Running in the Moment

Well, this week went by fast!  I went to bed early Monday night in preparation of an early wake up call to hit the pool, however when I woke up Tuesday morning, a scratchy throat and pounding head welcomed me 😦  I decided to go back to bed hoping that more sleep would help improve things.  When I finally got up and got ready for work, I hoped that as the day went on I would feel better, but I was wrong, I felt worse.  I headed home at 10a and managed to sleep until 5p.  When I woke up I did feel somewhat better, so I decided to do my 5 mile run.

Wednesday I woke up once again with a scratchy throat and runny nose so I once again vetoed the pool.  After work I felt better so I headed to a nearby park to do my brick workout (1:30 ride, 2 mi run).  The ride and run both felt great, however I didn’t get home until 8p which led to a very late night, heading to bed at 11p.  Thursday morning the sore throat had returned so I skipped the pool again but was feeling much better by the afternoon and decided to do my hour speedwork run.  I managed 6.6 miles in an hour, which was the fastest run I’ve done in a while!  When I went to bed I noticed my voice sounded like it was going away (yes, I talk randomly to Patrick when I’m alone :)) and when I woke up Friday I felt AWFUL.  I had no voice, head congestion and my throat was on fire.  Ugh.  I called in sick to work and slept most of the day.  I did manage a short trainer ride in the evening, but other than that I layed low all day.

(If you haven’t noticed a theme….I will do almost any workout over going to the pool… I really need to get some pool time in next week.)

Saturday when I woke up my throat felt much better, I still had lots of congestion in my head, but other than that, it looked like I was on the mend.  I decided to sleep in rather than push myself to make sure I was giving my body another day to rest so that I would be 100% on Sunday.  It really felt weird (actually wrong) to still be in bed on a Saturday at 8a.  I wonder how I’ll feel after IMAZ and not working out almost every day!

However, today I woke up feeling less than stellar, my congestion in my head had moved to my chest/lungs.  Argh!  After much debate and consulting a few other triathlete friends, I decided to just take the planned 4 hour ride easy and just see how things went.  The first 15 miles I didn’t feel great, but then after that I started to feel better.  Hmm… the new plan was to just do 2 hours (one hour out and then turn around), but maybe I could do 3…or the planned 4 hours?  On I went and I still felt pretty good.   Before I knew it I was at the turnaround and headed back.  The last 15 miles though I was pretty tired, my legs were ready to be done and so was my rump!  Hooray, 60 miles done solo, boy was I ready to talk to anyone by the time I was done.  Four hours on my bike was a looong time (too much time!) of me time 🙂

Depending on how I feel tomorrow morning, I hope to do the long run I missed today due to moving things around with having Saturday off.  Fingers crossed I wake up feeling good!!

Off to bed!

Total Training hours this week: 8:37

(Written Monday)

Phew, where has the time gone?  I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I last posted!  Well to summarize, a lot has been going on!  I went to Louisville the first weekend in July with some girlfriends to ride the IMLOU bike course (I only rode 80 with PT, and T and SS did the whole 112!).  Afterwards we also ate some delicious BBQ.

We fit ALL four bikes in PT’s car! Note the towel holding two bikes together…duffle bags and a yoga mat keeping the bikes from bouncing around. This definitely looked like a professional did it 🙂

The following weekend was the New Town Triathlon weekend, with the kids race on Saturday and the adult race on Sunday, and as volunteer coordinator for the tri club, I was busy, busy, busy both days!  I did manage to get in a long ride on Saturday with some other club members after the kid’s race where we took a ferry (ooh fun!) and got in a long run on Sunday.

The next weekend I rode 80 flat miles with some headwind followed by some delicious Mexican food 🙂 and later that evening a Bourbon tasting party!

Last weekend I did my first official race of the season (for some reason I don’t count Triple-T as a race, it was more of a …’just survive’ type of event for me)  The race was an Olympic distance, 1500 yard swim, 24.8 mile bike and 6.2 mile run in Springfield, IL and PT and I drove up the night before.

The ponies safe in our room for the night.

The swimming and biking I wasn’t as worried about, but the running, usually my strongest leg, has been really lacking lately due to trying to slowly ramp up my mileage without re-injuring my hip so I was kind of worried how the run portion would go.

Pre-race photo. It was cold that morning!!

