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July 31, 2006

Swimming Dizzy!

I was not looking forward to my swim this morning because today was the first day we couldn't use the nice 50 meter pool but instead were kicked out to the small, hot 25 yard warmup pool. Yuck. The truth was though, it wasn't that bad. A tad crowded yes. A tad warm yes. But otherwise just fine. I felt pretty dizzy from all the turns - I felt like I was hitting the wall every 10 seconds! But prior to starting with this masters team I ALWAYS swam in a pool like this so I knew I could survive just fine.

Regardless, I swam 3300 yards total including a 900 yard warmup and a 400 yard cooldown. The main set was 500,400,300,200,100 descending (coach had some fancy word for how we were supposed to do the repeats but I've forgotten it and it basically meant swim each repeat faster). Each repeat had a 45-60 second rest. Then we swam a hard 500. These are my favorite kind of workouts, longer and slower. I actually even swam up a lane (with faster people) and did fine. Swimming with that same group of people for fast 100s would be very tough for me though.

A couple observations...swimming long repeats in a 25 yard pool = not keeping very good track of how many laps one has swam. I lost track about 10 times. Good thing I was not leading the workout. Also, swimming yards vs meters? Yeah - big difference!! I usually swim 1:30-1:35 100s in the 50 meter pool depending on the length of the interval. Today I swam my first 100 of the first 500 in 1:20. Whoa Nelly! Now I feel fast! :)

So that was today. I got my workouts for the week from coach last night and boy was I surprised! Very light week and I even have Friday off - but I guess this makes sense since my biggest race is coming up Sunday. I'm getting nervous already!

Summary for last week (since I forgot to do it Saturday)

Sunday - off
Monday - 3500 meter swim w/4x(300,200,100), core/feet exercises
Tuesday - 3000 meter swim (off stroke day) in am, ~30 mile cycling w/15 mile crit in pm, 2x25 pushups and 2x100 crunchers
Wednesday - 45 min on trainer w/3x6 min in big gears in am, 55 min run w/3x6 min up-tempo in pm, core/feet exercises
Thursday - 3000 meter swim w/4x(4x50,3x100), 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchers
Friday - 30 min run w/6x20 second uphill striders
Saturday - Johnstown YMCA triathlon - 400 yard swim, 35K bike, 5K run (1:27:05)
Sunday - core/feet exercises only

Posted by beth at 3:48 PM | Comments (1)

July 29, 2006

The Good News and Bad News

The good news from today's race - I broke the course record! :) The bad news...so did the woman that beat me by 2 minutes. Doh!

The woman that won also won last year. The winning time last year was 1:31.xx. When I crossed the line in 1:27 I thought I may have won. Unfortunately she had already crossed the line (she started the race about 30 minutes ahead of me since she was in an early heat) in 1:25. I was still pleased with my race though. The swim was in a pool and each heat was 12 minutes apart so it was really hard to "race" anyone today - everyone was so spaced out! But I honestly don't think I could have cut 2 minutes from my time even if the winner and I were in the same heat and racing head to head.

My swim was fine - 400 yards in a little (hot) YMCA pool in around 5:45. It was actually nice swimming in a pool with nobody kicking you in the face, although it didn't feel quite like the start of a triathlon. :)

The bike was up next and I felt pretty good on it. It was relatively flat with one nice hill and otherwise very long gradual uphills and downhills. I don't have my exact splits but my bike computer said I did it in around 58 minutes with an average speed of about 21 MPH. Sweet. I was pretty pleased with that.

Next the run. I wasn't too happy with my run in the last tri I did - almost 22 minutes for 5K - so I had to redeem myself a little. Especially considering this should be my best event. Have to represent! The good news is the run course was very flat and I felt pretty decent so I squeezed in in under 21 minutes. Still nothing to write home about but at least better than 22 minutes. I can't wait to see the real results with the splits. I want to see where the winner made up 2 minutes on me. I'm guessing the bike as based on her build. She didn't look like a runner but a swimmer rather. It would have been pretty hard to swim 2 minutes faster in a 400 yard swim so the bike it is. :)

Anyway, it was a great day overall. The awards were actually very nice. I practiced some things (like actually taking fluids and a gel on the bike) that I'll need for next week's "A" race, the Olympic distance tri in downtown Pittsburgh. Because I'm so new to this, each of these races, no matter how small, really help me out. Just getting through the transitions and learning the little ins and outs and tricks of the trade are just what I need. I definitely learn something new each time.

And that was that! Triathlon #3 down and #4 is next Sunday already. Very excited for that one - my biggest (and longest!) race of the season with the best competition. I was thinking when I was running today how that 10K is not going to feel very nice next weekend. But then again, that marathon after the 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike next July in Lake Placid won't be a cake walk either. :)

Posted by beth at 5:02 PM | Comments (5)

July 28, 2006

Running Blind

For some odd reason I ran this morning without my contacts in. I guess I just didn't feel like putting them in. And I perhaps thought my eyesight was better than it really is. Truth is, I can't see too well without corrective lenses of some sort. Hmmm...interesting fact to know... :)

Regardless I did my short pre-race run this morning so as to give myself the maximal amount of rest between today's workout and tomorrow's race. It was an easy 30 minutes with 6x20 second (uphill) striders after I was done. I felt pretty good, albeit a little blind.

