Week #1—Anemia and Rectal Bleeding

My training is off to a fairly good start for Boulder Ironman, despite the title of this blog post. Last week I decided to do a recap of my training each week leading into Boulder—eight weeks away now—which will be my first full distance triathlon. In the past, blogging has helped keep me interested in workouts for some reason, so as part of my revamped effort to stay focused this season, here goes the first of what will hopefully be nine boring blog posts about riding, swimming, and running [very] moderately fast. Emphasis on the moderate.

On Monday I did a four hour ride in the mountains and enjoyed just about every minute of it, aside from the first hour, during which I attempted some intervals and went absolutely nowhere. After the ride I did an easy three mile run off the bike.

Tuesday was my group run day, which Adelaide has been joining in on the last few months as well. We did 9x1K starting at half marathon pace, getting down to 10K pace by the end. Rests were 90 seconds. I felt good for the whole workout, and my last 1K was 3:02. I did a long warmup and cool down, and ran a little over 12 miles total, which was my goal. That afternoon I did a 4K solo endurance swim.

I fell apart on Wednesday. I went out for intervals on the bike and knew I wouldn’t be able to do them right away. I made a feeble attempt and turned back after 90 seconds. I didn’t do any other training the rest of the day.

For almost a year now I’ve wanted to get my ferritin tested, as I’ve felt sluggish and unmotivated off and on in training. I’ve had low iron in the past, and have recognized some of those feelings with those that I’ve had in the last nine or six months. I finally got the test done on Wednesday and found out that I’m anemic, which explains a few things. While anemia takes a while to reverse, even with iron shots, I’m happy to figure out what’s been holding me back.

Thursday—I had a good 4-hour ride with Chris on road bikes in the mountains. We spent a solid amount of time on dirt and ran into a few friends along the way, including Justin-Justin Daerr, making for a perfect spring day. I did another three mile run off the bike.

Friday—Back at the run group, since I wasn’t confident I’d be able to push any watts on the bike for my originally planned intervals, we did a series of diagonals on the soccer field (sprints), followed by jumps, a six-minute effort at 5:16 pace, a plyo circuit, another six minute run effort a tiny bit faster, and more diagonals. The distance was low but I felt good on both six minute efforts. And, for the first time, I didn’t injure myself running the diagonals. In the afternoon I rode two hours in the mountains on the TT bike, again enjoying the sun and relatively warm weather.

Adelaide had a local half marathon on Saturday, so I paced her for that. In total, I got 17 miles of running in, then did an easy 30 minute swim afterwards.

I had my third bright red bloody poop in a row on Saturday morning. I’ve had a tiny bit of blood on the toilet paper many times before, but nothing like this. This has been full on slit-your-throat-into-a-toilet-bowl amount of blood, mixed right into the poop. No, it’s not always beets, Sir. I guess I’ll head into the doctor’s next week. I’ve done some horrifying reading online, and it seems like hemorrhoids are my best option. I briefly thought that maybe this was the cause of my anemia, but the rectal bleeding would need to have been going on for a long time for that to be the case.

Sunday—Cut my 4 hour ride nearly in half because I got drenched up high, then didn’t have the motivation to finish the rest of it on the flats. I did another 3 mile run off the bike with Adelaide and Maybellene.

This week was definitely lacking in the swimming department, as well as intensity on the bike, and overall volume. I skipped a few swims, a run, and of course all of my intervals on the bike. However, I think this is a good starting point to build from. I hope that I’m able to handle more intensity once my anemia is taken care of. And my rectal bleeding.