Back to training

I ended last season's commitment to running after the Women's 4 miler (Aug 30th) and ended the biking training after the Boys' & Girls' Club ride (Mid October). As for swimming, I wasn't keeping up since July. Now with the holidays mostly over, it's time to get back into training for my series of events. In the near future I will try to post or incorporate a training plan, but for now I'm just going to try to get my baseline back up. I did 2 miles running outside today and that got me out of breathe. I may have a long time until the marathon, but that 10 miler is coming up quickly.

2009 Race Schedule

I've decided on my 2009 Race schedule. Please note I use race as the official term about what the events are, but I don't necessarily plan on competing with others. For most of the races, it is a matter of finishing the race (especially for the longer distances) and trying to improve my PR (Personal Record) on the courses I have done before.

March 14, Martha Jefferson 8K Run

April 4th, Charlottesville 10 miler

June (?), Charlottesville Sprint Triathlon
~ 0.3 mile swim, 16.5 mile bike, 3 mile trail run

July (?), Charlottesville International Triathlon
Trail running portion of relay team.
~ 6 miles

July (?), Muddy Buddy
~6 miles split between running & biking. And the mud pit

August 15th, Luray International Triathlon
~ 1 mile swim, 25 mile bike, 6.2 mile run

August 23rd, Iron Girl Sprint Triathlon
~ .62 mile swim, 17.5 mile bike, 3.4 mile run

October 18th, Boys & Girls Club Challenge Ride
~60 miles biking

November 14th, Richmond Marathon

(Links to each event are on the side)

wdydwyd

The graphic designer in me really enjoyed making my response for a "Why do you do what you do?" meme.

Sized 5x7 so I can print it off and frame it easily to provide further inspiration.

Women's 4 miler

The whole notion of running being part of my life started last year with the women's 4-miler training program and race. I did the training program again this year in the advanced group for most of the summer but Pennsic kinda threw everything off for me. That being said, it was still a good race.

The fun stats:
This year 36:00. Last year 38:42.
This year 352 out of 2505. Last year: 567 out of 2240.
This year 45 out of 277 in my age group. Last year 69 out of 146. (Note, I moved up an age group to 25-29)

Lazy man final report

Yes, it's an entire month late, but Pennsic came and just never got a chance to update it. If you've been watching the numbers for the last month they haven't moved and the final tally was 3.3 miles swim (over by 1.1 miles), 78.3 miles bike (under by 33.7), 37.2 miles run (over by 11).

Once again, I didn't make it. However, I did do much better this year and I suspect I can do better yet next year. It's all a matter of getting the biking in early.

International Tri

My team rocked!

We took second in the relay category out of 5-6 teams that entered. It was back & forth with David's team to the point we ended fairly close together. The time for David's team was not posted as of the point we left the park so we don't know how they did besides also rocking it for giving it their all!

As I've posted earlier, I was doing the 1500m (~.93 miles) swim portion in the lake at Walnut Creek. All relay teams started in the 6th wave (Women 40+, Athenas, and relays) which means we started about 20 minutes after the first group. I started towards the back and pretty much stayed there. Between having shoulder problems recently and simply just not training my swim speed enough, there were only a few people behind me out of the water. That being said, it was a big motivator for me because I thought Karen had long since passed me and that the only other person near me was slightly ahead of me. Thus thinking I was DFL (dead f***ing last), I really pushed the last 500m to get ahead of atleast the one person and I think I passed another along that last push.

When I got towards the end it was an utter muddy, mucky mess that I was slipping in but I was determined to give it all I had and I sprinted up the hill to give the chip to G as fast as possible. At that point I saw David still there which meant Karen was still behind me. I hung out in the transition area to cheer her on. She was only 4-5 minutes behind me so G didn't have much of a lead.

Once both David & G were out biking for their respective teams, Karen & I rinsed off and went to hang with our runners (Gena for David's team, Courtney for my team)for about an hour because we figured that would be the absolute minimum time it would take to do the 23.5 mile bike course.

As we were waiting for our guys to make it in, one of our other coworkers actually finished the race and ended up placing first in his age group. Very impressive.

One hour twenty after he left, David came cruising in at full speed. He looked like he was going to face plant getting off the bike because how hard he pushed and how much his legs didn't want to run. He passed his chip off to Gena and we waited patiently for G to come in. Evidently David overtook G & his 5 minute lead in less than 8 miles. Another 15 minutes later G came in and also looked like he pushed incredibly hard, so we sent Courtney out for her 6 mile trail run.

The run on this triathlon is nasty because it is two loops of the same course, thus after the first loop you literally run next to the finish sign and have to keep going. When the ladies came through the half way mark (and we all of course cheered them on), Courtney had made up some time such that it appeared that if they kept the same paces they'd be dead even coming into the finish. In the end, Courtney pulled out all the stops and sprinted like a mad woman across the line. Gena came in not too much longer there after.

