« Winter Riding | Main | Indian Summer »
October 13, 2008
IM Fever, Hot Marathons, and Frostbite
It has been a strange couple of days as you may be able to tell from the randomness of my post title today. I am going to tackle this baby in three paragraphs as my thoughts are random although I guess they are all related in some strange way.
IM Fever
Well, Kona was on Saturday so of course I want to do an Ironman. This is crazy. I hate marathons. After Chicago last year I swore I would never do another. So why in the heck would I want to run one after biking really, really far? I wouldn't! And as I know from my Boulder Peak experience this year, I am a really bad hot weather runner, so I would never do well at Kona. And yet it just looks so exciting and amazing! Thank heavens I am broke from signing up for Timberman and buying two pairs of shoes on Saturday (I was out of work shoes that I didn't hate for winter and then I found these super cute casual shoes). Otherwise God knows what race I would sign up for today. Seriously, IM athletes, you amaze me. And once the gloss of Kona fades over the next few days, I hope I will no longer think longingly of joining you. However, as I may not have mentioned, I am very excited to spectate at IM Wisconsin next year as Betsy is doing it. Luckily there has been lots of talk of spectathlons in the tri blog world, I should be well prepared.
Hot Marathons
Yesterday my friend Laura ran 13 miles of the Chicago Marathon. I guess it was really hot. That sounds familiar! It brought back my own memories of Chicago from last year. Luckily I had just become obsessed with triathlon so the fact that I DNFed wasn't a big deal, but this was Laura's big focus for the year and I know she has a BQ in her. Luckily for her, the Denver Marathon is this Sunday so she has a great chance at redemption and her BQ. I spoke to her when (I think this is irony) I was in the middle of a 2 1/2 hour ride wherein I was freezing my toes off almost literally. So in Denver it was too cold for biking but it was great marathon weather, and in Chicago it may have been a bit warm for biking but not really, and it was bad marathon weather. Very bad. I don't know how they will continue to hold that race in early October. I felt so bad for Laura, she was pretty upset. All I could do was tell her that she did the right thing with her DNF and that I knew she would BQ this weekend. And I know she will. She is a strong runner and she put in months of very solid training. This is why I hate marathons - you focus all year on one race, and if the weather isn't great, it's so hard to recover.
Frostbite
Yeah so I rode for 2 1/2 hours yesterday in approximately 40 degree temperatures. I am cheap so I don't have a ton of winter riding gear, as in my curmudgeonly mind I feel that I have a bunch of winter running gear and really these things are almost the same. Um, that may be true to a point, but my feet were frozen ice blocks after my ride (especially after giving Laura a pep talk for 15 minutes in the middle of the ride). In fact my left little toe was white. I think it may have had a bit of frostbite. But the rest of me was perfectly warm so I feel generally pretty good about my cold weather riding gear. Nonetheless since I have a holiday today, and I want to ride today, I bought a pair of thicker riding socks and some windproof/warming toe covers yesterday. I hope they will keep my feet nice and toasty as I still have not bought a trainer (I lost it in the divorce) and I think it will build mental toughness if I ride outside more this winter. Also, 2 hours seems to be my trainer threshold and I am pretty sure I'll have to do some longer rides this winter what with 70.3 training.
Anyway I haven't written much about specific workouts recently since I am still doing active recovery but yesterday I rode for 2:30 (45 miles or so), and then I swam 1800 meters. It was so fun! I love swimming. I had a hard time convincing myself to get in the pool yesterday as I was still semi-frozen from my ride, but once I got in and swam 5 laps or so I was fine. I wanted to run for 30 minutes too but I kind of ran out of juice and since I am still in recovery mode I didn't really care. Saturday I had an awesome 10 mile run up in Boulder on the South Boulder Creek Trail, my favorite place to run in the world outside of Wolfe's Neck Woods in Maine. It was so beautiful. And after that I froze myself for a while at my friend Scott's cross race. Cross looks SO FUN. Oh my gosh, if I was not obsessed with getting a tri bike next year I think I would definitely get a cross bike. It's like cross country running but on a bicycle and it was so muddy!
So that is about all, I think my ride procrastination has reached a ridiculous point now. I am off to try out my new socks and toe covers!
Posted by barb at October 13, 2008 8:07 AM
Comments
"I hope they will keep my feet nice and toasty as I still have not bought a trainer (I lost it in the divorce)"
Have been reading for a while. Didn't you get married some time last year? Hope all is well...
Posted by: corrado giambalvo at October 14, 2008 10:45 AM