4 Weeks!

There are only 4 weeks remaining until the Cville Sprint Triathlon. Which really means only 3 more weeks of training and one week of tapering. It seems so far away and yet not enough time to really improve much on my training.

Swimming
I've been doing 1000m in the pool about twice a week for the last few months. I may pick up a little time over last year, but I will only be able to tell in comparison to my relative standing since as a previous post noted - the times vary greatly year to year. The 1000m I've been doing is plenty since the actual race is supposedly only 500m, but I will need to be able to do 1000m for the IronGirl Sprint Triathlon in August. Therefore I need to start increasing my distance to train for that. In addition, all of my swimming has been in the pool. The local parks open this weekend for swimming, so I shall try to get some murky water swim time in soon.

Biking
I've only been biking about once a week. I seem to come up with all sorts of excuses as to why. The only good thing is the once a week is riding the actual course and thus really learning the hills. I have gotten better at them. I don't know how it'll compare since I've only been doing group rides. In addition, last week was my first time since getting my bike professionally fitted, so I'm still working on building the correct muscles. That being said, already it was better than the old set up I had.

Running
I've been consistently getting 2 runs in a week at 3 miles each run, but on far too many of them I've had to walk a portion of it. Plus, I have only run/walked the entire sprint run course once since last year. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can get out there a few more times.

Overall
I know I'm going to finish it because I feel like I'm in good enough shape for that. I don't know if I'll do better or not from last year since I feel like each of my areas has lots of room for improvement. If I could do this training time all over again, I would've gotten serious about it much sooner and actually stuck with my plan of increasing distances.

Running the Numbers

While on my lunch break I started playing with doing multi-year comparisons of the race results. 2008 had 109 women finish, 2007 had104, and 2006 had 108. There may be slightly more data points than that in the swim and bike in case women dropped out. I kept the numbers because I don't know why they dropped out.

Overall, the times got lower as the years increased. Not by anything significant. However, the item of major note is that the swim times got longer by a fairly sizable amount. Using the average swim time (though the pattern carried through out including the fastest times), 2006 had an avg of 9:36, then 2007 went up to 10:53, then 2008 was at 11:50. My guess is that the women as a whole did not get slower (especially since it did carry into even the fastest time going from 6:03 to 8:24). Most likely the course distance has been getting slightly longer.

Other than that, my goals to have my bike around 1:05 and run around 30 are well within reason. Those goals happen to be less than a minute lower than the average time. So basically, I'm looking to go from being in the 80s in rank to right around 50s in rank (again, out of about 105-110 women).

I would also like to get my transition times down a bit since every second helps. Last year since I was just going for completing the triathlon I took my time to get something to drink between the bike and the run. If I can streamline that, I think I could easily gain some time there.

Ironman Inspiration

10 weeks until the Charlottesville Sprint Triathlon. I have not been as committed to training as I should've been and more than anything its a mental game at this point. I know I can do all 3 distances individually and I'm pretty sure if I took it slow I could do them all in a row right now. However, I need to get my performance up if I want to enjoy the day (aka I don't want to fill incredibly sick from overworking myself to get a decent time). Last year I was really scared that I would DNF (Did not finish) that it inspired me to train lots. This year it's a mental game to tell myself that I need to train more if I want to improve my time. So often when I'm running or biking right now I see a shortcut and think "Well, I could just cut it short today, it wouldn't matter that much." However, all those times cutting short would only hurt me in the end since you can't cram for a race like you can studying. All nighters don't work in physical goals.

To pick up a little more inspiration about doing this, today I watched the Ironman 70.3 competition. Half the length of a full Ironman but that is still 1.2 miles swimming, 56 miles biking, and 13.1 miles running. The perseverance of the athletes was impressive. They also did some stories on unlikely competitors who had overcome hardship to be there. If they can do it, so can I. Plus, my distance is a lot shorter so there is no reason not to be in my best physical shape.

Getting Realistic, part 2

A few posts ago I wrote that I wasn't training as much as I needed to be and that caused me to drop out of the Cville 10 miler. The second casualty has been the Muddy Buddy. I have not ridden a mountain bike in quite some time and certainly not offroad. With only 3 weeks until the event, it isn't going to happen. Instead with the 10 weeks I have left until the first triathlon, I'm going to focus on the activities for that.

My revised list grouped by liklihood
Definites:
Cville Sprint Triathlon
Iron Girl Sprint Triathlon
Richmond Marathon
Iffy:
Cville International Triathlon (as part of relay team - thus need to check with my team)
Unlikely:
Luray International Triathlon - it's just too close to Pennsic
Boys and Girls club ride - I just don't enjoy biking that much and I should be well into marathon training at that point.

Richmond Marathon - Registered

I am now officially registered for the Richmond Marathon. I should've done it yesterday when registering for the Cville Sprint Triathlon, since I missed one of the early registration time frames by a day. But now I've paid, so I'm going to do this thing!

(And no, it's not an Aprils Fools joke... I'm serious, I'm doing this)

Registered for the Sprint Tri

Nothing says motivation like forking over the money to commit oneself to the cause. I am now registered for the 2009 Charlottesville Sprint Triathlon. In order to not make a fool of myself out there, time to get serious about the training. Only two months left.

Quick results & video!

The MJ8K folks were amazingly on the ball this year, the results are already posted. My team finished 7th out of 8 teams. Much like the triathlon song says, "won't be first, won't be last, but I'm sure I'm going to have a blast." That definitely holds true for over 3 miles I ran with David and finished strong with him. Becky also ran about 2 miles with us, but we sprinted the final part. During the time we all were running together we were bantering, having fun, and keeping those around us entertained.

My personal time was not as high as I estimated earlier. The official time was 53:55 which is a 10:53 pace. Definitely my slowest pace of any race I've ever done (of all 4 run-only races). That put my 49th out of 56th. Once again... at least I wasn't last!

This year for those of us finishing 45 minutes through 63 minutes they posted video on youtube. I'm in the red pants, grey sweatshirt, and pink bandana.

Publish Post

Martha Jefferson 8K Results

This morning was the Martha Jefferson 8K run. As my last post states, I didn't really train for it this year and I knew my time was going to suffer. That being said, my time was around 53 minutes. That is about a 10:39 pace. This is all conjecture because I didn't stop my watch until 55 minutes at which point I was just out of the shoot (walking area to hand over our number).

The good:

• It wasn't raining this year!
  
• I spent most of the race chatting and running with a friend.
• I was part of the awesome PQA team.
• The t-shirt fits better than last year's.
  

The bad:

• I had to walk multiple times because I just wasn't in good enough shape.
• It was kinda chilly out (40ish degrees).

The ugly:

• My time last year was 45:41 thus I was about 8 minutes slower this year.
• Did I mention the walking thing?

Overall, I'm glad I did it. It really felt good to cross the finish line so I'm now again motivated to start training. I still don't think I'll do the 10 miler in 3 weeks, but definitely start working towards the triathlons again.

Time to get Realistic

There comes a time when you must face reality and accept the consequences. One of my stated goals and races was to do the Cville 10 miler. I would like to do it, it just won't be this year. I haven't trained sufficiently for it so actually running it would only be setting myself up for failure and possibly injury. As it is I'm hoping to even be able to finish the Martha Jefferson 8K (~5miles). Again, I haven't trained enough. I know my time will be worse than last year and that is just the consequence of not training.

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.