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October 29, 2009

Good Timing for a Week Off

I must say that I could not have chosen a better time for a week off from training!! The outdoor pool at my gym is closed this week. Right now we are in the middle of a blizzard and in Denver we have almost two feet of snow. If I were training right now it would be very difficult and stressful, logistically and motivationally! I don't think that is a word but I'm going to use it anyway. My training for today so far has consisted of weight training (i.e. shoveling), and I think at lunch I will be going for a walk. I am also obsessing over purchasing snowshoes so that if we do have a really snowy winter I can get out of the house more easily. This whole experience is also making me question my desire to go to Clearwater next year - training hard in late October/early November just doesn't sound like a lot of fun. But it is the world championships which would be cool, so if I get a slot I may have to suck it up and do it!

Anyway, planning for 2010 is in full swing. Here is the tentative plan right now:
Rock & Roll Arizona Half Marathon (1/17/2010)
St. Anthony's Olympic (4/25/2010)
Eagleman 70.3 (6/13/2010)
5430 Sprint Tri (6/20/2010)
Boulder Peak Tri (7/11/2010)
Lake Stevens 70.3 (8/15/2010)
Wild on Windsor Olympic (August 2010)
Crescent Moon Sprint (September 2010)
Clearwater (November 2010) - Maybe

The only real variable there is St. Anthony's - Michelle is trying to convince me to go to Age Group Nationals instead. I would love to do both but I am not really that rich :) I am going to figure out the travel costs and then decide by the end of November. But other than that I think we are locked and loaded for 2010! I think it will be a fun season! Now if I can just survive my week off...

Posted by barb at 8:45 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2009

Longhorn 70.3 Race Report - Finishing 2009 with a Bang!

My last race of 2009 was, in my opinion, a huge success. In fact I think the whole year has been totally awesome, but more about that in a later post! I would like to take some time now to review how things went this weekend and to bask in my achievement.

Overall - 5:04:34, 6th F30-34, 25th Female Overall
Wow! This was a competitive race. I think due to its place in the year, meaning that there aren't many options for an IM series race in late October, a lot of good athletes showed up! Luckily I beat my age group place from Timberman by two spots and I PRed by at least 11 minutes (more on the 'at least' a bit later)!! I am super excited about that, this year alone I have taken my Half Ironman PR from 5:38 to 5:04. My goal for the race was to go under 5:10 and I felt that I would be over the moon if I broke 5:05, so I achieved my stretch goal which is always a great feeling! Now I am definitely ready for a week off to sleep, recover, and generally catch up on life. It is weird not having to get up to train in the morning, or at lunch, or after work! I don't really know what to do with myself but I know taking a week off is the right thing to do.

Pre-Race:
My friend Michelle and I arrived in Austin around 6:00 pm on Friday. The travel went so smoothly it was amazing! We actually sat next to a super fast age grouper on the way down so that was cool. She ended up winning Michelle's age group by a pretty solid margin. After we got our bags and our car we headed to the hotel, checked in, and started building our bicycles. We got about halfway done and took off for dinner at the Eastside Cafe which was awesome and highly recommended. They have an organic vegetable garden behind the restaurant which I think is so cool! We went to bed around 10:00 Friday night, I had a headache (I think from the travel) so I didn't sleep terribly well but it wasn't awful. Saturday we got up, had hotel breakfast (ick! I am a food snob), and headed to the race site for our mini-workouts, packet pickup, and to drive the bike course. All of that stuff went well and after driving the course we felt pretty confident - it was not hilly at all. There were a lot of turns, a few of which were somewhat technical, and some areas where the road surface was pretty busted up, but overall it looked like a fast course. The run course looked hilly but not awful. After all that we checked our bicycles, dropped off our run stuff, and headed into Austin to eat some lunch and to see Mellow Johnny's (Lance Armstrong's bicycle shop) and experienced the joy of Austin traffic which is even worse when one has low blood sugar! Luckily we got back to our hotel room by around 4:00 which was our goal. We took to our beds for a little nap/vegging out before dinner at Carabba's which is not delightful to me and my food snob ways but is consistent and quick. Actually this one pasta dish we got was pretty delicious! We went to bed around 9:00 Saturday night, which was not bad considering we didn't have to get up until 5:15! I actually slept pretty well which was shocking but awesome. We got to the race site around 6:15 and got to the start (they were busing us down there) about 20 minutes later. The shuttle system was really well-organized and quick. We set up our transition areas and did some normal pre-race stuff although no swim warmups were allowed. Michelle was off at 8:00 (okay, they got 5 minutes behind somewhere so it was 8:05), and I waited around until the gun went off for my age group at 8:25.