The swim started off pretty choppy, and everytime I took a breath, I was hit by a wave which made the first half pretty slow-going.  However after the turn around, with the wind going the opposite direction, the waves weren’t very noticeable.  Once I hopped out of the swim at a slow 34:xx, I headed into transition to get my bike and go.  However, I could not find my bike.  Anywhere.  The volunteer kept pointing me to several racks but none of them had my bike…after running around for a minute, I finally realized he was pointing to the sprint triathlon racks and not the olympic.  After finally finding my bike, I quickly put on my helmet, sunglasses and bike shoes and was off!

The bike was pretty uneventful, fairly flat out and back and on the way out I thought I was having a little headwind, so I was excited to turn around and get some nice tailwind.  Boy was I wrong, as soon as I turned around I was hit with a wall of wind.  Argh!  It was at this point that I realized I was SO happy to be riding my triathlon bike because I could get into aero and hide from the wind somewhat.  Although the last four miles I was really ready to get off my bike.

Once I hit transition I hopped off my bike, took off my helmet and bike shoes and put on my running shoes and my hat and was off.  .2 miles out of transition I realized I had forgotten my race bib.  Oh no!  But the thought of going back meant that I would add on .4 to my race, which was practically half of a mile…which was almost 5 minutes.  I decided to keep going knowing that I would possibly be DQ’d (it’s a race rule that you must run with you bib on).  Off I went, a little sad, but then realized that this race was just to ‘get my feet wet’ and get myself back into the swing of things.  Dust off the cobwebs.  Boy did I do that…lost my bike… forgot my bib… go away cobwebs!

The run course was fun since there were so many club members also racing, so it was nice to see everyone during that portion.  The last four miles really hurt as my hips were not happy to be running 6.2 miles at a much speedier pace than they were used to (which wasn’t that speedy!)

When I crossed the finish line I stopped my watch and about started crying when I saw how much slower I was compared to my olympic time last year.  11 minutes.  Ouch.  Six of those were because my run time was 1 minute + slower each mile.  But I composed myself and was happy that I had just gotten out there and raced (and didn’t panic on the swim!) and then went back to the finish line to cheer the rest of my team mates in.

After everyone had finished I ate some pizza and had a coke (yum) and then we got ready to cheer in the club members that were doing the half.  We looked festive!

Cheering on the tri clubbers doing the half

After the race we headed home where I promptly ate dinner and went to bed early.  The next day I was up at 6a to volunteer at a nearby triathlon focused on beginners.  I was on the bike course at the bottom of a big hill with a sharp turn, boy was it scary having newer cyclists coming down and trying to make that turn!  One guy missed the turn and went right into a stop sign and then a police car.  Fortunately he was ok and ended up riding away after the sag wagon came and fixed his two flat tires.

To top off the busy weekend, I rode for two hours on the MCT trails, flat and boring, but also safe!

Overall my training last week was pretty light as it was a race week, so this week I’m in for a surprise.  My coach emailed me last week to let me know that my volume would really be ramping up starting in August and she wasn’t kidding!  This week I have 13.5 hours of training!  Wow!  The highest number of training hours so far this year…I’m actually excited though 🙂

Today is a rest day though, so I’m enjoying doing nothing…the calm before the storm!

Yep… wow.  This week marks 20 weeks until IMAZ!!

Training really is starting, as I’m no longer just building a base.  Although my ‘base’ over the month of June was pretty non-existent.  Coming off of Triple-T I was pretty tired and somewhat burnt out (more emotionally than physically, the thought of just finishing that race sounded so daunting), and on top of that, several other things that happened in June (broken AC being one of them), caused my training to lose its priority and take a back seat.

Well, something about July 1st (and it was a Monday too!) seemed so official.  And the number 20.  A nice even number.  When you think about it, 5 months really isn’t that far away….and I have A LOT of work to do.  My biking needs some serious work, apparently tri bikes suck at climbing hills compared to road bikes, so I need to get much stronger (no real hills in Arizona, but there are where I live, so training will be miserable if I don’t get stronger), my swimming volume is laughable (ahem. 5x in the month of June)… I wasn’t lying about training sitting in the back seat…heck, it was in the trunk.  And I need to get a solid running base now that my hips seem to be under control (knock on wood).  So…..not only is training getting serious, but I am a bit behind from where I wanted to be at this point.  However, I’m ready to put in the work, so bring it on July 1st!!