I'm very proud and happy for everyone who participated today. I think we all pushed hard and made it a real good race.

Week 3 of Lazyman

In week 3 of Lazyman I was hampered by very knotty shoulders that impacted everything (yes, you use the upperback in all three sports in some way). I did manage to complete .3 miles swim, 17.1 miles bike, and 10.2 miles run. As of the week cut off that means I'm done with the swim, almost done with the run (which I actually finished this morning but counts in week 4), and no where close on the bike.

In related news, the international Tri is this Sunday. Kinda seems surreal.

Week 2 of Lazyman

Week 2 was hampered by a business trip and just getting out of the routine. I accomplished 1500m swim (~1 mile), 4 miles biking, and 6.3 miles running. With any luck I can make up the biking somehow and actually finish this thing.

My goal for week 3 is to finish both the swim (really easy as long as I get to a pool) and the running (Saturday should be 4 miles and if I do 5k on Monday I'll get it). As for the biking, just try to get in more in general.

Week 1 of Lazyman

My week 1 totals for Lazyman were 1.2 miles swimming, 28 miles biking, 7.2 miles running. Logically that leaves 1.2 miles swimming, 84 biking, and 19 running. This is very doable.

Lazyman Returns!

With July brings the return of the Lazyman Triathlon. We have the entirety of July to do the distance of an Ironman Triathlon: 2.4miles swimming, 112 miles biking, 26.2 miles running. I feel very confident that this year I can actually complete it since I'm starting at a great advantage over last year - I actually have a bike and feel reasonably confident using it.

I will try to post weekly updates with distances remaining. I started off the month with an early morning run (2.6 miles) and short bike (2 miles).

Lazyman Left to go
2.4 miles swimming
110 miles biking
23.6 miles running

Race picture

See post below for race report.

Race Report

I completed the Charlottesville Sprint Triathlon two days ago and from my perspective, I rocked it! My only true goal was to finish the race and not pass out afterwards. My dream goal was to be in the middle 80%. I accomplished both. I finished the race in 2:04:26 which was 87th out of 109 women. My other time splits were 13:19 for the 500m swim (81st), 1:13:52 for the 16.5 mile bike (88th), 32:17 for the 3 mile run (77th). The rest of the time was transitions.

The story of all the training begins way back in January (or possibly even before) but I'll start the recap from Saturday.

Saturday morning I went to the women's 4 miler training program since I felt I needed to wear my new race gear once before the race. In general this is a very bad idea to try anything new so close to the race, but I felt I didn't have a lot of options. I meant to only do the 1.5 mile intermediate run, but ended up doing the advanced group's 2.5 mile. Plus I had walked there and back so add approximately 2 miles of walking.

Later that day I helped with packet pickup. Since I knew parking would be an issue, I decided to walk there too, so another 3 miles of walking. Once there I did a variety of jobs but mostly on my feet. Thus I was certainly not resting like I should've been.

That night I had a good meal of pasta and a 32oz smoothie. I really think the smoothie helped because it had some additional protein and I know it doesn't tend to sit in my stomach too long. Ironically while reading a bicycling magazine and drinking the smoothie, I came across an article that listed smoothies as one of the top pre-race meals.

Sunday morning came way too soon since I rustled myself out of bed at 4:30 to eat breakfast and finish any packing (most of it was done Saturday afternoon/night). I got to the site around 5:45 so that David could pick up his packet and get all of his stuff prepped before the 6am opening of transition. Since we knew we'd be coming out of the water at different times, we parked our bikes next to each other and set up our area. From there, we went and got our numbers written on with Sharpie.

When transition set-up closed at 7:15 we all went down to the beach to get pre-race instructions and get ready for it to start at 7:30.

For the swim we started in waves based on age and gender. As 20-29 year old woman, I started in the second wave with a neon pink swim cap (I hope there are pictures somewhere). The other groups were labeled with yellow, red, light blue, white, and neon green. So at 7:33 we entered the water and made our way out to the first marker. At 7:34, we were off. Myself and 40 of my closest swimming friends started swimming out to the first buoy. I got hit, kicked, and did the same to other swimmers. At first I was having a hard time breathing but then remembered that even in the pool my 500m swim time was 12-14 minutes, so I shouldn't be trying to keep up with the folks I knew would be finishing in about 8 minutes. After slowing down the area became less crowded and I was able to breath a lot better. I got passed by guys in the following wave (4 minutes behind us) but I was ok with that.

When I finally came out of the water we had to run up a grassy hill to the transition area with our bikes. They have volunteers at all transition entrances and exits to keep us excited and point us in the right direction. It was nice to have a few folks I knew volunteering with that because I felt there was an extra connection and they actually called out my name in encouragement.

