The best shape of my life...maybe...

At this point in my training I've accomplished a lot, a lot of miles on the bike, enough yardage in the pool, and as many run miles as I can handle before getting injured (not a lot). Regardless of the numbers, I'm feeling fit physically and ready to race mentally, but am I really ready?

I know that I'm getting fit, and going crazy; this revelation came over the weekend when I knocked out a rough 95 mile ride that ended with dizziness, stars, and dehydration. I woke up the next morning feeling lazy; a product of skipping my transition run because I didn't want to risk passing out with the homeless people along side Cherry Creek. Also, as the big mileage piles in, I start to forget about the big workouts that I complete just days after their finished. It will be a Monday and I'll start wondering when my next big ride is because the last one seemed so long ago...like on Saturday.

In the past few months I've had a lot of great rides and a lot of rides that didn't go so well. This past weekend I established a new hypothesis for my shitty rides; there's always a reason, figuring it out is the hard part. Dehydration is my suspected culprit. Colorado is insanely dry, I'd actually go out on a limb and say that the typical humidity, when there's not a storm front coming through, is lower than Phoenix. So the dry air dehydrates you from the inside as your breathing rate increases, then you add some consistent sunshine, high altitude, and only drinking a bottle an hour and you are left with a dehydrated Francis. For some dumb reason I have only been averaging a bottle of water an hour on my long rides when I should be hitting 1.5 to 2 bottles an hour. Okay, so I think I have that resolved and will be able to test it out on the 3-six hour rides that I have left in my training. That's right, just three more really big rides, a few 4.5 "shorter" rides and then Ironman. That's exciting news, very exciting.

Since I'm in a recovery week, there won't be too much to write about, but the next two weeks are going to be big, really big. This week involves getting mentally prepared for the weeks to come; then it's taper time and I love taper time.

Go workout.