Swim - 1.2 miles, 34:20
First off I am convinced that the swim was long. Looking at the times I am somewhat validated in my thoughts although there are a few really fast outliers so I cannot be 100% sure. However, this put me slightly behind in my PR quest as I was hoping for a sub-33:00. Oh well, I felt like I swam really well, got some good lines, didn't go off course too much, and passed a lot of people from earlier waves. The water was nice and calm and I felt relaxed but good. I did wear my heart rate monitor for the race and when I got out of the water my heart rate was 188! I'm not sure if this was due to swimming really hard, adrenaline, or the fact that we had to run up a big hill right out of the water, but wow!

T1 - 2:36
I love wetsuit strippers. I do not love clean transitions - stuffing a wet wetsuit into a plastic bag is not easy. That is all!

Bike - 56 miles, 2:41:03 Official Time (20.9 MPH Official Pace)
This is where we get into the asterisk on my time. I will narrate the whole ride and I am sure the asterisk will become apparent. So I got my bicycle and headed out of transition. I was nervous because my swim was slower than I wanted and I knew the transition area was huge so my T1 time would be slower than normal. Oh well!! I started out and worked on spinning my legs, not pushing too hard, and getting my heart rate to settle down around 170. That took a while I must admit! It was kind of nerve wracking looking at the monitor and seeing some pretty high numbers, knowing how much more racing I had to do. For the first 10 miles or so the course seemed as easy as we had expected which was nice. The road surface was annoying and since I was in the twelfth wave I had lots of people to pass, that always makes the time go by pretty quickly. The course was not nearly as scenic as Timberman but it went out on some rural roads East of Austin so at times there were some nice views back to the city. There were a few climbs but they were either moderately sleep and very short or not steep at all and somewhat sustained. One girl from my age group caught me and we played cat and mouse for a while - she passed me, then I passed her, then she passed me again, etc. Then we turned South and oh my what a headwind!!! I realized why I thought the first part of the course was so fast, because we had a raging tailwind! This wind was pretty intense, it made it really tough to accelerate. I kept worrying that I had a flat because I just wasn't moving forward very quickly!! I kept pushing though, and luckily I was passing enough people that I could move into their draft zone, pass them, and quickly move into the next person's zone for a pass so I got some breaks from the headwind. After a while we turned East and the headwind continued although I thought it wasn't nearly as bad as when we were going South. I think we were maybe 10 miles from the bike finish when something kind of crazy (and very annoying!) happened. I was riding towards an intersection where cars were waiting but the police had them stopped. Then all of a sudden the police started yelling at me and all the people behind me to stop. Um, what?! I was really close to the intersection so I slammed on my brakes and clipped out just in time. Then they opened up the traffic and let cars go through for about a minute and let us go. So this is why I am putting an asterisk next to my official time - I lost a minute on the bike course! I emailed the race director and he said there was a crash and they had to stop us to let a helicopter pick up an injured cyclist but as I was at the front of the row of bicycles and saw nothing like this I don't think he was telling the truth. Ugh, how annoying!! I really wanted to average 21 MPH and it looks like had I not been stopped I probably would have averaged 21.0. Anyway after the stop I had kind of a hard time getting my momentum going for a while and my groin felt weird due to the sudden braking and twisting to get my foot out of the pedals. I mentally regrouped and started to focus on spinning so that my legs wouldn't hurt too much on the run and before I knew it I was at T2.

T2 - 3:00
Long transition area. That is all.

Run - 13.1 miles, 1:43:33 (7:54/mile)
The run was a three loop course mostly on pavement but each loop had about 800 meters of dirt. It was definitely hilly but there was only one steep hill so it didn't seem all that bad. I must say that in triathlons I can never tell if I'm running well until I hit the first mile marker - my sense of pace is just totally off because I can't tell how my legs feel, or they always feel the same, or something. Anyway I felt good and I came through mile 1 in 7:51 so I was super excited! I thought if I could run a 1:45 I would be in great shape and based on where I was when I came out of T2 I knew if I did that I would scrape in under 5:05. I had come up with my cheesy mantra last week but it just didn't feel right when I was out there so I started out with an easy one of 'Have Fun'. I was kind of stressed after the bicycle situation so I thought no matter what my number one goal was to have fun. So I kept repeating that to myself and it seemed to work! I also tried to say 'good job' to people when I passed them and just be positive and happy and awesome. Later on during the race I started to feel worse so I changed the mantra to 'Run Fast, Have Fun' which also worked pretty well. On the last steep uphill I kind of shuffled up but then I focused on picking up my feet and picking up the pace again. Then once I cleared the very last uphill I just started to run as fast as I could! I was so happy and excited to be done that I had a huge smile on my face when I crossed the finish line, and when I looked at my watch and saw 5:04:xx I was so excited!! What a great day and a great race.