In the transition area, I dried off a bit (mostly my feet), put on all my bike gear, and headed out. My coworker Courtney was in transition about the same time I was but I would not see her again until she passed me on the run.

Out I went on the bike and up the major hill. Having trained on this route a number of times I knew that first 4 miles were tough with a major uphill climb. So I paced myself because I didn't want to have to stop at the top to rest. It was a nice feeling as I actually passed a few folks. The rest of the ride I was pretty much brutally passed by everyone and their mother.

The bike ride went amazingly well for me. Part of it was that I was much more confident because I knew the route, and knew all the traffic had been warned about the 270(ish) cyclists on the roads. For the first time I seriously pushed on the biking, I pedaled on some downhills instead of breaking and really tried to ride hard when on the flats. Part of my encouragement was figuring David would be about ~8 minutes behind me (4 minutes for starting in a later wave, and ~4 minutes because I am a faster swimmer). I kept telling myself, all I have to do is get to the next landmark in the bike course before David passes me and I shall have a minor victory. As I got further and further along the more determined I was to get as far as possible before he caught up. He never did, instead he was cheering me on as I came into transition and out for the run.

During the transition into the run I grabbed some gatoraid, threw on my bandanna, and I was off for the 3 mile trail run.

The run was hard. I've done it before and been rather tired going into it, but this time that wasn't my issue - I felt I had plenty of energy. I though I might feel the typical brick in my legs, but I didn't get that either. Instead, as I was going up the first of the hills on the run a muscle in my butt started getting incredibly sore. It wasn't bad on downhills or flats, but it just burned going uphills. It started just on my right but by the end of the run both sides hurt like none other. So I ended up walking up a fair number of the hills.

With less than a mile less, the pain was starting to get unbearable and I was finally starting to feel the energy drain despite having taken in an energy gel (but probably far too late). I did a mix of jogging and walking. What really kept me going was a guy behind me kept yelling encouragement to me to not let him pass me and to at least walk faster. He did catch up to me, but when we hit the last level area he told me to get in front and keep going even though I hurt. It was just a great show of community support. (Somewhere in there Courtney just blew by me too).

As I came in the last little leg and saw the finish line, David & Karen were cheering me on as well as one of my friends was on the announcement system picking folks out to announce their names as they came in. Even though there were a few folks with me she knew me so gave me a grand announcement. It felt great to cross that finish line. As soon as we finished we were supposed to turn in our timing chips and another friend was there collecting them so I got a nice congrats from her. It's a really great thing to know so many folks that can be happy with you when you accomplish something like this.

In the end, it was a great experience and I'm glad I did it. Thanks to everyone who supported me through out the training and have actually managed to read this entire rambling post ;).

Eep!

The Cville Sprint Triathlon is this Sunday. Yes, as in 6 days from now. I waiver between feeling not ready and knowing that I will be fine. I won't be first, I won't be last, I just hope to survive. In training I've done the entire distance and even done some of them on the same day.

In other news, I knew I was not going to be ready for the biking and running for the International distance so I will be participating in that as part of a relay team. I will be doing the swim portion. 1500m of pure swimming joy.

Last piece of news that isn't really triathlon related is that I've also registered for the Charlottesville Women's 4 Miler again. I'm doing the training program again this year and put myself in the advanced group since that starts at 2 mile runs. Since I'm doing over 3 miles for routine practice, this is entirely reasonable. I'm going to try to follow the training schedule the best I can but after this triathlon I'm still going to need to get in swim time and I really want to up my boxing time to twice a week.

Tour de Madison

On Saturday Guillermo (henceforth referred to as G) and I did the Tour de Madison ride. It is a yearly ride that Madison County puts on to tour the country-side of rolling hills. This year 280 riders did one of three courses - 15 miles, 40 miles, 62 miles. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Just barely 70, some wind (but not enough to push us over), and clear skies.

G & I got there around 7:45 to pick up our t-shirts, enjoy a pancake breakfast, and watch the impressively in-shape people arrive. It seemed like most folks had some sort of sponsored jersey from a previous ride and that was rather intimidating. If I knew anything about bikes besides they have two-wheels and some gears, I might've been more impressed with the quality of bikes there too. Some of the riders were clearly in groups with matching apparel and some even had support vehicles following them. We also saw a handful of tandem road bikes. I can't imagine riding with someone else on a road bike, I can barely keep myself stable.

They started the ride at 9:30 with a bag-pipe player and the 62-mile group going first then having the rest of us roughly stage ourselves behind that group. The entire ride was nicely organized and set up. There were bright arrows painted on the roads for all major turns and even straight arrows for minor roads we were supposed to pass by. In addition, for the 40-mile ride, there were 3 rest stops set up. Gatoraid, water, fruit, pretzels, and cookies.



