice 3 hours later. However Miss Eva decided to spend at least one of those hours barking at every sound in the hallway, so I went into day one of get-smashed-by-tiny-ITU-people camp with a solid two hours sleep.

As if I needed to add to the challenge! Coach is here with a bunch of his olympic-distance athletes, including three who were actually part of the Olympic Team for Canada in the last games—so we are talking about very fast athletes who specialize in a race that is just about 2 hours long. Speedsters.

What does this mean for me?

Gas station coffee is my new BFF.

And I need a nap. Badly.

Will be back soon now that I think I have internet figured out.

Q from Kati:

My question is about stretching. I am coming back to tris after a year off from surgery. I am finding that I lost so much flexibility that it is really affecting my ability to regain my run, bike, and swim. I have flopped around from some yoga to general stretching. What I would love to hear is about your ‘must do’ stretches and how often you do them.

My answer:

Great question, Kati. I will preface my answer by saying that most people look at me like I am nuts when I answer this question, but here goes . . .

I actually don’t stretch. I haven’t really stretched in years. On one hand, this is a bummer, because I actually love yoga. When I am retired from racing professionally, I will probably go back to it at least a couple of times per week.

However, if you’ve been reading here for awhile you probably know that much of the way I train and race today was shaped by my experiences training under Brett Sutton. When I joined his squad in the fall of 2005, I was practicing yoga for about 5-6 hours per week on top of my swim-bike-run training. But it turned out that one of the many things that I enjoyed which he did not permit—in addition to eating bread and hydrating during swim practice—was stretching. Anyone he even saw stretching would get yelled at.

Training under Brett was an “all-or-nothing” thing. He outlawed stretching, so I didn’t stretch. And—touch wood—I essentially never got injured (I had a hip fracture before my time with Sutto), and got faster. So I have stuck with it.

Am I flexible?

No.

But I have done okay, and I don’t think flexibility is the limiter between me and what I have yet to accomplish. Plus, the way that Sutto always explained why we should not stretch made sense to me. What he said was that for my little short-strided ironman shuffle, pedaling a bike, and swimming freestyle the way we do, we “didn’t need range of motion.” I can still see him now, standing there, doing a furious bike-pedaling/ shuffling/ swimming simulation, saying, “Do you think you need range of motion to do this, or this?!?”

He argued that people often turn niggles into injuries or exacerbate existing injuries by stretching the heck out of them, which seems to be people’s natural instinct. So his point was that the potential gain in stretching was just not worth the risk.

There are a couple of things that I do which I think make my body feel better before and after hard training and racing in much the same way that stretching did. These are:

• Massage: I try to get deep-tissue sports massage once per week. We have an amazing therapist here in Tucson, Bill Kruse, who works exclusively with a few professional athletes and the University of Arizona Track & Field and Cross Country teams. He is an expert in dealing with beat-up bodies like ours!
• Chiropractic Work: We also have an awesome chiropractor here in Tucson, Dr. Eric Vindiola, at The Joint. This is a walk-in clinic, so Monday through Friday we can drop in anytime and Dr. Eric will put us back together. His services are affordable and efficient; if you are training in Tucson and every need an adjustment, you can drop in most anytime Monday through Friday!
• Recovery Pump: I have talked frequently here about how these recovery boots work for my recovery after training each day. You can check out a full blog on it here. Also, I see people searching often for my Recovery Pump affiliate code, so here it is again: A11021 . This gets you free ground shipping and $25 off.
• Foam rolling: If you don’t have a foam roller, get one! This is a super-cheap and quick feel-good option. Just last Tuesday I had a pair of very tight, beat-up legs that honestly didn’t even loosen up during my whole first run of the day. I knew I had to smash out some speedwork on the track, so I made myself spend a whopping 3-4 minutes with the foam roller beforehand, the legs loosened up, and I had one of my best track sessions yet.

I am very pleased to report that my body is feeling pretty decent today after yesterday’s run effort. I was able to test it swimming, biking, and running today and it held up alright. Again, I am thankful for Coach Joel’s training for being able to run that pace for 13+++ miles and not be at least somewhat dysfunctional today. As annoyed as I was about the race course distance and all, I am appreciating the fact that my run confirmed that we are indeed on the right track here and the work is working!

Speaking of which: yesterday morning while I was having my little half marathon smashfest workout here in Arizona, one of my star athletes was having her own in Austin.

I told you about Ms. Jennifer and her 26th-birthday smashfest party a couple of weeks ago. Well yesterday she had her first progress-check of the season at the Austin Livestrong Half Marathon. I actually told Jen ahead of time that I wished we were in the same city and could run the same race because I was pretty darn sure that she would be chasing me down. And indeed she would have been! Nothing like having speedy athletes to keep a coach on her toes–I love this!

Jennifer busted out a 3-minute half marathon PR and ran a 1:29. Check out her report here. And you might want to watch that blog as I think this is just the beginning of what is going to be a great season, with many more to come!

Well I have good news and bad news about today’s half marathon. As I shared here, I went into this race looking to get rid of my old half marathon PR, which had stood for 7 years–since 2005! I knew it was a 1:28-something so I just looked it up: 1:28.57.

The good news: I hit 13.1 miles (21.1 kilometers) at 1:26.30.
The bad news: The finishline was not there. I still had to run 1 minute and 42 more seconds to cross the line. My garmin read 21.53 kilometers and 1:28.12 at the finishline.

So I’m a little bummed as I don’t get a lot of chances to better my time at this distance, and I don’t like having an asterisk by my PR! Now of course I really want to figure out a way to do another half marathon in the next few months …

Rationally, though, I have to say that I am pleased with how my running has progressed in just a few months of work with Coach Joel. We have been doing a lot of training, and focusing on the bike of late, but I can see my run coming along as well.

For me to be able to run the pace I did today and have it feel controlled (not trying to say I was holding back–I wasn’t, and could not have run faster than I did today) is a big step forward. I went for it from the start as I thought I would need to force the speed a bit up front because it still does not come naturally for me; just on Thursday, my legs were so full of lead that I literally could not run one minute at half marathon pace!

But apparently my first easy day in about two months—yesterday—worked some magic because my first miles were 6:12 and 6:17 and I actually did not feel like I was sprinting woohoo! I did get slower from there as my first half (the 10.55km half, that is) was 42:20 and my 21.1 km time was 1:26.30, but I never felt bad—just a gradual tightening of the legs and I got to the point where I just couldn’t turn them over any faster than I was doing.

All in all, I am pleased with my run, but just annoyed with this race, as I didn’t need to travel all the way to the other side of Phoenix to run a slow course!

Someone else had a big day today too . . .

It’s a rough life when you’re a puppy!