Week of recovery is almost up

It has now been 1 week since I completed my 10th Ironman. I had been looking forward to a real week off and it did not disappoint. Well, possibly the only disappointing thing was that indulging in whatever not-so-good-for-me foods I had been fantasizing for months prior didn't prove to be nearly as much fun as I thought I would be. Truly the eyes are bigger than the stomach. In fact, I actually had myself an unplanned 20-hour fast when my stomach finally revolted on me Wednesday afternoon and I found myself unable to even stand the smell of food until sometime the following morning. I don't even know what set it off. Chicken salad for lunch maybe? Who knows? I'm actually looking forward to getting back to eating right starting tomorrow. I can just tell what a difference it makes with how I feel. I'm sure my stomach will thank me also. I will, however, miss eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast and switching back to egg whites, which I have not missed in the slightest. I had a child-like moment of excitement as I poured myself a bowl yesterday morning and a toy came out! But I'm a good aunt, and since I don't really have much use for an Ice Age character pencil topper, I gave it to my 6-year old niece.

There was a tiny bit of training this week, mostly in the form of hour-long easy rides at insanely slow speeds in which my heart rate shot up with little effort. I probably would've been even slower, but so far I've been too lazy to switch out my race wheels for the training wheels. I had an easy, painless swim and today I went out for a run for the first time. I mentioned before how my foot decided to bother me in the final 2 miless or so of the marathon last weekend, and since then it's been hurting. I experienced the same thing last year, only to a much greater degree. I got it checked out on Friday and the doctor agreed that it was the same issue, but not nearly as bad. So I opted to give running a shot today as planned. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. Bottom line is that it didn't seem to make it feel worse, so hopefully it will only continue to get better. I was ridiculously slow, but whatever. Aside from the foot, all other residual soreness seems to be pretty much gone. That includes the bruise on the shoulder from my graceful acrobatic maneuver over that cone at mile 25.7.

It's nice for things to be so different this year. Last year at this point I was aimless, lost, dejected. I was about to hit rock bottom at Timberman. I thought maybe I'd sign up for some fun events, but I opted instead to stop entering events and having horrible results. It's nice to have some real goals again, and actually believe that I have the ability to attain them.

I have also spent the week sleeping lots, eating the occasional ice cream, staying up too late (last night was midnight) hanging out with friends and family, swimming just because I wanted to get in the water and not because I had to do a workout, and looking forward to training again!