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June 30, 2008

First time on the podium!!

Well this was a good weekend for me. I have been slacking on the blogging front again, but I promise I will get better, especially since I do not have a race for almost three weeks so I can start training hard again!

I do not know if I even mentioned this before but I had a race this past Saturday, up in Loveland, Colorado. Loveland is about an hour north of Denver, which is a long drive on a Friday afternoon and that is no joke. This was a Saturday race which is unusual in my short triathlon experience, and it was a bit of a pain as we had packet pickup Friday afternoon. Um, don't race directors know some people have normal jobs? Anyway, that is the end of my rant about that.

Since I have two A races this year - Boulder Peak and Age Group Nationals - I did a big fat one day taper for this race. Basically I had a normal training week until Friday when I just ran 3 miles. Thus my expectations for this race were not all that high. However, as my college coach always said, sometimes low expectations are the way to go! When you put less pressure on yourself you can be surprised by your results.

Anyway, the race on Saturday was an Olympic but like all Colorado Olympic triathlons I've ever done it had an abnormally long bike - 30 miles (actually a short 30 which I believe was 29.3). That is good for me since I am strong on the bike but sometimes I feel lazy and wish I could do a normal Olympic (24 mile bike). The end result was that my time was 2:39.45 which was good enough for third place in my age group, which I was really excited about! Stay tuned below if you would like all the nitty gritty details.

And here is the detailed report...
Swim - 28:45
I was actually thrilled with this swim even though the time does not sound awesome. They had a really long swim to transition run so I got out of the water at 27:14, which was a huge PR for me. Anything under 30 minutes still kind of blows my mind and in every swim I convince myself that I am going really slow but somehow I seem to pull it out. My swim is still my worst sport but I am getting better, I hope by next year I can be in the 25 minute range which would help me start in a better position on the bike.

T1 - 1:13
I felt like I was in transition forever but this wasn't actually that bad. Sweet!

Bike - 1:23.42 (21.5 mph)
The course was actually really hilly so I was very pleased with this time, especially considering that I dropped my chain (meaning that my chain basically fell off the big ring on the front of the bike), and I didn't know how to fix it, so I got off my bike and manually put it back on. I think it cost me about a minute, which sucks because the girl who got second in my age group only beat me by 15 seconds, so I probably would have gotten second had this not happened. I am hopefully going to take my bike into the shop this week or weekend so the guys can take a look as it's just kind of noisy when I shift and I do not like how it sounds and I am very annoyed about the chain droppage. Other than that I am really happy with my effort on the bike, I passed a ton of girls in my age group here.

T2 - 0:48
This is a very solid T2 time for me which just goes to show that practice makes perfect.

Run - 45:15 (7:25 pace)
Considering that in a sprint two weeks ago I only ran 10 seconds per mile faster I was thrilled with this result. My goal was 8:00 pace with a stretch of 7:30 pace so I am really, really happy about this. To be more competitive I do need to get faster but I think I can do it. The run course was really nice and flat and I did pass two girls, at least one of whom was in my age group.

Post-race I feel pretty good although my Achilles and arches are a bit tight. I am going to a yoga class tonight with a friend, I think that should help. By tomorrow or Wednesday I think I'll be back up to normal volume, and this weekend I am hoping to get a few nice, big workouts in. If you have read this far, you probably deserve to be on some type of patience podium yourself, so with that I'll leave well enough alone.

Posted by barb at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2008

a new state and an easy weekend

Well, I guess this is my year of going to new states as I just got back from Oklahoma for the first time, and in September I am going to Oregon. If we want to get specific, it is the year of the O states! I do have higher hopes for Oregon than Oklahoma as realistically it is not much to write home about. However, I did have a very nice run around a large, pretty lake on Saturday morning. It even had a lighthouse, which was so cute! I ran with Michelle for about half of the run and afterward we walked a bit, saw the lighthouse, and decided it would be a fun place to stretch out. It was very peaceful out there.

On Friday we decided to do a nice long-ish hilly ride, since we could not take our bikes to Oklahoma, so we headed to Boulder for a hilly ride. We did the big hill in our July triathlon, then we rode up a canyon, then came back over a shorter, steeper hill. Then we realized we had only ridden 18 miles so we rode some flats for a while. It was fun and challenging.

Yesterday I had a big of a hangover but I ran 5 miles in Oklahoma before we all had to pack up and head back. It was super hot and humid on my way out, but on the way back I had a nice little head wind. When we did get back I drank a ton of water as I was super thirsty and then I swam for 30 minutes. It was like pulling teeth to get myself to the pool but once I was there I had a decent swim, and I was glad I did it.

