It's been about two months since my last post, and frankly I've just been waiting to feel like I am getting fit again before sitting down and getting the blog going. Since my last post in mid-February (which seems like yesterday) a lot has happened, and not just with training.
While I was able to get my running going again, slowly, in February, in March I turned 32 years old (I can't freakin' believe it, but my body does tell me OFTEN that it's true) and once again celebrated being Irish with lots of my friends in Denver. Later in the month, I finally booked my Fall trip to go back to Europe for a couple weeks to visit friends. I also found out that the rashes that had been coming and going on my body were actually a result of food-allergies!?! Seriously, I found out that I have a very strong allergy to Wheat, Corn and Almonds. A few other minor allergies are in the mix too (like peaches, pears, strawberries, etc.) but those are the big 3. So from mid- March thru today I have steadily been trying to adapt my diet to account for this, but wheat and corn are in pretty much everything that I previously ate... pasta, flour, tortillas, sauces, BEER, bread, and on and on... so there have been a lot of mistakes. Unfortunately, now that I have cut the majority of that stuff out of my diet, now when I do mess up and eat it the reactions are much worse.
Luckily, my mom and friends have stepped in to try to help me out with meal ideas, etc. Mom even went out and bought a bread machine and has been baking me gluten-free bread regularly (thanks mom!). It's been a huge adjustment and definitely has been effecting body weight, energy levels, etc. with training. Apparently, a lot of pro endurance athletes out there either have similar allergies or have chosen to cut Gluten out of their diets on purpose.
Over the past few months I have also been working a lot (50+ hrs/wk), which in addition to Maddie, a social life and sleeping has limited the amount of time that I can really commit to training. At first this was alright as I was just starting to ramp volume up again and get my body readjusted to training. During that time I cut my weight back down to the 166-167.5lbs range and got the body fat percentage from 7.0% in Feb to 6.5% currently.
I've been finding that a 9-12 hr/wk of training is about what I have been able to fit in. Last week was a pretty common week for example and my volumes were 11K swimming, 63.5mi biking, 42mi running. While the swim and bike volumes are significantly lower than they once were, I am very pleased to be running over 40mi a week again! I jumped in a 5K a few weeks ago before having even made it back to the track and managed a 17:00 effort at altitude, which is the fastest that I have raced the distance since '09. I'm definitely still lacking in endurance, but this week is the Cherry Creek Sneak 10-miler, which I'm sure will be a humbling experience but hopefully will be a good benchmark for me as I begin to focus in on my early season goal of a good race at the Ironman Boise 70.3 on June 9th.
More to come soon... thanks for reading!