Monday I did my planned 40 minute run followed by an upper body workout my friend PT put together.  Which kicked my butt.  A lot.  It involves a deck of cards, each suit is a different exercise (pull ups, abs, dips and push ups) and the number is how many reps you do (Aces are 14. Ouch).  So by the end, you will have done 105 reps of EACH.  I was sore until today.  Let’s just leave it at that.

Tuesday was a rest day, but I felt good (and full of energy to get back to training), so I took a spin class to get a little more biking in for the week (I only had two rides on my schedule), which also kicked my butt.  I forgot how tough those classes can be (plus I was still super sore from Monday…it hurt to move my arms!).

Wednesday was a forced rest day due to a shady tuna sandwich I had at lunch that my stomach didn’t agree with.

Thursday a group of us from the tri club met up late in the morning for a 25 mile ride, followed by a 2 mile run as a fun way to spend the holiday (and day off).  The ride was tough because apparently I am unable to ride hills at all on my tri-bike, but afterwards we got lunch at the Boathouse restaurant nearby which made me forget about the awful parts of the ride 🙂

I matched my bike!!

After lunch I headed home to do a costume change, aka, shower, put on my suit, lather up the sunscreen and head to swim with T and R at a nearby 50 meter outdoor pool.  I wasn’t sure how my arms would do since my swimming hasn’t been happening and I was STILL sore from Monday, but between the live band playing, the beautiful 50 meter pool (man, now I’m really going to hate swimming after work today in the little 25 meter pool at the Y), and it just being so nice out, I managed to swim 2600 meters, the longest I’ve swam so far this year!  Hooray!

After the swim, I headed home to take my second shower of the day and then went over to R’s to hang out with his wife, family and T and her husband for a BBQ.  By 8p, I was tiiiired, skipped out of watching fireworks, went home and watched fireworks on tv (ha) and was in bed by 9:30p!

Today I have a half day at work, then heading home to run and swim and then off for a girl’s weekend!!! (spoiler: it involves biking and running…) 🙂

This weekend was pretty busy – I was up Saturday at 5:30a to get ready to meet some friends for a 70 mile ride out in Columbia, IL.  The original plan was to do the 60 mile charity ride that started at 10a, however because the temperatures were supposed to be super HOT, a 10a start wasn’t very smart.  So T (she was the awesome girl I trained with for Redman last year), PT and I decided that we would do 30 miles with one group early in the am and then do 40 miles with a charity ride that started at 10a (there were 20, 40, 60 mile routes).  I was also excited to try out my new arm coolers I had bought for myself as a present, since they were supposed to help cool your arms and also block out the sun.  After finishing getting our gear ready, we all headed out.  After a few miles, PT, T and I noticed how many turns we were doing and after 10 miles we decided to turn around, rather than after 15 miles, so that we wouldn’t get lost on our way back! Bummer, so only 20 miles done so far, maybe the 60 mile route would be in our near future rather than the 40?

Once we got back we re-applied sunscreen (I obviously missed a spot or two, more on that later), re-hydrated, ate a bit and then picked up our packets and were ready to go after 45 minutes.  We had a few other club members join us for the charity ride which made it fun to have some new company.

PT, me and T ready to head out for round #2!

The first 20 miles of the charity ride were really really hilly!  I haven’t ridden any hills on my tri bike yet and it was tough.  I didn’t feel as powerful and on top of that, constantly changing my gears on my tri bars rather than my bars next to my hoods was driving me crazy!  Some of the hills I almost didn’t shift in time and could have possibly toppled over!  I’ll just chalk it up to learning curves and assume that it will get easier over time.  It was also getting really HOT.  The earlier ride was pleasant but now, the sun was out and shining.

After 20 miles there was a rest stop where the group met up and we debated whether to continue and stick with the 40 mile loop or attempt to do the 60 mile loop.  At that point, I was crabby, hot, tired of hills and in no mood to do 40 more miles, so I decided to stick with the 40 mile loop and ride 20 more miles.  PT said she would ride with me, and T, who has IM Louisville (and is in much better shape than me right now!) coming up in August, was ready to do the 60 mile loop!  So off we went in our different groups to finish the ride.  Fortunately the rest of the 20 miles were pretty darn flat.  The sun was out for part of it and it did get warm, but there was wind (a headwind!) and some clouds so it was much much more pleasant than the first half.  Also, I rode the first half solo, so it was nice to chat it up to PT, which always makes the time fly by faster.