When I finished I started to feel really ill so I walked over to some nurses and they took me to the medical tent for an IV. Wow, those are amazing. I was so hot and wasn't sure if I would pass out, or puke, or both when I got there but once they got some fluids going I started to feel so much better! I don't think I'd ever move to Texas but I must say that the people there are incredibly nice, welcoming, and friendly!

Once again I am just thrilled with the outcome of this race, and I am so lucky to be able to participate in this awesome sport! It has been an amazing season and I cannot wait to recover and start training for my sub-5:00 race next year!

Posted by barb at 11:17 AM | Comments (4)

October 20, 2009

So this is what happens when I have free time...

I actually write blog entries on a daily basis!! How fun! Now if I can just get myself to blog every day when I am training too, my entries might be more interesting :)

So tapering is good. I am going a little bit insane but realistically I'm holding it together pretty well. I am always the type who freaks out and thinks I should train more during a taper, but this week I am being really good. In fact I am considering skipping a swim workout today (but I just had a meeting cancelled so I don't think I will actually skip it). I got an amazing massage yesterday, holy cats was this woman awesome!! If you read my blog and live in Denver and need a great massage therapist let me know. I am super picky about massage therapists because usually I think they are too lazy and do not beat up my IT bands enough, this was perfect to me. I also went to the dentist this morning. That was kind of funny actually, in a weird way. So my dentist was apparently writing prescriptions for pain pills for his friends and he was also addicted to them. He is in rehab right now and the hygienist was telling me all kinds of crazy stories. Things seem very dramatic at that office, holy cats! I feel so bad for the poor office staff, they had nothing to do with this situation and now who knows what will happen with their jobs when the dentist is convicted or his license is revoked or whatever.

I cannot believe Longhorn is only five days away, I am getting so excited! Last night when I was getting my massage I did some visualization which is always really good for me. I am starting to feel excited about this adventure before me, hopefully I can enjoy and appreciate every minute!! I am so lucky to be able to participate in the fun and awesome sport of triathlon, every day of training is really a gift and racing is just icing on the cake! And you know how much I love cake :) Bring on this 70.3 miles, Austin!!

Posted by barb at 12:52 PM | Comments (2)

October 19, 2009

Photo Test

I am trying to figure out how to upload photos. Just doing some testing. Hopefully you can see the photo below!

Oh great, that was much easier than I expected! So this is a photo of me with my award at the Crescent Moon Sprint Triathlon on September 19th. Anyway I am so excited!! Look for some photos after Longhorn!

Posted by barb at 3:53 PM | Comments (1)

Race Week!!!

Oh I am so excited, my race is this Sunday!!! In six days my season will be over, it is hard to believe! I have definitely had my ups and downs this year, from the sprained ankle sagas, to the crash, to a somewhat disappointing Lifetime Fitness performance, to Timberman which was just so much fun I can hardly stand it, to a sprint PR, and now to me, staring down my last race of the year - Longhorn 70.3!!

Thankfully we had a fabulous weather weekend which made my last weekend of training quite pleasant. Yesterday I was actually hot when I did my last tempo ride! That was a surprising but welcome feeling, I think Austin could be toasty so I need to re-acclimate to the heat. Given that I am deep into my taper now my training is super duper chill this week. Today I ran for 35 minutes when I got up, and after work today I have a very important 'workout' - a 90 minute massage!! Oh I cannot wait for that! I haven't had a massage in ages and I am trying someone new who comes highly recommended from a fellow tri geek who likes my kind of massage (the kind where you almost cry). Since I've been having IT band issues on and off this year I think this is just what the doctor ordered, and it should hopefully help me run a bit faster on Sunday.

I have been thinking about the race a lot and one thing I know is that I tend to get mentally down during the run, and I start to run 'heavier', and thus more slowly. So this morning I was trotting around (in the dark, which is always fun but stressful for a habitual ankle sprainer) and I came up with a super cheesy but very positive mantra. I am not going to post it here because I have told two people about my mantra and they thought it was quite possibly the most cheese-tastic thing they had ever heard. But you can bet it will make an appearance in my race report if it works! Hopefully this will help me to straighten up, get happy, and go fast!! I was looking back at my 2009 goals last week when I was adding a 2010 tab to my goals/results/old running log spreadsheet, and found that one of my 2009 goals was to do a Half Ironman in 5:10, so that is my big goal for this weekend. I think I can easily find one minute on the swim, two on the bike, and two on the run to best my Timberman times and get the 5:10. But you know, I am really Zen about my whole season right now, so whatever happens I will be happy and excited. And after the race I will find a really big cupcake!