And so now I'm about ready to leave work for the day. I think I may need a nap before dinner and before I start that awful packing business for the race tomorrow. :) Have a great start to your weekends everyone!

Posted by beth at 3:45 PM | Comments (1)

July 27, 2006

More Meters

More swimming this morning, this time another 3000 meters of fun and games with my early morning friends. I'll have to say - when getting up early in the morning for a workout - swimming is my preferred sport. Just seems easier to ease into I guess. Easier to wake up too when you are jumping into a cold body of water.

Today's workout:

3000 meters total (700 meters warmup/300 meters cooldown)

4 sets of:
4x50 (kick, stroke for distance, hard, easy) - on 1:15
3x100 (descending) - on 2

My 100s usually were on the order of 1:34-1:35 for the first of each set, 1:32-1:33 for the 2nd and 1:28-1:30 for the 3rd. Not too much faster each time, but faster nonetheless.

The sad story for the day is that the beautiful 50 meter pool that I've been swimming in for the past 2.5 months is going to be drained and repainted and shut down for the whole month of August. BOOO!!! We can still swim in the warmup pool however when I took a look at it today I figured the longest it could possibly be is 20 yards. It looks so tiny! And it's hot. I'll give it a try on Monday for practice because I want to continue to swim with the same people but if it's too troublesome I can always go back to swimming at the YMCA by myself. I guess I'll see how it all shakes out.

Regardless the swim was my only workout for the day thankfully. I also only have one workout tomorrow (a run) and then triathlon #3 on Saturday! The race on Saturday is another smallish type deal and also a YMCA sponsored event (like last time). The swim is in a pool but the bike is longish for a sprint tri - 35K (~22 miles) and is rumored to be hilly. The run is a 5K. I'm excited (as always)!

Posted by beth at 7:52 PM | Comments (2)

July 26, 2006

Uncreative

I'm feeling pretty uncreative tonight. That and nothing really exciting happened today. What I'm trying to prepare you for is the fact that this blog entry is going to be boooo-ring! You may want to stop reading now... :)

Morning workout:
Got up. Fed Roxy. Changed clothes. Stumbled downstairs to my bike which was on the trainer. I had wanted to ride outside but O put the nix on that. Too dark and foggy. 99.9% of the time he doesn't tell me what I can and cannot do so when he does put his foot down with something, I listen.

My legs were feeling the hard race from Tuesday night. I rode 45 minutes total, 15 minutes warmup, 3x6 minutes in my big gears (goal RPM 60-70) w/3 minutes rest, 6 minutes cooldown.

Evening workout:
Came home from work. Wanted more than anything to take a nap. Changed clothes and headed over to the Butler-Freeport trail for a run instead. Legs still feeling Tuesday night's effort and now this morning's workout too. I ran 55 minutes total (7 miles), 22 minutes warmup, 3x6 minutes (see a theme in my workouts today?) w/2 minutes rest. Harder intervals weren't all-out but up-tempo rather. I was to keep my HR below my upper limit zone 3 (178 for me) which I succeeding in doing. 11 minutes cooldown. Came home and ate pizza with O and Roxy. Actually, Roxy just watched while we ate pizza. :)

A rather ho-hum day. But I was thinking to myself on the car ride over to my run - THESE are the training days that make an athlete. The days when nothing special is going on. You don't feel that great. You would rather be sitting on the couch. But you do your workouts anyway and at the end of the day you are a stronger person than you were in the morning. It's these kind of days that I have to remember in my races. I bet I have a lot of these leading up to Ironman Lake Placid (which from now on will be IMLP). Lots of long, lonely miles. I'm looking forward to it. I think...

Posted by beth at 8:54 PM | Comments (3)

July 25, 2006

Lovin' the BMC

Um yeah - that new bike? Love it. I have some serious bike envy. The idea is for me to ride the bikes so everyone can see them and therefore buy them but I want this one all to myself. The bike and the crazy wheelset that makes it go really fast - I want them both. See how easy it is to get greedy? I didn't even ask Coach J how much that bike costs. I'm sure it's wayyyyyyyyyyyy more than I would ever want or could pay. :)

Anyway, the crit went well tonight. Maybe "well" isn't the right word - I still need lots of work - but things are getting better. I broke away twice tonight - once for 4 or 5 laps by myself workin' it hard at the front. I was really trying to make myself hurt. And let me tell you - I was succeeding. When you're new to a sport it's hard to find those limits as to how hard you can push your body. I know them well in running but cycling and swimming I'm still learning. I dug a little deeper on the bike tonight and the grimace on my face probably showed it. :)

I broke away again later in the race with the help of my teammate. We went after it for about 4 or 5 laps again, her leading a lap, me leading, her leading, me leading, etc... Apparently we should have been pulling each other for more like 30 seconds at the time "short pulls" instead of for a whole lap, but we didn't learn that until after the race. :) Regardless both times we broke away Coach J told us to let up and get back int he pack and both times he did that I was very relieved because I was getting to the point where I wasn't sure I could hold it much longer.