The first little bit was nice flat (for VA) road where the group could really spread out and I felt rather comfortable just taking off on it. The first real hill of any sort G & I passed a bunch of people on the way up and that felt great. The route we do from work has a much worse hill, so we know how to keep going and climbing, where as a handful of the folks got off and walked it.

The real b*tch of a hill went on for what was probably 3 miles and a good 30 minutes. (All times in this paragraph are relative because I didn't check my watch). At first I didn't think too much about it, but after about 20 minutes of riding up hill it was getting rather tiring and steeper. I just stayed in first gear for what seemed like forever. Not really passing anyone, not being passed, just slowly grinding up the hill. The one thing that made me smile is that just when I was getting to the point of physical and mental exhaustion of "when will this ever end?!" I came across a note painted on the ground "Almost there!" It made me smile and meant the folks marking the course weren't actually trying to kill us and did want us to make it.

After that b*tch of a hill, I was determined to enjoy all of the downhills from then on out. Up to that point I was rather scared of going too fast and losing control, but now it was just a matter of shear "me against the hills." The hills may get their pain on the way up, but I was going to take my pleasure on the way down!

After that first killer hill, none of the rest were all too hard. Right before the 3rd rest stop there was a rather long one, but we took a break mid-way up so I could eat (not quite the right word) a power-gel because my energy was starting to fade.

All in all, I kept up with G reasonably well. We did approximately 10 mph. That is pretty slow all things considered, but hopefully as I do more hills (both up and down) I'll be able to speed that up.

At the very end, I was rather sore but I accomplished a lot of my goals of just making it all 40 miles with minimal whining. I enjoyed a nice rest in my car and plenty of advil (see picture).

Tastes like chicken

I have nothing really against meat. If it happens to be in my food, sure, I'll eat it. (As long as it isn't bacon.) Though in general I never go out of my way to try to incorporate it in my food. However, as part of training for the triathlon I acknowledge that I probably need to get in more protein. Given the choice between beans and meat, it's easier to hide the meat in my food. Thus, over the weekend I purchased a George Foreman grill and make my first chicken breast on it to incorporate into my pasta dish. I think I cooked it for too long because it was a little tough in places, but I suppose it's better than under cooking it.

72 and sunny

72 and sunny is perfect weather for just relaxing, enjoying the slight breeze, and taking a stroll. It's not so good for going on a 4 mile run along the side of the road. By mile 3 I was really feeling the heat and it was slowing everything down. In addition, my face turns and stays red for quite some time after from the heat. Guess it's time to consider doing running in the morning and only biking & swimming midday. Though I'm sure I'll hit a point soonish that biking midday will also be out.

Thump

The sound Nicki and her bike make as they fall over. I'm told that pretty much everyone falls over at some point when they are learning to ride a road bike clipped in. True to what I've also been told, there is that instant you realized you are falling over (because you didn't unclip and tried to put your foot out) and there is enough time to anticipate the fall but not enough time to stop yourself. You also don't want to stop yourself at that point with your arm because you'll likely break it, it's much better to just tuck it in. Also true to biker form was "Oh, I hope I didn't break anything on my bike." I heal, my bike doesn't.

1500m finally!

Last night I swam 1500m in ~40 minutes. Yet another very zen like experience. Swimming is quickly becoming my favorite part of the triathlon. The 1500m is the distance I would have to do for the international length triathlon. Therefore, I am going to try to work up to doing 2000m and also improving my speed.

Bike Goal

Yesterday I did a group brick workout (biking then transition into running). We biked 11.6 miles then did a 1.7 mile trail run. Wow, I am not used to so many biking hills and it just killed me both in my cardio and in my leg muscles. Though I guess that is why we practice because the short bike distance is ~16 miles and as I am now, I wouldn't make it.

Also, given that I really don't like going fast and was rather frightened that I hit 28mph, I'm a bit worried about making the time cut-offs. Even for the running because it is trail running and that takes a different set of muscles to stabilize everything. Guess it's time to hit the woods.

Swimming Zen

Today's swimming effort was very zen like. The 1000m felt very calm and not the struggle that it sometimes is. It took me 30 minutes to do the 1k, which is on the slow end but the technique is feeling more comfortable so I'm happy with that. I also did some sprints after the main portion. The 25m sprints weren't too bad, but doing 50m just killed me by the 40 meter mark. Sadly, the speed at which I was doing the sprints is where I need to get to for the actual races. As long as I keep doing both the length and the speed, I should be alright.

Guess this also meets my 40 lengths, any stroke without stop goal since it was 40 with frontcrawl.