This morning I rode a little over 20 miles around the park. I cannot even describe the idiotic behavior of some people there, today was worse than most mornings. Some woman was running along in the middle of the bike lane, with her back to all the bikes (running the same direction as the bikes), and I gave her an 'on your right' since she was in the middle of the lane. She of course moved to the right, so I swerved around her and told her in as nice a way as I could manage that she was in a bike lane. I swear to Pete! Then I almost hit her again the next time around as she was still running in the middle of the bike lane, not paying attention, and swerving around. After that she did seem to get the message so I felt that my work was done. It is amazing what people will do, no one would run in the middle of a lane where cars drive, so I do not know why they feel that it's okay to do so in a bike lane. Anyway outside of that I had a pretty good ride.

I am heading to a lifting session after work tonight and then once that's done I am going to do a short run in my Newton shoes I bought at the race expo last week. I am excited about the new equiment!

Posted by barb at 9:47 AM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2008

It looks like I'm going to Age Group Nationals

So I was bored this morning and surfing around on the USAT web site, wherein I found a clause that said I basically already qualified for Age Group Nationals - Any non-championship USAT sanctioned event will qualify the top 10 percent or top finisher (whichever is greater) in each age group. The race I did Sunday was USAT sanctioned, and I was fifth out of 92, which (even though I am bad at math) I know to be in the top 10%. I went ahead and signed up, just to get it taken care of, and found that I saved $10 by registering before 6/30. How awesome! Of course active, the worst web site in my personal experience, took $8 of that, but whatever. So I am super excited. I am probably going to book my flight tonight. I cannot imagine what racing at sea level will do for my times, I hope it will make them faster!!

Anyway, two days post race I am feeling pretty awesome. Yesterday I ran 7 miles in the morning and biked 28.5 or so in the evening - I didn't really intend to go that far but I missed a turn, whoops! This morning I had a 7:15 a.m. meeting so I am probably just going to swim after work, it should be a nice mellow day which is definitely in order for me.

Also, now that I have had an awesome race, my friends seem to think it might be time to get a proper coach. So that search is on. Luckily, living near Boulder there are a ton of coaches - it is just a matter of doing the research and finding a coach who is right for me. As much as I would not enjoy spending even more time and money on triathlon, I do think it makes sense. So that is what's up today!

Posted by barb at 9:49 AM | Comments (1)

June 16, 2008

the gory (but awesome) details

Here is the long report on yesterday's race. I will warn you it might go into excruciating detail, and you may learn the true extent of my obsessive attention to detail at times!

Overall: It turns out I was fifth in my age group, not fourth. Oh well! I think I could definitely have beaten the fourth girl, I was under a minute back. However in a way it is better to be fifth than fourth - one place off the podium is kind of brutal. My official time was 1:25:58. Which does not sound awesome, but keep in mind that this is an atypical sprint distance - the bike is 17.3 or so miles whereas the 'standard' sprint bike distance is 12 miles. In obsessing over my standings and where I could beat more chicks to get on the podium next year, the answers are basically swim, swim, transition, swim, transition. I had really solid transition times for a middle of the pack triathlete, but now that I am trying to become an awesome age group triathlete they need some work. Now here are all the details.

Swim - 14:15 (this includes running up the beach for about 45 seconds)
This time exceeded all my expectations, but it is also pretty slow if I want to get on the podium. I would say 10 women in my age group beat my swim time. I thought I would do 15:00 just in the water, however, so 90 seconds faster than my goal is nothing to sneeze at. I did not panic which is awesome, even though I started out around the middle of the pack and was in a ton of traffic at first. I felt strong and I do think I can go faster next time, although I also felt really nauseous when I got out of the water. This was a clockwise swim which is the worse side for me (I strongly prefer breathing to the left), but it didn't bother me.

T1 - 1:29
This was definitely not an awesome transition. I dropped my bike (and scratched up one of the hoods, wah!!!!), and I was kind of out of it from the swim. I would love to get my times into the low 1:00 range - the fastest time I saw was 1:03. This just comes down to practice.