Posted by barb at 2:31 PM | Comments (2)

October 16, 2009

Time to find some new hobbies... almost!

I am starting to obsess over what fun and interesting things I can do when I take time off in November after Longhorn. Of course I am not obsessing about that too much because right now I need to stay focused, get my last weekend of training in, and rock Longhorn with (hopefully!!) a new PR. I am getting excited but luckily I do not feel nervous. I think I was really nervous for Timberman because it was my first 'real' half Ironman, the travel was stressful, it was far away, and it was hot. This time I am hoping to have a good result but I am not freaking out about whether or not I can finish so that is a nice change! Also, the travel to Austin should be much easier than flying to Boston, shipping a bicycle, driving for two hours, etc., etc.

Anyhoo, here are some thoughts on what hobbies might occupy my time in November:
- Yoga
- Cooking
- Baking delicious gluten free products (I am on a gluten free kick)
- Reading books!!!
- Being a gym rat and elipticalling and calling it a workout
- Going to happy hour (although funny enough, I still have no interest in drinking whatsoever)
- Planning for 2010
- Planning for Boston
- Obsessing over pros and cons for different race scenarios and moving scenarios
- Working (blah, I know, but it will be good to focus more for a while)
- Going out to lunch with people instead of going to the gym at lunch time and sprinting back for a salad at the cafeteria
- Walking
- SLEEPING - oh how I love to sleep!! This week has been amazing. I feel so awesome when I am all rested up and not sleep deprived!
- Laying on the couch watching So You Think You Can Dance

Those should get me started. Hopefully I will not overcommit and be super busy during my rest month!!

Posted by barb at 2:27 PM | Comments (1)

October 15, 2009

Elaborating on the Plotting and Planning

I guess I ignited a bit of a curiosity in my readers when I mentioned moving the other day. Um, whoops! I can never remember what I write to whom, and where, and what I say to certain people and all that jazz. So anyway, here is the deal. I have lived in Colorado for my entire life excepting four years in college in Maine. And 18 months in Minneapolis when I was 12 but that does not count, I hate the Midwest and I spent the entire time inside or being eaten by mosquitoes! Anyway I am hungry for life experiences and I miss the East Coast. I have wanted to move to New York or Boston for probably at least a year. I was in fact all ready to start my move last year when the economy fell to pieces. At that point I decided to wait for a recovery before I moved - no one wants to move across the country to get laid off. I had been planning to renew the search this fall when all of a sudden I freaked out. Okay, this is not really all of a sudden - I did some research and learned a few things about living in New York/Boston and then I freaked out. First I threw New York out of my pool of target cities because it is really expensive and people there work a lot. I like working 40 hours a week. Then I started to worry about what cycling is like in Boston, and the fact that even if I did not get hit by a car in Boston, the fact that six months out of the year I would be riding my trainer, which I do not love. I also looked at my current situation and realized it is awesome for training - short commute, good work-life balance at a stable job I am good at, good cycling location, ridiculously convenient gym. And I started to wonder if I should move after all. But then I started to think about how I will feel when I'm 40 if I never live anywhere else. So I think I am going to look for an awesome situation in Boston, and if I find a good one, I will give it a shot! It is exciting to think about. I love New England - I love the ocean, the trees, the history, the people who are not in your face being overly friendly, the academic institutions all over the place, the proximity of other awesome places like Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, the SEA LEVEL training and racing. Oh boy!! I get excited just thinking about it. Anyway that is a bit of additional background so that my randomly talking about moving does not come out of thin air again.

So... taper. As you can see from the fact that I've been thinking A LOT (above), I am tapering. Ick!! I am so conflicted. I hate tapering. But I love racing!! And I really love racing well, for which tapering is a requirement. So here I am. Tapering just makes me insane. All the workouts seem too short. I have lots of free time. I feel like my legs are burning doing these short workouts. I worry that I will not be fit. AAAAHHHH!!!! Basically I freak out, talk myself down, and repeat. But it will all be over soon and I am very excited about that!! Luckily our weather is back to normal seasonal stuff which is very helpful, I have five hours of cycling in the next three days and if I had to do it on the trainer I think I would die. There are not enough old episodes of America's Next Top Model in the world for five hours on the trainer over one weekend. My other big plan for this weekend, besides training, is packing my bicycle. I am determined to get things done early for this trip so I am not a stress case the night before/morning of. Yeah, good luck, but maybe if I write it down I will feel accountable and do it!

