The training camp has continued to involve something hard every day. Tuesday we did a run / swim in the morning at the 27.5 meter pool. We keep doing the same workouts we would in the 25 yard pool, but instead of 5,000 yards we’re actually getting in 5500 meters. It’s almost like free mileage because you don’t really notice it when the walls are just a little farther apart. (btw, my hormone level must be getting messed with from all this training because I was watching 24 on Hulu last night and one of the actors said, “just tell me how much further it is”, which annoyed the crap out of me because I couldn’t correct her. Why can’t people figure out the difference between fUrther and fArther? Maybe it’s just me, I’m sure I make my own grammatical errors. And I’ve also bean craving chocolate, so it has to be the training.) Anyway, the afternoon run was a hard one. 4×8 minutes with 1 minute rest holding the fastest possible average. It was not unlike a 10k for time, and I was definitely the slowest of the boys still. It was after the first interval that I stopped for a quick second to retie my shoe when Kathy Tremblay caught me and I realized that I had better get my act together if I didn’t want to be “chicked” (when a guy is beaten by a girl – quite the modest making moment when it happens at this level). I managed to outrun her on the last three intervals, but I was closer to her than I was to the next guy ahead of me.

Wednesday we did what basically amounted to a 5k TT on the bike. To clarify, that’s 5,000 vertical feet. We started on the side of Mt. Haleakala and rode 3×20 minutes with 5 minutes “easy” in between. The “easy” part, however, was still uphill and I never got my HR even close to a recovery rate. We actually finished the ride at about 4700 feet, but the total ascent for the ride was almost exactly 5,000 ft, according to my Edge 705. This ride marked the turning point for me. I started off conservatively on the first interval and found myself riding with Andrew Russell and Kathy (yeah, she’s crazy strong – and really nice too). The three of us rode together for for the second interval at a stronger pace, then on the last interval Kathy dropped back and after 11 minutes I was riding solo as Andrew’s legs started telling him about the past 17 days of training he’s put into them. It’s pretty unbelievable to think that an hour at my best effort didn’t even get me half way to the 10,000ft peak, but it was still a great training day.

Which brings me to today. Another double run with a swim in between. We repeated last weeks run workout of 24x 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds “easier”. This time I didn’t try to stay with the group leaders, Simon Whitfield and Kyle Jones. I started off with the main group and found myself running in fourth position with Kyle an Simon long gone and Jeff Phillips coming back to me ever so slowly. Eventually I passed Jeff, ran with him for 5 or 6 more intervals, then fell back as he found a second wind. It was definitely a successful workout, if only because I didn’t do anything dumb like last week. Hooray for small victories!

(A quick plug for my K-Swiss K’Ona trainers. I’ve been really pleased how they handle fast running through uneven surfaces like the cane fields and on grass. I haven’t twisted my ankle once, and normally I’m the type to roll an ankle easily when I pick up the pace on trails. I’m very impressed.)

Tomorrow we were planning to ride up to the peak of Haleakala, but since everyone seems fatigued we’re going to do another 4 hour “base ride” – which means a 4 hour hammer-fest on the Simon-Pain-Train. I’d much rather ride up the mountain at a constant effort, and get some cool pictures to replace the photo above, which I took from the peak in 2006 with my aluminum Felt (complete with the strap on bars and fold-up pads). Oh well. Looks like I’ll have to come back to  Maui again to get in my crater ride.

Click on these guys sites that I’m training with (and linking to). All but Jeff have particularly good blogs with lots of pictures, as do Kirsten Sweetland and Andrew McCartney.

Saturday night was one of the roughest night of sleep I can remember. My skin was itching, smoldering, goose bumped, and otherwise completely lacking in ability to control temperature. Meanwhile, my insides were churning, I had to get up to pee 6 times during the night, I discovered what it would feel like to have the roof of your mouth sun burnt (and some other parts that don’t normally see much sunlight). But by morning I felt 25% better, and went for my “long run” of just 90 minutes. It was the slowest long run of the past 2 years of training. I could not get my heart rate above about 140, my legs wouldn’t turn over faster than about 85 steps per minute (all this is measured on my Garmin 310XT), and every slight incline felt like trying to climb K2. Luckily, I did my run on my own so I could get it out of the way before the sun came up. Had I been with the rest of the group, I would have felt much worse about myself while watching Simon drop Kyle drop everyone else while running well under 6 minute miles (all of them) for nearly an hour. I might have cried.

