Well, in the past two weeks since Iron man, I've run 15 miles, biked about 45 miles, and swum about 2000 meters. Not all at once. it was spread out over mostly this week.
I was surprised to find, as the week went on, I just wore flat down. This morning I swam for about 30 minutes at Lake Cochiti - which, FYI, is warm enough at 65 degrees to eschew the wetsuit and wear my point zero3 fastskin instead - and then went for a 2 mile run afterwards.
Did you read what I just wrote? A TWO. MILE. RUN.
And I was barely able to keep running.
True, the first mile was all uphill, but still: barely able to keep running. Tired legs. Breathless. I complained to Baboo about it and he quizzed me about what I'd been doing this week. Finally, he said, "You can't recover from an Ironman AND be on a diet. You need more carbs." I looked that up and, as usual, he's right:
According to this website, factors that can slow recovery include these that I've been doing for the past two weeks:
* Delay in intake of carbohydrate after exercise.
* Inadequate amounts of carbohydrate.
* Reliance on carbohydrate-rich foods with a low glycemic index.
* High-intensity exercise during recovery.
Oooo. There's that whole "high intensity" thing. For me, most of the time I'm moving I'm honestly going as fast as I can; running any slower would be, well, walking. Or standing still. So, yes, I've been running "hard" and biking "hard". Breathlessly. And drinking sugar-free drinks.
And little did I know, that even though my weight was dropping, I was depriving myself of much-needed carbs that I needed for recovery. I wasn't having problems when I was training with this system, and I figured recovery would be the same.
So well, now I know. I'm eating a large bowl of spaghetti and I have a 12-mile flat run tomorrow, so we'll see how I do. I'll fuel with sports drinks and gels and stop starving myself, at least this week. I've reset my WeightWatcher's Online points thingy to "maintenance"(you can do that) just until after this next half iron, and then I'll carefully go back into weight loss mode after that.
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