T-7 weeks: "Build 1 Recovery Week - Last Big Breather"

Dear Papa,

What a week! It's late evening on Sunday, and I'm only now having the time to sit down and write things up.

This week was a recovery week, and I really needed it! As I told you last week, I was starting to feel pretty exhausted - it was like I could just always sleep and never really got to the point where I felt well rested. I started recovery a bit early end of last week, and after this week of slowing things down a bit, I'm starting to feel on top of my strength again.

The week still included a fairly hard 3-hour indoor ride on Tuesday, a brick on Thursday that felt pretty challenging, and a 9-mile tempo run on Saturday, so it wasn't quite like I was relaxing, but it was all well within what I could do without accumulating additional fatigue, and now, I'm ready to go into the last build block of the training plan. I also estimated my FTP to have gone up a bit more, and as I tried to match my heart rate zones with my power zones without having to go through another FTP test, I increased it another 5%. It made the workouts a lot harder, but unfortunately, the zones now match up pretty well, so I guess that's the power I'm supposed to be pushing at this stage.

Quick summary of the week: 3 swims with 8,500 yards in 2:45h, 3 bike rides with 105 miles in 5:30h, two runs with 15 miles in 2:30h, and 30 mins of gentle yoga. All in all 11:15h stretched across 9 workouts. Still a lot of hours, so realizing that this felt like recovery tells me that I'm getting stronger and that I've been putting a lot of strain on my body. One more block! Then peak and taper... and then, the race! 7 weeks away - impossible to think about.

We had a really wonderful week with Jim's son Jacob and his daughter Josie visiting us for the weekend, and Jim's daughter Sarah and her husband Jono also flew in from Atlanta for Blair's baby blessing today. We spent all day Saturday together, had brunch, and went to the Air and Space Museum on the mall, which the kids loved. It was a ton of fun to have them all in town, they're just awesome and such a good group. So grateful they took the time to come out to DC for this!

It was interesting to talk to both Jacob and Jono this weekend about my training. Both of them have done at least one Ironman, and learning about how they felt at this stage, what their training plan looked like, and what that did (or didn't do) for their race readiness helped put some things into perspective. I've been upping my mileage on the long runs in the past weeks more than my training plan originally called for, as I got nervous about having to run a full marathon at the end and not having put in the same mileage as for previous Ironman trainings, but the more people I talk to, the more I realize that I'm probably ahead of the game with my running. Time to simply trust the plan and roll with it!

One night this week, I had an incredibly sad dream about you. I have been journaling about my dreams in the past weeks, but this time, I was so shaken that I didn't feel like writing in the moment, and now I have already forgotten what it was actually about. I believe it involved you being alive but knowing that you would have to die if we didn't do something about it fast, and we weren't succeeding in preventing it from happening. Sometimes, the realization that you're not with us anymore still shakes me to my core. It's so unbelievable. So incredibly sad. Sometimes I just want to throw something at the wall and scream, just to relieve myself of all the sadness and anger that's still sitting on the bottom of my throat. But that's not going to bring you back either...

The closer I'm getting to the race, the more I'm looking forward to it and to the feeling of doing this for and with you! I left my story on the Ironman page when signing up for the race, and they got in touch with me this week, telling me that they felt moved by our story and that they will try to let the announcers know to mention your name when I make it to the finish line. I hope that will work out!

I love you so much! Hope you're loving your time up there, and I hope you know that you are missed so very much down here! I wish I could have you back just for a day to hang with you and talk to you about all the things I never had a chance to.

Maybe one day, we'll have that chance, both in a better place! I want to believe we do!

With all my love, Papa!

Kathrin

P.S. Dear Reader, if you have comments, questions, memories, or thoughts to share, please leave a comment (and leave your name in the comment so I know who it's from). I would love to hear from you!

Go to the full list of blog posts or read more about the project Ironman for Papa