Finally we were rolling back into the parking lot and ready to get off our bikes.  After loading them up, re-hydrating, I slowly put on my running shoes and hat to attempt a run.  PT decided she would join me, and after saying we would do 30 minutes… I then decided 15 minutes sounded ok…and then 10. 10 minutes.  It was 92 degrees according to my phone which meant it was probably hotter than that with humidity and NO shade where we were running. The run hurt.  The poor little lonely mile we ran hurt!  After we finished we both sat in the shade to try to cool off.  After we felt like we could muster up some energy, we went to go change, get a beer at the finish area and wait for T to come in.  We had big plans of BBQ when she finished 🙂

It felt great to change, the beer was even better, and sitting felt amazing.  How have I gotten this much out of shape?  This ride seemed really tough, yet I rode one similar a month ago (at TTT, and even more than that over the course of a weekend!) and it just didn’t seem as bad?  Maybe because of the heat?  Maybe it was the new bike? (I rode aero more than half of the time!!)  Who knows.  I just know that I need to keep getting back out there and getting more rides in 🙂

As we were waiting, the clouds started to roll in and it started to thunder.  We both were getting worried about T, since the last time she called us, she was still at least 20 minutes away.  As it thundered more, the finish area was being broken down and PT and I headed to her car.  10 minutes later we saw T coming through, hooray, she finished!!  80 miles!!  A distance PR for her 🙂  No sooner than a minute after we loaded up her bike, the skies opened up and it started raining.  We ran into the BBQ restaurant and as soon as we got in, it really started pouring buckets!  The food was amazing, and after the beer and BBQ I was ready for a nap!

Back to the title of this thread – after I got home, I unpacked, started laundry (boy does this sport really build up a lot of dirty, smelly clothes!) and got ready to hop in the shower.  I did a quick check to see if I had a weird tan line from the arm coolers, which I did not, but my back hurt.  Gah.  I had missed the lower part of my back and I was burned.  Grr. Now it looked like I had red wings on my back.  This is going to be the ultimate summer of tan lines.  Note to self, do not forget that part of my back again!  I have done more research and there is a ‘shrug’ type of arm cooler that also goes over your back.  I might have to buy that if I can’t get this sunscreen thing down this year.

Ouch. The picture makes it look more red than it really is…I promise..

Sunday I slept in a bit late and ran a miserable 3 miles in the heat and humidity.  Never again!  getting up early and getting in a good run is much better than a couple of extra hours of sleep on the weekend.  I can take a nap later if I’m tired!  Then I headed to the pool for a 2000 yard cool down swim.  Next up was Target and Trader Joes for food and other items.  I also got a lot of things organized when I got home and did three loads of laundry.  Did I mention that this sport is laundry intensive???

Now I’m getting ready to head to a meeting and start the workweek!

…  a new relationship has been formed.  Between me and Lola. 🙂  I hadn’t posted about this earlier because I didn’t want to be negative and was hoping things would change, and fortunately they have!

I rode Lola for the first time outside the week after Triple-T, just 30 miles and it was MISERABLE.  She was wobbly, the seat was painful, my hands hurt holding the hoods and riding in aero was downright scary.  Like super scary.  The next weekend I was determined to convince myself that Lola was fine to ride and super comfy, I took her out again and within four miles. FOUR measly miles (granted I had ridden my trainer the day before for an hour and a half), I turned around.  Everything was uncomfortable, I was only able to get into aero for .1 seconds without freaking out.  This just wasn’t going to work out.  Maybe she wasn’t the right bike for me.  Sadly I put her back on my bike rack and back home we went. 😦

The following Wednesday I went to the baseball game with the tri club, and two of the members were asking about my ‘new’ bike and how it was going, and I just spilled the entire story of the awful rides, aero being scary and the seat downright sucking.  I said I knew that it takes time, but I had been riding her on my trainer since January and I just couldn’t understand why it had suddenly become so awful to ride her outside.  They both recommended a bike fitter (that was supposedly the best in the saint louis area) to get a new fit.  It was a bit pricey, but hopefully worth it.  I mean, that was his full time job for the past 13 years, I guess he has to know his stuff?  So the next day I called to schedule an appointment and as my luck would have it, he had an opening that evening!  After work I grabbed Lola and off we went to get a new fit.

