Everything came to a halt...

This morning I woke up and my mouth felt "sweet", like I ate a pound of sugar. Which I probably did.

Alyssa was jokingly upset that I ate her FULL box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios as a late night snack and she was looking forward to having some for Breakfast. She was "denied".

I got about 10 hours of sleep and slept in until noon. From sleeping so long in the prone position, my back was tight and sore. I was very careful to move gently to ensure I didn't throw it out.

Inadvertently, with all the sleep I got last night, I followed my Coaches advice. He had sent this email to the Kona qualifiers late last week.

Hi Team,

I hope the training is going well. I just wanted to drop an email with a tip. Your taper is going to really start to kick in next week. One thing that can happen is that people really push the training these final few weeks, which is good, but then once this taper starts their body really starts to let down in an attempt to store up, which is also good. However, a side effect that can happen is that sometimes athletes will catch sniffles or get a sore throat, etc.

There is a way to avoid this! Make it your mantra to start getting extra sleep right now. Give your body that extra time at night to recover now while your workouts are still pretty challenging. This will go a long way to keeping you healthy in the weeks to come. Saving it all up for the week or two before Kona does work, but it can also be a bit of a risk depending on how much recovery you need. So count sheep and sleep. Save all the extra stuff that you might normally do that keeps you up that extra half hour for after the race.

Safe training.

Mark

Even though it was a late night last night, I felt surprisingly good this morning. I was slightly regretful about having a big "party night", as it was not part of the plan. Although, "what can you do, what is done is done, all you can do is move on".

I put on my heart rate monitor before my run and my resting heart rate was lower than I thought it would be, which means last night wasn't too much debauchery. If it was a really bad night, I'd have gone anaerobic doing simple tasks like pumping my bike tires. It's no joke, it's happened to me in the past.

Before today's long run I drank lots of water to make sure my muscles didn't cramp from any beer drinking dehydration. The longer I waited to start my run, the more I didn't want to do it. It was my last 2 hour plus run before Kona. That fact became my motivation "to get out the door and finish strong".

The moment I forced myself out the door, I DID NOT want to continue running. It wasn't a physical issue, it was a mental issue. Last night John made an interesting comment, he reminded me that I did 3 Ironmans in the past 6 months. To add to that, I've also been training hard since early December 2009 when my Ironman China training began.

In the 9 months since then, I've done 23 Century Bike Rides and 28 runs over 2 hours long. I'm ready for a break and I sure felt that way on today's run. I battled with myself mentally and won.

I was well on my way to finishing my 2:40 run when 2:15 into it, a major problem reared it's head and stopped me in my tracks. My groin was in pain, it was chaffed "big time".

The first thing I did was stop and tried to adjust my tri-shorts, it didn't help. Then I tried to "tuck" the boys in, in such a way to prevent it, that didn't help. It was so painful, I couldn't even walk. I had to "phone a friend" and Alice picked me up. I couldn't walk so I waited at the side of the road and stretched.

I'm now worried. "What caused this?" I was thinking it may be the shorts, they are new DeSoto's. Although, I've worn the same style for the past two years with no problems. "Was it from running in my cycling shorts yesterday?" If this chaffing happens to me in Kona, I'd be screwed, the pain is awful.

The moment I got home, I showered and put some "Body Glide" on. It felt much better. Glide is amazing, not only does it relieve the pain, it has something in it that promotes rapid healing. My plan is to continue to train and race in my Desoto shorts and if the chaffing continues I'm going to go back to my 2XU's.

I'm on the fence about doing next weeks Ironman Syracuse "old school" on my 25 year old Centurion bike. I haven't put in any time on the "old steed" and I'm concerned I may injure myself. It may be a better idea to do it next year and try it out at an Olympic distance race.

This week will be clean living until after Ironman Syracuse, then it will be a post-race Sunday night party and back to clean living until after Kona. At least that's the plan. Right now I'm happy with my progress and weight loss and this weekend was a turning point in my training.

I am now beyond the "bonking" phase. I'm back to the "super human Ironman no training will bonk me" phase. To reward myself, I had some KFC tonight and I didn't feel one ounce of guilt. In the last 11 days, I've done 694 km's of total training.

John Barclay was giving me a bit of a bad time for drinking beers this week. I told him "they were recovery beers and if I don't get a buzz, it's all good, they don't count". However, I did notice on yesterday's bike ride that I was peeing "beer suds".

Even though I had a solid weekend of training and physically feel great, I'm ready for a break from training. I couldn't imagine doing one more 2 hour plus training run. I only have one more 2 hour run and 5:15 bike left until Kona. I'm so looking forward to finishing those sessions.

With that said, after Kona I still have the NYC marathon November 9th. I'm not out of the long run training woods just yet.

On Friday, I got an email from Canadian Running Magazine. In their next issue they are going to include some information and pictures from "The house of Payne Beer Run", it's going to be part of a section they're doing on "crazy running events".

I also got an email from Adena's triathlon club coach Nancy. She's asked if I'd like to be a guest speaker to the group. I accepted and it looks like it will be November 14th. I'm not sure what I'm going to talk about and if I'm the ideal role model, but I'm looking forward to it. I hope I can motivate others to know if they put in the time and work hard, even they can get in shape and make it to Kona. If I did it, anyone can do it.

Finally, congratulations is in order to a number of blogging buddies who raced Ironman Wisconsion and Ironman Muskoka 70.3 this weekend. First off, congrats to John Fortin (12:02:21 -1st Ironman), Hugh Ryder (12:4805 - 1st Ironman) and Dave Anderson (14:35:06), they all completed Ironman Wisconsin.

Congratulations to Rodney Buike (5:30:12 - 1st 70.3), John Proc (6:24:15 - 1st 70.3), Brian Bourne (7:04:23 -1st 70.3), Bruno Samuel (6:10:09), Hans Winter (5:58:09) and unfortunately Beatrice Winter wasn't able to finish due to knee injury. I hope I didn't miss anyone. For the record, Ironman Muskoka is a 94 km bike ride, 4 km's longer than a normal 70.3.

Well done to all the guys and enjoy the "guilt free food and beers". Now, I'm going back to sleep, I've been napping all night, "coaches orders".

Long Run - 2:15:17 / 24.48 kms / 5:31 avg per km pace / 139 avg hr