Starting my 12 week Texas 70.3/18 week IMTX training plan on Monday and it looks like I'm going to h
My plan was to start really training for the Texas 70.3 and IMTX combo starting on January 14th. That's 12 weeks for the 70.3 and 18 weeks for the IM.
It now looks like I'm going to need surgery to remove a very painful occult ganglion cyst in my right wrist. I'd love nothing more than to push the surgery off until after IMTX. It's affecting my job though as I'm an FBI Agent and I can't go to my quarterly firearms qualifications because I physically can't grip a gun and fire rounds for several hours. I need to do the responsible thing and prioritize the aspect of my life that pays the bills and allows me to do this dumb hobby. The heresy! 
It's not a big deal when it comes to surgeries but it's still surgery and comes with a recovery time of about six weeks. I'm not so much worried about IMTX but my swim training for the Texas 70.3 is going to be completely fubar'd. Let's say I can get a week or two of swimming before the surgery. Then I will have six weeks of no swimming and then maybe four weeks of swimming leading up to the 70.3. Running should only be affected for a week and cycling for maybe a week or two as I can just ride indoors where I don't have to worry much about gripping the bars and handling.
Any thoughts on how I should approach my swim training? My last swim was IMAZ on Nov. 18th. While not in tip top swim shape, I should be in decent base swim endurance shape.
Comments
It is what it is.
The time frame 6 weeks before to 3 weeks before the race is critical to solidifying your bike and run for the IM. DO NOT skimp on those workouts at the expense of swimming in the period from RR#1 to RR#2. Since you will ramping up your swimming during that time, focus your swim efforts first on fast, meaning a bunch of 50s and 100s is what you should be doing, say, working up from 10 >> 30 50s swimming them alternate fast and easy. You might look @ weeks 5-7 of the OS swimming plan for guidance, and add one OWS each week to that. Then, the three weeks before the race, you can start putting far on your fast with more focuus on 400s/500s working up to 6 of each. You can even consider ramping up to 4 days/week if you are anxious, but you probably don't need it. THe IM plan will probably have a progression in weeks 6 >> 3 that you can move forward to weeks 3>>1
Rich of course is the expert on this, and a query directed towards him in the Macro thread might help?
Exactly. As always... Thanks for the advice.
All I could think of was that scene from Full Metal Jacket:
"This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun."
Update...
Had a MRI last Friday and met with the ortho yesterday. It's a very small cyst that shouldn't be causing the level of pain and problems that it was. So small that he said surgery didn't make any sense until it grew. I have an unbelievably high threshold for injury kind of pain and he knew that so he knew if I said it hurt that it hurt. The cyst must have been sitting in just the right place on a nerve or something that it was causing the problems.
He felt he could aspirate it armed with the MRI as a map. He sprayed some numbing agent and then stuck a normal sized syringe in there to draw the fluid. Nothing came out! He said he needed to go to aspiration plan B. So he gets another syringe that has the diameter of a coffee stirrer straw (I might be exaggerating for effect here but it was a pretty thick gauged needle) and says the following, "You're not going to like me for a couple of days after I do this." He explained he was going to just poke holes in the cyst with the big needle and top it off with a steroid injection. That was about all he could do right now to alleviate the pain and hopefully get rid of the cyst. The procedure did not feel good and felt much worse once the numbing agent wore off and is sore as hell right now. But I'll take a two day recovery over a six week recovery.
So hopefully I'll be back to normal sometime this weekend.
Recover well. I need to draft off you in texas.