Pre Bike Fit (taken a while ago, must have been at night hence the weird quality)

Boy did he change a few things, my current fit was very aggressive, having the handlebars down super low and the seat pretty high.  So he raised my bars almost 2 inches, lowered my seat and did a few other adjustments.  I hopped back on and so far, it felt great!  Back home we went, and I was ready to try her out on my ride on Saturday.

Post Bike Fit

Well the ride was a success, the seat started bothering me in the middle, but by the end it felt pretty comfy.  And I rode in aero quite a bit and it wasn’t scary!  Raising the handlebars made a huge difference.  Perhaps as I get more comfortable with the position, I can lower them to be in a more powerful position, but for now, no way!!

So Wednesday morning’s ride was really the day though that we bonded.  I felt so much more comfortable, I had more control (getting used to a lighter bike) and am finally getting used to changing the gears on the aero bars.  So, hooray!  I will still take very good care of Peaches and try to not ignore her too much, but now it’s time to ride Lola because she will be my buddy for the 112 miles at IMAZ (and my buddy the rest of the season, through good and bad rides!)!

Well I did say in my last post that I was going to take a little break after Triple-T and boy did I!  The weeks following I didn’t do too much, in fact the week after I just did a short run and a short ride that weekend.   Overall I swam a whopping one time, and got in a few longer rides and runs.  But man, last week I did nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Work was pretty busy that week and on top of that, when I came home on Wednesday (ready to hop in the pool and then run to redeem myself for two days off), my condo felt really warm.  I looked at the thermostat and it displayed 81 degrees.  Oh dear.  I tried to lower the temp on the screen to see if it was just something weird with the computer, but no more than 20 minutes later, it read 82 degrees. Oh great.

I quickly got online and searched AC repair companies as I knew I would need to get someone out ASAP.  I was able to get someone out within 30 minutes, and after inspecting the inside and outside unit, he declared that the terminal had blown out of the compressor.  So what did that mean?  He said, ‘well, you’re going to need a new AC unit.  I can have my assistant call you tomorrow morning to set up an appointment for an estimate.’  An estimate?!?! I needed a new AC now!  It was in the high 90’s outside and sooo hot!!  Apparently that is not how it works.  When I asked him what type of cost to expect, $500, $600?  He said ‘Oh no ma’am, I would think at least a couple thousand.’  I about died.  And cried.  Poor service guy.

So back inside I went, opened all of the windows, turned on a box fan in the window.  It was warm but still only 82 degrees in my condo, and after confirming with the animal hospital emergency number that Patrick would be ok in these temps, we settled in for the night.  I’ll just spare you the details and let you know that everything worked out and a new inside and outside unit was installed this past Monday.  It was pricey.  More pricey than the first guy had quoted, and I’m going to leave it at that or I might cry again. (I kid…maybe)  So while all of that was going on, I was going back and forth from my place to my parents (it was too hot to sleep at my place most of the nights, and too hot for Patrick after the first night, so he had to stay with them). So between all of that shuffling around, along with a few other things going on, my workouts just took a back seat and I was ok with that.

This week however, it’s game on.  My body is READY to get back into training, my pants are not fitting how they should and my mood just isn’t as good as it is when I’m training or exercising on a regular basis.  Despite that mentality, Monday night I didn’t get my planned run in due to horrible weather leading to horrible traffic while picking up Patrick from my parents.  However yesterday I did manage 2200 yards in the pool (while fighting HUGE clumps of hair at one of the ends of the pool.  It was disgusting and the whole reason why I hate swimming in pools to begin with.  Ugh) and this morning I got up at 4:30a to ride at 5a with R.  We managed 24 miles in an hour and a half followed by a 2 mile run.  Getting back in a groove…

Tonight I am making up my run from Monday and have a short 45 minute tempo run.  Despite going to bed around midnight (not sure how that happened, I think I’m just so happy to be in my condo with the nice cool AC 🙂 and waking up at 4:30a, I am still full of energy!  Although I’m sure once my run is done after the tri club meeting tonight, I will be in bed by 8:30p.

As I walked into transition, I realized that I was really ready for this weekend to already be over.  After being in the car for over 8 hours the day before, doing a sprint race, going to bed late (11:30p and not getting good sleep) and wearing the same smelly clothes from the race in the am, I was mentally tired and wanted a shower and nap (in clean clothes).  But, I had to power on, and definitely didn’t want to come across as whiny to the other club members, so I set up my transition and got ready to get my bike and wait for my turn to start the bike (it was time trial, 3 at a time, just like the swim).  Bike, you might ask?  Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that there was a special twist to the second olympic race that day.  The order was switched so that we biked, swam and then ran.  That combination wouldn’t be too bad, if we didn’t have to mess with trying to put on our wetsuit after being all sweaty from the bike.  I was really not looking forward to the swim, especially because it’s my least favorite of the three.