Bike - 46:49 (22.0 MPH)
My goal on the bike was 22 MPH, and I just made it. In fact I think I was very close to averaging 22.1, which would have been cool - a girl who did the bike 3 seconds faster had an average showing 22.1. I felt strong on the bike and I passed a TON of people (I started in the fifth wave so there were lots and lots of people to pass, which was both motivating and annoying. It was cool passing people, and not getting passed (I did not get passed by a single person on the bike), but it was also annoying because I was constantly passing someone and I do think it slowed me down a bit, especially when I would come up behind someone on a turn. One guy in particular was just rolling along all the way to the left when I was coming up on a turn and I basically had to scream at him to get him to move out of the way. He could have (and in my opinion should have) gotten a penalty for this. Just like I could have gotten a penalty had I passed him on the right. I do not know why people do this. It is dangerous, as well as just being rude and an example of very poor sportsmanship. Anyway, the bike was awesome. I absolutely love my bike and given the number of men on fancy tri bikes that I passed, I do not think I need to purchase a tri bike any time soon. It was a bit more windy on the course than I would have liked, but the wind was at my back at the end which was pretty cool. I felt very strong throughout, and I think although I can improve on the bike, what I'm doing now is working. I had the second fastest bike split (by three seconds) of all the women in my age group.

T2 - 0:59
This was a pretty solid transition time although one of the girls in my age group did it in 30 seconds. I really do not know how that is even possible - maybe she can get her feet out of her shoes while she's still on the bike. That would be a good way for me to crash.

Run - 22:29 (7:15/mile)
Although this is not a smoking fast run time, it is surprisingly not far off from the fastest time in the age group which was only 21:38 (6:59 pace). However, given my running background I do think I can improve. I should be able to run around 7:00 pace, realistically, especially since when I finished I didn't feel all that bad. However, I was only passed by one person (a super fast 21 year old who was third overall I believe), and I did pass one girl in my age group, which was sweet. I felt good although I was wishing I had drank a bit more water on the bike. There were a ton of spectators on the run (including my awesome parents, who got up at 4:30 am to come watch the race and take some pictures that I am going to attempt to post tonight/tomorrow), so that inspired me to kick it in pretty hard in the last .2 miles or so. Which is great because that's probably what got me under 1:26!!

So that is the really long and obsessive race report. I ran an easy 7 miles this morning and felt great - it is back to the grindstone now so I can hopefully improve on my age group performance (or at least maintain in a more competitive field) in the Boulder Peak Tri. This will be important as it's the age group nationals qualifier, and I really want to compete there! Anyway thank you to all of my readers for your support. If you have gotten this far, you deserve an award yourself!

Posted by barb at 8:37 AM | Comments (1)

June 15, 2008

1:25!!

And fourth in my age group, I think. However, my math could be wrong. I will write a full report on this awesome race once the results are posted. Needless to say it was a great day and I am really happy with how it went.

Posted by barb at 1:27 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2008

calming the nerves

I have to say I am proud of my effort this week to calm my nerves. I have been visualizing my race at least once a day which really seems to help. It is kind of funny, I was never a big fan of visualizing running races because I thought it was boring. With triathlon, there are so many things to visualize - setting up the transition area, putting on my wetsuit, swimming, T1 and T2, the bike, the run, etc., etc. It does not really seem to bore me much at all! And it really helps with my nerves so that is worth the price of admission.

My taper is definitely going better. I would not say I'm bouncing off the walls, but I do feel very rested and I feel like I am no longer losing all my fitness which is nice! Today was a very easy day and tomorrow will be even easier, and in fact it might be a rest day. I am really excited to race, and I am even excited for the swim. I had a super choppy swim on Wednesday which really helped to build my confidence - no race has been as choppy in my experience as the water I swam in on Wednesday. So that was great.

This weekend will be pretty much devoted to race expo, race prep, and RACE activities. How exciting! Now that I have actually been posting on a somewhat regular basis I will probably post my results on Sunday sometime, and I should bust out a longer race report early next week. How exciting!! I hope all my fellow bloggers have a great weekend.

Posted by barb at 3:58 PM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2008

stress case!

Well I am a big stress case today. I had been feeling very fit, and now my confidence is shaken a bit. I think I will get it back, and in fact I really hope I am feeling better about things very soon! I do not want to go into my first race of the year with busted confidence. Yesterday, I basically had a horrible workout. It was the first really hot day of the year, 92 degrees when I left my house for the track workout with my club. The posted workout was a backwards ladder (1600/1200/800/400/200/200), which I wasn't sure about since I do want to race well on Sunday, and it seemed kind of long. The coach asked if this weekend was an A race for anyone and since I do really want to do well in my age group I told him it was. He told me and my friend Kevin to run three miles around the track instead, accelerating for a 200 every three laps. I cannot tell you how hard this was, and it was such a cake workout! So disturbing. The miles were at 9:00 pace and at the end of every 200 I thought I was going to puke.

I am really hoping that this was just a reaction to running on the first hot day of the year and not being acclimated. I think it is. Now I just need to convince myself for sure! And a run where I feel really good in the next few days would not hurt. So come on legs, let's do it!!

Posted by barb at 8:04 AM | Comments (1)

June 10, 2008

Taper!!

