Slow twitch or Nervous tic

     Last week was was all about nerves. Sunday I took a 32 mile bike ride and went to a run recovery workout at lifetime. That was really pretty great.  I worked Monday Wednesday and Friday which is an odd schedule for me. Tuesday  & Thursday I worked out with Matt my trainer, who does corrective excercises, soft tissue work (I may love this most about him) and strength training. I also had a really good tempo run with my run club Tuesday evening. Thursday is where everything started getting my anxiety levels rising!

     Thursday early morning I met with Nate the run trainer. He has decided to change the way we train. Instead of going with my heart rate zones we are going by pace. His thoughts are my heart rate monitor is unreliable indicator for me and since he has a fresh 5K time that is what we will go with. Hmmmmm well ok, how does this work? So he decides that an 11:20 pace is my threshold pace and then proceeds to breakdown a zone 1, 2, 3, & 4 from this threshold pace. Ok. So here it is:
Zone 1 - 20:00 - 14:37
Zone 2 -14:36 - 12:55
Zone 3 - 12:54 - 12:00
Zone 4 - 12:59 - 11:20
Zone 5 - 11:19 - 10:58
     Tuesdays are your tempo runs and everything else should fall in zones 1 & 2. This will develop slow twitch muscle fibers allowing you to run longer at a faster pace. Uhm, I already have a lot of slow twitch muscle fiber because I am already slow as  shit.  Trust me Michelle, your runs should be easy! It is about time on your feet. How am I going to build endurance at faster paces if I don't work at it. Michelle you need to train your body to use fat stores as fuel instead of glycogen and to rid the muscles of lactic acid. It will help you keep fatigue at bay and run faster for longer periods! By now my eyes are rolling and I am pretty sure Nate has developed a facial tic. Fine Nate, I will try it.

     Later on Thursday I met with Ben the triathlon coach I have hired for  some private sessions to work on swimming. Let me tell you an hour in the pool can drag by!  Face in the water, blow out through your mouth, stare at the black line on the bottom of the pool, left, right,left, breathe, face back down! Swimming was so easy as a kid, idk when it became so complicated. Now Ben is nice and patient but I am inpatient and overly critical.  According to Ben it takes 10,000 perfect repetitions to master something. I think in the one hour session I may have managed 5 perfect ones, so only 9,995 to go. Now I have a facial tic.

    Now some genius decided to post 60 days until my marathon. Thanks for that I may need to vomit now.  I already was nervous about the 15 mile training run on my schedule for Saturday. Especially since Nate wants it slow and now I'm going to be running all day to get it done. Let's see 15 X 14 = 210 minutes or 3 hours & 30 minutes.  Luckily for me I had the Susan Komen 5K on track for Saturday so for 3 of my 15 I got to do at race pace 34:24. The other 12 miles took 2:44. For a total of 3:18:23 running. The last 2 miles my legs were dead. I had plenty of breath and my heart was calm but my legs were tired. I came home and did yoga, a Myrtl routine and foam rolled for about 1.5 hours. I ate, slept, ate and slept.

     Whether it is changing you run training, or swimming form, or just trying something new takes courage, faith and determination. Courage to try it, faith to believe you can, and determination to know you will succeed or drown trying. Sometimes nerves show as a twitch, other times it is a tic and other times you may feel,the need to hurl. So just breath through it until the nerves relax. A friend of mine told me it's 20 seconds till it passes.  Thanks for that Brook I can manage anything for 20 seconds!

Be Epic
Michelle