Posted by barb at 3:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2009

Planning

Oh how I love to plot and plan!! Luckily my job is mostly planning, plotting, and then making sure that my plans are executed in the most awesome way possible. If only I had a bike trainer in my cube it would be perfect.

Now I don't want to talk about boring IT project planning and execution here so let's talk about triathlon planning. Oh it is so exciting and yet also very nerve wracking!! When I used to run, planning my season was not really a big deal. I would pick a big marathon or half marathon or 10k and then kind of build everything around it, as well as adding in races whenever I felt like it. I would travel for maybe one race a year. However, now that I am a fancy triathlete I have to plan so much more!! I will be traveling for at least two races in 2010, and this year I will have traveled to three. Luckily this year two of the three trips have been really affordable. Next year, who knows! Since I missed the boat on signing up for California 70.3, which would have been fairly cheap, I could have a lot of travel expenses. Since my life is in flux right now, and I may move next year, I am trying to plan everything to be pretty flexible which is yet another challenge. If I don't move, I want to do the Boulder Triathlon Series. However, if I do move, there is no way I will be flying from sea level to 5430 feet of elevation to race, because only pros and insane people do that! Also, if I move, I will want to do some local races, but if I don't, I have no interest in flying to New England for a race again. Oh, the drama!!

Luckily although I have been obsessing about next year a bit today, I am officially not worrying about it until after my next race. I need to focus hard on Longhorn, since it is an A race. I just got some great news about this race - they had to change the run course due to the drought (I have no idea why, but whatever, don't look a gift horse in the mouth), and they removed Quadzilla, the big hill. The run will now be a three loop course with only 85 feet of climbing in each loop. Hooray!! I suck at running uphill so this is great news.

I am not sure if other triathletes are this way but during my taper I try hard to do everything on my plan as scheduled. Sadly I am kind of a mess this week. I was supposed to ride 1:40 yesterday and take today off. Yesterday the weather was still crappy (this weekend was like a January weekend), and I had an emotional roller coaster of a day due to some family stuff. So I laid on the couch all day (I had the day off for Columbus Day), and moved everything to today. It isn't the end of the world or anything but it does just make me a bit uncomfortable. I have a 2:30 ride scheduled for Friday which also seems implausible so I may need to move things around again, how annoying! Oh well, I think I will survive.

So far, as far as tapering does go, I am feeling shockingly good. Usually when I taper I feel lethargic and icky so I am really glad but definitely perplexed. Hopefully this will continue!

Posted by barb at 3:34 PM | Comments (2)

October 11, 2009

Two Weeks and Counting...

The Longhorn 70.3 is just under two weeks away, I am excited!! The weather has made training a bit of a challenge over the last week or so - this weekend I don't think it was over 35 degrees, all weekend. Ick!! I don't really mind running or swimming in the cold (actually I really like swimming in the cold), but cycling in the cold is the WORST. Luckily I have gotten used to the trainer again, the first time I rode it this fall a week or so ago it was awful but this morning it didn't seem that bad at all. Due to the weather issues for the weekend I decided taking Friday afternoon off would really help me get my long ride in, and avoid over three hours on the trainer, because as not bad as it can be, three hours is almost unbearable! My plan worked although my conditions for Friday afternoon were high 40's and windy. Not ideal, but not 30 degrees and snowing either!!

I am reading this awesome book called 'Born to Run', I will write a full book report here when I finish but I just wanted to mention it because I think it really helped me out with my long swim yesterday (I moved all my training around due to doing my long ride Friday). The book is all about this tribe of people in Mexico who run crazy distances at crazy speeds for the love of running. So I was inspired by the book and decided that 4500 meters was not that bad, and I would just take it one lap at a time and enjoy every lap. Wow, it made a huge difference! I had such a good time, and I swam really well!! So I was super excited, this week three of my four swims were really good! I have decided that maybe there is a method for the madness of all the swimming I have been instructed to do this year. I really think I am starting to improve which is exciting!!

I am now at the point that my taper is driving me insane. Um, with two more weeks of this, I may be a bit loopy by the end! I have gotten all my random errands and such done, I am going to the chiropractor tomorrow just because they called me and I have time, and I have so much energy I am bouncing off the walls!! Hopefully I can calm down, rest up, and have a good race in Austin in two weeks!! At that point 2009 will be in the books!

Posted by barb at 7:39 PM | Comments (0)