Well I am in day two of my taper for my first race of the year, and I am bouncing off the walls!! Hoo boy, I know I will hate the taper by Friday but right now it is nice. I am all about good sleep, good nutrition, and nice short workouts this week. I am sure the sleep is making the biggest impact on me right now as I slept in until 6:25 this morning which is really late for me. Okay, well it is only 25 minutes later than my normal wake-up time but it seems to make a sizable difference. I mean right now I am sitting at my desk and I do not want to close my eyes and fall asleep at all!

I am going to go ahead and recap the last couple training days because they were awesome, so this may be a long entry.

We will start with last Friday which was a fairly big day. I have gotten in the habit of swimming 4 days a week, with Fridays being a really easy 20 minute workout. This is just to keep my 'pool legs' on or something. I don't really know, as I am self-coached these days I just made it up but I do enjoy it. I did a 300 warmup (my pool is 25 meters so whenever I talk about distances they are in meters), and then did a few 100's and a few 50's. I think it was maybe 4-6 of each. Then I did a nice mellow cool down. It was a gorgeous day (we have an outdoor pool at my gym) so I just had a great time. This was at lunch time. I left work at 4:00 and headed home, so I could bust out a nice little brick workout. I rode to a local reservoir, around it, and back, which is 27.5 miles. This was my standard ride last year before I realized that I would be faster if I rode uphill, and farther than 27.5 miles, occasionally. Last year my PR for this ride was 1:32. On Friday I rode it in 1:26. So that was awesome! It did not even feel like that hard an effort. I had my transition area all set up in my living room so I ran inside, put my bike away, changed, and headed out for an easy 4 mile run. This was about 35 minutes which was also awesome! What a great workout. And the best part was that after the run I got to go for sushi, yum!!

Saturday I was planning to meet a friend for an open water swim at the Chatfield Gravel Pond. All was going as planned until I was half way to Chatfield (which is about 25 minutes from my hosue), and I realized I left my wet suit at home. Um, whoops! The water is getting warmer every week but it's not warm enough for me to swim without a wet suit yet, so I hurried back home. Bobbie, my friend, had a run to do afterwards so we did not get to swim together. So I started my workout around 8:35 instead of 8:00, which was not a big deal. I swam across the pond and back (900 meters each way), and felt okay but not great. However I did feel that my sighting, and thus my swimming in a straight line, did improve.

After the swim I did as quick a transition as I could do, and I got going on my bike. I did a moderately hard ride that we call the Deer Creek Canyon ride. You basically ride out from the reservoir, and then ride up the canyon for a long time. I got to 1:25 and turned around, and made it back at about 2:01. That is how big a difference the gradient makes - my average on the way up was about 11 mph, but by the time I got to my car it was 15.5. It was a pretty fun ride, and there were a lot of guys to say hi to (and check out their bikes, which is a fun long ride pastime), so that was a good workout.

Sunday I went up to Boulder with my friend Laura for a 10 mile run. We were up late Saturday night and we both felt dehydrated but considering that we had a great run. The rest of the day was super busy but it did not involve any more workouts unless you consider weeding or planting flowers a workout, but I think that would be a stretch.

Yesterday, day one of Taper Madness, had me riding for around an hour very easy with my friend Michelle in the morning, and doing our personal training session after work. We did a nice easy session which was great. We used this power plate device which is basically a vibrating platform on which you do squats and stuff. It was kind of weird!

And this morning I woke up and had a really nice swim. I did a nice long warmup, then did 3 x 300, and then cooled down. Each 300 was faster than the last one, and they are all much faster than I used to do for 300's, so I was pretty pleased. And now here I am! I have a track workout with my tri club tonight, which I will do unless it is really long.

I am working really hard to calm my nerves about Sunday, and to ensure that I do not have unrealistic expectations going into the race. I do think it is getting better as I can think about the race without my stomach jumping into my throat now!

Posted by barb at 8:37 AM | Comments (0)

June 4, 2008

Interesting couple of days

So, it has really been an interesting last two days. Training is going well although I am feeling fatigued and I am excited to taper for my race next weekend! I am also the proud owner (although this is not yet in my possession) of a sweet new tri outfit. I am really short so most tri shorts have a 6-inch inseam which is really long on me. I found a pair of Zoot shorts with a 3-inch inseam, which will hopefully fit my short legs much better. They will go with a sweet black tri top, which will hopefully look awesome, and will not look weird like my current shorts.

