Three Weeks Sober
The HRV on Saturday was 8.5.
Highest single reading of this entire rebuild. By a meaningful margin. And it didn't come from a perfect training week or an ideal taper or some carefully optimized recovery protocol. It came from three weeks without alcohol and eight hours of sleep, repeated enough times in a row that the body started doing something different with the quiet.
Sleep averaged 8.0 hours this week. I don't think I've averaged 8.0 hours in a single week since before the cardiac stuff started. The data on this is not subtle. Remove the alcohol, the sleep gets longer and deeper, the HRV climbs, and the body recovers in a way it simply doesn't when there's wine in the equation.
I've been on naltrexone for part of this stretch — trying it to see if it made the sobriety easier. Honest answer: unsure. It didn't make anything worse. I'm not sure it made anything meaningfully better either. I'll probably stop taking it. The sobriety itself has been fine without needing a pharmaceutical assist, which tells me something about the habit versus the dependency.
The training this week was lighter than it needed to be. Three days, 330 TSS, 5.2 hours. Call on Friday and Sunday took the weekend anchor sessions. One training day missed mid-week to life. The two real sessions were Wednesday and Saturday — 148 TSS and 151 TSS respectively, both controlled, both at the right HR. Wednesday's average was 103. Not a typo. The aerobic base is running clean.
Seven weeks to Ironman 70.3 Washington.
I've been reading about BPC-157 for the shoulder. The shoulder that's been not-quite-right since the open water season started, the one that gets mentioned and then ignored because it doesn't actually stop anything. The peptide literature is — to put it charitably — not impressive. The more I read the more it looks like a well-marketed placebo, at least at the dosing levels people are actually using. I'm a physician. I should know better than to get pulled into the supplement rabbit hole. I'm leaving it alone.
The shoulder will either sort itself before September or it won't. I've had worse things on race day.
Weight at 173 this week — scale finally reading my profile again. HRV consistently above 7 all six valid days. Three weeks sober, eight hours of sleep, and the body responding in ways the data makes impossible to argue with.
The ENVE wheel is here. The shoulder is being managed. The call schedule is what it is.
Seven weeks. The long sessions need to happen this week. No pizza. No moving trucks. No excuses.
Onwards.
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Weekly metrics: 3 training days · 5.2 hours · 330 TSS · HRV 6.7-8.5 (6 valid days — 8.5 highest of rebuild) · Avg sleep 8.0 hrs · Avg HR 111 · Weight 173
3 weeks sober · naltrexone trial — verdict: inconclusive
vs. last week: 5 training days · 5.0 hours · 338 TSS
7 weeks to Ironman 70.3 Washington