After the long run I went for a 90 minute "base ride” which had similar physiological discoveries to my run: no power, no speed. I finished early and sat around waiting for my skin to heal for most of the day, and by the time the rest of the guys were ready for their second run I was actually feeling like it might help. We ran 30 minutes and when I came back my ankles, feet, and hands were noticeably less swollen than before. Hooray!

Today, however, was a whole new world. We swam in a public pool with 27.5m lanes (the other side of the bulkhead was measured to 25 yards, but was crowded). We did a 5k set, which was really a 5.5k set, during which I was reminded that I was never particularly good with a pull buoy (still confuses me that I can be a bad kicker, bad puller, and  somehow put them together alright). I stayed with most of the guys for the workout, but Andrew McCartney (AMac) is unquestionably part dolphin – he kicked my butt. 

The main workout of the day was this afternoon. We rode a little over 2 hours, with 60 minutes where we split into groups and were supposed to ride together at a hard tempo – breakaway simulation. I was put with the B group, which ended up being the most confused group of all. None of us had done the workout the previous week, so we didn’t know the loop. All of us have had health issues we’re getting over. And we were all at various stages of feeling good. I kept feeling better during the ride, AMac misheard the coach and thought he was only doing 20 minutes, and Jeff felt terrible from the start and was dropped back with the girls group. This meant that after 20 minutes I found myself doing a solo TT into a headwind – no fun at all! I saw the coach pulled over on the side and stopped to ask what I should do, and he said some heated words in French, then told me to wait for AMac, who was not supposed to stop after 20 minutes after all. I did and we ended up working together pretty well for the rest of the ride. All except the part where we were on a false flat downhill and I decided I felt good enough to do a 34mph pull for 4 minutes. That’s where I found myself alone the second time. Oops.

So all in all I’m feeling 80% better. Still a little puffy, but nearly back to Seattleite pasty skin again. My run tonight was still a bit slow, but I felt in control of that slowness, and not forced into it like yesterday.

The state of my skin the past 48 hours has gone from “don’t want to whine and make excuses” to “wow this really hurts, I can’t believe I let myself get this burned” to “twitterable, but I’ll try not to sound too complainy” to “full on bloggable.”

I’ve been taking antibiotics the past 9 days. Was supposed to go another day, but I finally called a doc at home who sent me see the doctor that Brent McMahon is staying with. He took one look and said, “that is definitely an allergic reaction, stop taking the antibiotics”. See, the strange part is that I was “burned” under my jersey after yesterday’s 4 hour ride, and it kept getting worse through the ride, and even when during the ride to the beach this morning. I layered on the HIC 2x Suncblock (I’ve raved about that stuff before, you can put on one coat and it’ll protect you until you get it off with soap). I ran with a shirt on. I was done early in the day. I mean – I’ve been here nearly 6 weeks without any sun burn, you’d think that I would have it down, eh? But I just kept getting redder, feeling sick, nausea, headache, swollen joints, and I was red under all my clothes and even my eyes looked bright red.

The verdict is I’m allergic to sulfur medications, and if I had continued I could have developed a much worse condition, which would have required TUE (theraputic use exemptions) drug forms and time off from training. Right now the doc said I should stay out of the sun as much as I can, wear lots of good sunblock, stop taking the drugs and use Claritin to get over it. Luckily, the infected cut I started taking the drugs for has healed, so I should be fine without another round of antibiotics.

So good! And now I can get back to training, feeling strong, and hitting the Kefer to get my GI tract back on schedule! As for the title question between rash and burn? Hard choice, at least the rash isn’t from stupidity of neglecting sunblock, but it sure hurts. (And swimming on a reef and getting an infected food three weeks ago was not without stupidity.)

Every time you do a new workout you should build into and get to know how your body is going to react. Today I didn’t do that. We started a set of 22x 30” at 5k+ pace 30” tempo (coach said easy, but it was only relative). I tried to stay with Simon and Kyle, succeeded for a few of the intervals and dropped the rest of the group – then was dropped and passed by everyone else in the group. Oops. At least it was fun running in the cane fields and being with a group. Maybe tomorrow I’ll hold back a little more. I can tell the fatigue is going to catch up with me very quickly here on Maui.