PT and I in transition getting ready for race #3. I was tired and ready to get the show on the road.

I lined up next to my friend PT and we were off.  She’s a much speedier cyclist than me, so within a few miles she was out of my sight, but I kept peddling on.  I hadn’t paid much attention to the bike courses, but did glance at the maps the day before we left just to have an idea of what they looked like.  Other than being super hilly, the other thing that stuck out at me was that the third bike course was an out and back.  So I really started to notice when we kept going down, down and down the (what seemed like) mountain.  Each time I grabbed my brakes as I made a sharp turn going down a switchback I realized that I would have to come UP this same darn, steep hill.  Sigh.  Faster than I realized, I was at the turn around and getting ready to ride UP the big hill.  I took a big swig of my Infinite and a couple of bites of a Honeystinger waffle and then I started shifting down into my easier gears to get ready to climb.

Climb I did, up, up, up and up.  In my easiest gear, peddling as hard as I could to keep moving forward and not topple over.  As I kept moving, the hill just kept growing, switchback after switchback, we were still going up without a break.  I just tried to keep my head down and focus.  And then it happened.  The weather had called for rain all weekend, but so far we had been pretty lucky and just had overcast skies.  However, now our luck had changed and suddenly the skies opened up and it started to rain.  Not just rain, scratch that.  POUR.  Rain so hard that I could hardly see in front of me, and rain so hard that it hurt!  I was also steaming up my glasses from working so hard to keep pedaling that it made it even worse to try to see.  At one point it got downright scary.  Finally the rain seemed to calm down to a slow drizzle and about the same time I could see the end of the hill.  It also was about that time that I just about burst into tears from being so exhausted, tired of riding the hill, tired of being in the rain, tired of the whole weekend!  I wanted a warm shower, dry clothes and my own bed to take a nap!  Maybe Ironman just isn’t for me.  This was tough.

As quickly as that feeling rushed over me, it also quickly went away once I crested the hill and started to descend the hill.  I could see that there was one more hill (the same one I climbed that morning and the same one I would two more times on Sunday), but I could see the top and knew that was my last climb of the day.  I shifted again into my easier gears, put my head down, and mustered all of my strength to get. up. the. hill.  I could hear someone with a cowbell at the top, which also seemed to help give me the energy to spin up the hill.  As I reached the very top, I had tears in my eyes again, but this time tears of relief.  I was finally almost done with the bike.  The rest was downhill.  I did it!  This course was the hardest of the four races and I was more than happy to be done with it!

I coasted the rest of the downhills and finally ended up back at transition, hobbling to my transition area and in no mood to try to squeeze into my wetsuit.  I saw PT right away and she gave me the same type of look and we both began putting on our wetsuits.  Everyone was helping each other out, zipping up their wetsuits, pulling on sleeves, it was pretty funny to see, since usually everyone is trying to hurry along in transition, but everyone was chatting and taking their time for the most part.  After helping a few people (which was mostly to avoid having to do the swim), I finally headed out of transition to start the swim.  Once I got in, I slowly started to swim, but one thing that was different this time was that I could breathe more easily and every few strokes, without any issues.  My first loop was really slow, but at that point I didn’t care, it was the last thing I wanted to be doing, so I took my time working on my strokes and breathing patterns, and eventually got back to the calm feelings I had last year during my OWS.  As I got out of the water to do the second loop, something in me clicked and I became very determined to get this loop done and get it done fast!  I really started to swim harder, working on my breathing but also picking up the pace and after saying my usual mantra ‘just keep swimming’, I was getting out of the water.  Hooray!!  On to the run!

After I got out of my wetsuit, I put on my running shoes and was off for the run, curious how my hips would hold up.  But sure enough, they felt fine, a bit tight, but no pain.  It was the same run course as the 10k in the morning, so I pretty much had the same strategy of walking a few of the bigger hills and running the rest.  I did walk through a few more aid stations, but kept on pace, hips felt good, and crossed the finish line only 2 minutes slower than the run that morning.  Once again, super slow, but I was happy with that time!