Anyway, here is the weirdness. On Monday I was at the bike store trying on really long tri shorts (and a one-piece tri outfit, and let me just say that I have no idea how people even put these on). There is a Honda dealership across the street and I thought I would check out a used Honda Civic, just because my car is getting older so it is starting to have all kinds of issues and it requires premium gas which is really expensive. They were completely sold out of used Civics, so I drove a new one and almost bought it. Luckily I decided to think about it for a few days, because yesterday I got rear ended! I am fine and the guy who ran into me is fine, but the back end of my car is a bit of a mess. I feel so bad for it! Anyway I do not have loads of free time but now my extra free time will be spent getting estimates, getting my car fixed, etc. Hopefully this will make me like my car more, or maybe the damage will be too much and they will total it. Anyway, the whole sequence of events was just kind of strange so I thought I would share.

This all happened (the accident part) about an hour before practice yesterday so I made it but I was feeling kind of shaky, and I did not feel my usual adrenaline. I think I used it all in my car accident. We did a random workout, running 800m at 5k pace, 3200m at tempo pace, 800m at 5k pace again, with 2 minutes between each interval. Holy cats, it was hard!! My second 800m was definitely slower than 5k pace, I cannot lie. I also did a fun swim workout yesterday morning, 2 x 1000m plus a little warmup. I am feeling fit but also fatigued, my taper could not come at a better time.

This morning I rode my bike for about an hour, which was fun - I hardly ever ride in the morning, it is so nice and calm! If the weather holds up today I am going for an open water swim after work. If not, I will either swim in the pool or go for a little run. That is the week to date!

Posted by barb at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

June 2, 2008

run, bike, swim, run, bike, eat, sleep, etc., etc.

My life is so boring, I tell you what. I go to work, I work out, I eat, I sleep, and that is realistically about it. However, I do like to vary the scenery of my different workouts which I guess is pretty fun. This past weekend I did workouts in several fun places. On Saturday morning I headed to the Chatfield Reservoir's Gravel Pond (which is a pond about 900 meters across that has open swimming a few hours a week) for a swim-bike brick. I have definitely gotten much faster in the water but my sense of direction remains quite spastic. For some reason I have a pull to the left, like a golfer who always slices I believe. So I would be going along somewhat straight and then sight and realize that I was really far to the left somehow. I am not terribly concerned by this as in my races there will be buoys that I can use - in the gravel pond you just have to look at the scenery around you and try to figure it out which is not that easy.

After the swim I dried off and headed for a little ride with my friends. It is actually very pretty around the reservoir area and it was not windy at all which was really shocking. Most of the time I am too annoyed by the constant wind to notice the nice scenery. We rode a nice loop and most of them went back to the reservoir for their team in training picnic. I kept going and rode to a pancake restaurant where I met my mom, stepdad, and brother for a belated birthday breakfast. It was so delicious! The ride ended up at about 23 miles.

After that I basically walked the dog and laid around in various places for the rest of the day, including at a fun little barbeque. I was not that tired from the workouts but the hot weather always takes some adjusting and I hadn't been sleeping very well.

Sunday morning I headed up to Loveland with a big group of mostly team in trainers to ride the course for their big race. I am also doing this race, mostly just for fun although I guess if I somehow had the best race of my entire life and all the fast chicks decided not to race I could theoretically qualify for this Best of the US triathlong that Beth awesomely just qualified for. We had heard some nasty rumors about the course and wanted to see if they were true. The elevation profile looked somewhat hairy but it is always hard to tell before you actually ride a course. And basically, after riding it, my professional opinion is that it's not that bad. However, it is the closest to a true rolling course that I've ever had to deal with in a race. All the Boulder races are rolling for part and then they are super flat.

I decided to make this an easy ride but to pay close attention to nutrition and try out a new strategy. This strategy is to eat every 30 minutes. In general I have used a very non-scientific approach and eaten whenever I felt like it. I decided this was not the best approach now that I am trying to become somewhat fast. I absolutely loved the every 30 minutes strategy so I think I will keep it up. It was nice having time milestones to focus on, and I felt like my energy levels were more regulated than ever before.

I ran an easy 5 miles after the ride so this was definitely a big brick workout weekend for me. It was really fun actually and I felt great on the run, to which I am going to attribute my easy workout on Saturday and my awesome new nutrition strategy :)

Today is a pretty easy day, I ran 7 miles this morning just to make sure I still knew how to run a reasonable distance and I have a lifting session after work. This week is my last big week of training before I taper for my first event of the year. It is so exciting, I feel like I've been working really hard so I cannot wait to see if and how it pays off on race day. Now if I could only get rid of the nervous feeling in my stomach every time I think about racing, that would be ideal! I hope everyone is having a nice start to the week. Hopefully I will continue my consistent blogging for more than a week!

Posted by barb at 4:09 PM | Comments (1)