The Thing About Swimming (or, Hitting the Bonk)
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
An off-day of running for me consists of slogging along at a slower pace than normal, and is sometimes interspersed with shooting pains in my sides, as happened last weekend after a tough, second-to-last night of Mel-A-Palooza paloozaing.
The 12-miler I had scheduled for that past Saturday was anything but enjoyable, as I'm sure my running partner could attest to. I shuffled along like a 90-year-old without a walker, complaining the entire time about the sideaches that shuttled from one side of my abdomen to the other, the numbness in my feet, the cold, my frozen cliff bar and slushy Gatorade, the icy sidewalks that we had to pick our way over, and my general dissatisfaction with having to be out running, period. I was really tired, slightly hungover, and most likely a little dehydrated. But throughout the complaining, I kept slogging (slow+jogging=slogging), and I got it done. 12 whole, miserable miles.
And it's the same on the bike. If I'm tired, if I haven't eaten well enough -- or enough at all -- I reach a specific point where my legs turn to lead. Where I can't seem to get the pedal around with any sort of coordination. Where I can't imagine having to do two minutes more on the bike, much less two more hours.
That, my friends, is called bonking.
Anyone who has experienced it can attest that there is no worse feeling in a workout or race, save for a torn muscle. You know you can run/bike faster, and you know you should. But every single muscle in your body Just. Won't. Move. Like you've suddenly gained 200 lbs. Like you've been sitting sedentary on a couch for years and decided to do a 10k on a whim. It's frustrating and it's painful.
If you're doing a swim workout, it's downright dangerous.
I used to not be able to eat before I worked out. In high school, I'd sip on a water or have a bagel during lunch out of a healthy fear of that afternoon's track practice. In college and grad school, my ideal time of day to run was right around 3 p.m. -- far enough away from breakfast and close enough to dinner that I could eat right afterwards. It wasn't until I started trying to run father and faster that I discovered the joys of adequate nutritional fuel: GU and Cliff Bars -- and how just one little GU break could carry me through an extra five to eight miles that I didn't think I had in me.
And it wasn't until an incident last week that I discovered how essential it was to eat before a swim workout...old wives's tales to the contrary be damned.
Because, unlike running or biking where you just go slow down, if you hit the bonk swimming, you darn near drown.
In retrospect, I should've known better. But I got going late, Leonard took his sweet time on his morning walk, and by the time I got to the pool, I had just a little over 1.5 hours until I had to be at my first meeting of the morning.
The first five to ten minutes went well. I pulled, glided, and pulled in perfect rhythm. I swiveled my hips from side to side as if on a rail, just like all of the books say to do. I was one with the water. Any fish would've been jealous.
And then.
Without warning, I couldn't get my limbs to coordinate. It felt like there was a cement brick resting on my back. I started taking on water. I coughed and sputtered and sputtered and coughed my way through the last 25 meters in a pitiful breaststroke, and then held on to the end of the pool for dear life. I looked at the 50 meters stretched out before me, and for the first time that I could remember, felt scared of the water.
After catching my breath and reasoning with myself, I placed both feet against the pool wall and pushed off for another length. Not even a handful of strokes in, though, and the same problems resurfaced. It was like swimming with a dumbbell in each hand.
In the end, I conceded defeat. Not more than 20 minutes into the workout, and I climbed out of the pool and hit the showers.
Normally, in my training, I won't shy away from working out when I'm tired or feeling sub-par, because, I figure, come mile 100 of the bike on September 9th, or mile 20 of the run, I will surely learn a completely new definition of how tired really feels. I will learn what it truly means to "not feel well."
But there is a reason that the Ironman, and all triathlons, are ordered the way they are: swim first, then bike and run. It's because you can fight a lot of things -- exhaustion, hunger, pain, weather -- but you shouldn't ever try to fight water. If you do, in the end, every time, you'll lose.
Now, no matter what, I eat before I swim now. And lest I forget, there's a cliff bar that stays in my pool bag. Rookie mistake, and one I won't make again.
Posted by Erin 7:56 AM