After cheering on the rest of the tri club teammates, we headed back to transition to pack up and then head to the car.  I looked at my watch and couldn’t believe it was already 7:30!  We hadn’t even eaten dinner yet and the hotel was still 30 minutes away!  Argh!  I really needed sleep for the big race the next day!  We finally arrived back at the hotel around 8:30, I unpacked my gear, washed out my tri top and shorts (I also washed them out Friday night, don’t think I was wearing dirty smelly clothes all day Saturday…well, they were dirty by noon, but you know what I mean :))  Getting my nutrition ready took a bit longer because I was going to be out on the bike course for around 4 hours, and needed quite a bit more nutrition than the two 25ish loops from Saturday.  Finally I was in bed around 10:30p and was happy to hear that the toilet was no longer making any noises!  The next thing I knew I was waking up to my alarm at 4:15a.  Last day of racing!!!

Saturday morning arrived to quickly, I didn’t sleep very well, the toilet in our room was running all night and I just couldn’t get comfortable.  I was hoping that the adrenaline from the races would keep me going for the rest of the day.  I got up, packed my gear and nutrition, had a banana and Larabar and then met up with the rest of the group for eggs in the main dining area of the hotel.  After some coffee and eggs, we all headed to the race site which was 30 minutes away.  When we arrived we were surprised that there was still good parking available closer to the transition area/finish line, hooray!

I took my bike and gear down to transition to set up and then went to go get my timing chip.  After spending what felt like forever to squeeze into my wetsuit, we finally lined up and got ready to start the swim.  After about 10 minutes from the start time, it was finally my time to hop in the water.  As I ran into the water, and started to take a few strokes, once again I had issues getting my breathing under control. I stood up and tried to collect myself and then started to do strokes again.  My heart rate wouldn’t settle, so I finally just breathed the same way I did the night before, every right stroke.

After some time I was able to breathe every three strokes and I was finally headed towards the exit. It was a pretty uneventful swim, other than the fact that I got passed by practically everyone.  The swims for the rest of the weekend were 2 loop swims, so that by the time I got into the water, the super fast people were starting their second loop, thus swimming and thrashing (at least it felt like it) over me.  Grr.  Thank goodness IMAZ and Redman are 1 loop swims!

Once I got out of the water I pulled off my wetsuit (which seemed to take for forever, it wouldn’t come off of my arms!) and then got into my bike gear.  I honestly cannot remember much about this ride except that the hills were tough.  But they were tough all weekend.  At the very end of the bike route there was one really super steep hill that we were lucky enough to get to ride for three out of the four races.  Yippe!  After climbing the last big hill it was pretty much all downhill to the transition area.  Once I dismounted my bike I ran to my transition spot and put on my running shoes and hat.  Now the exciting part of the race began for me, my hips could handle 1 mile, but how would they handle 6?

Off I went, and so far no pain!  The run was the same route 1 mile run, except after .5 miles we kept going into the woods.  Yipes!  Not only was the bike hilly, but the run was hilly too!  After 2 miles I walked up one of the really big hills to try not to aggravate my hips since they were already feeling tight.  On I went, and suddenly I saw the 3 mile sign, halfway there, and I felt great.  The second half of the run was mostly downhill, so with the exception of another big hill, I mostly ran the rest of the route. I could hear the announcer’s voice getting closer as I exited the woods.  Almost to the finish, I looked down at my watch and saw that I could still finish under 1:10, so I sprinted the last .3 miles to the finish, hitting ‘stop’ on my watch at 1:08 and some change.  Not my greatest 10k (possibly my worst), but with such awful training (or lack of) I was happy with it!

I walked over to the finisher’s tent to get some lemonade and watermelon and then went back to the finish line to cheer on the rest of my friends that were still out on the course.  After everyone had finished we went back to the area where we had parked and set up the club tent and took out the coolers with the food we had bought the night before.  I have learned over the past 6 or so months that my stomach doesn’t agree with bread/pasta (gluten possibly?) so I was worried about what to eat in between races so my stomach wouldn’t be grumpy for the second race.  I had decided on eating deli turkey meat, mixed nuts, powerade (small bottle) a banana and a Larabar.  My stomach still felt weird after finishing so I skipped the Larabar (extra fiber, probably a good idea to skip!) and banana and felt pretty full but not puffy.  After a couple of hours of laying in the shade and stretching/foam rolling, it was time to get transition set up for the third race of the weekend….

stay tuned!