Fast forward to the last lap. You all would have been so proud - I didn't lead! Quite the reverse happened - I put myself in a HORRIBLE spot to sprint! I was just about dead last coming around the last turn and had lots of traffic to get through but I sprinted better than I ever have before and finished 5th. I think what I'm most proud of is the finishing time was the fastest so far for the year - that's what pushing the pace up front gets ya!

And so that was that. I'm beat now. After the race we went on about a 20 minute cooldown ride - I'd say I probably rode 30 miles total tonight (but the new bike doesn't have a computer yet so I'm not sure). And now me and my stinky self needs a serious shower! Good night everyone!

Posted by beth at 9:12 PM | Comments (0)

Catching Up

Workouts yesterday:

Workout #1 (am swim)

3500 meters total (800 meters warmup, 300 meters cooldown)

4 sets of 300,200,100
1st set on 2 min base (6,4,2)
2nd set on 1:50 base (5:30, 3:40, 1:50)
3rd set on 1:55 base (5:45, 3:50, 1:55)
4th set on 1:45 base (5:15, 3:30, 1:45)

Workout #2 (pm - not really a workout at all)
I am going to ride a different bike tonight at the crit so I stopped by the store to try it out. It's a BMC, the kind of bike that Floyd Landis rode to victory in Le Tour. Um, it rocked. I get so spoiled riding these nice bikes I'm not ever going to want to ride mine again. Not that mine is awful by any means, but I've learned that one can quickly become a bike snob, even when they don't really know the difference between good and bad. :) Anyway, I rode the bike around for maybe 4 or 5 miles near the shop. Good stuff.

Workouts today:

Workout #1 (am swim)

3000 meters total (600 meters warmup, 400 meters cooldown)

20x100 on 2:10 as:
1x100 free
1x100 IM
2x100 free
2x100 IM
3x100 free
3x100 IM
4x100 free
4x100 IM

100s on 2:10 doing free = good stuff. 100s on 2:10 doing IM = bad stuff. :) It actually wasn't that bad, especially considering I don't do fly so my IM is a little easier than most.

Workout #2 (pm crit)

Another crit is upon me! We'll see how it goes tonight. I've promised myself that I will not lead the last lap until we all try to sprint but I've promised myself that before and we all know how that turns out. :)

Posted by beth at 3:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2006

T-Minus 364 Days

Today I signed up for Ironman Lake Placid. In 364 days I'll attempt to swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 and run 26.2. One after the other after the other. I feel like I'm going to throw up.

Here's the truth. I've never swam 2.4 miles. I've never biked 112 miles. I've run 26.2 miles but the two times I've done that I've hurt so badly at the end I thought I would never do it again. I've never completed a triathlon farther than the sprint distance. The more I type, the faster my heart beats.

But here's the other side of the truth. Triathlon to me IS Ironman. It's what I watched on tv when I was in high school. It's what I think of when I think triathlon. I'd hazard to guess that's what most people think of. And even before I did my first sprint race in June of this year I talked with O about doing an Ironman next summer. If I'm really truthful with myself, I've been dreaming about doing this for years. Ever since I watched that darn race in Hawaii on tv in high school.

In typical O style, he encouraged me to do it when I approached him about it 2 months ago. I knew he would but I protested that it would be expensive, it would be more time consuming than any other race I've wanted to do...times ten. The training would be hard and long and I would be tired and stressed and overwhelmed. We'd have to put off starting a family for another year. I'd spend more time with my training partner K than him. It didn't phase him. He said that all didn't matter. He told me he would do anything he could to help me reach that goal. I knew I married him for a reason.

And so I talked with my coach and I talked with K and we picked Lake Placid. You have to sign up for the race a year in advance. Ironman Lake Placid took place yesterday and so this morning at 9 am race entry for next year opened. I got on my computer at work at 9:01 and filled out the longest race entry I've ever filled out. They ask you scary stuff like who your insurance carrier is! And I paid the $480 to enter. And then I called O. And that was that. The race sold out in 90 minutes. Thankfully K got in too so we talked on the phone after and I told her she can't get sick of me now. We'll be seeing a lot of each other over the next year... :)

I've known I was going to sign up for this race for several weeks but now it seems so much more real. I hope above all things that I'm not just in love with the idea of the race because real soon I'm going to have to be in love with the training for it too. It's a big undertaking no doubt but the scariest thing of it all for me is that I'm not 100% sure I can do it. And I've never started something I wasn't sure I couldn't do. I knew I could finish my first marathon, it was just a matter of how quickly I would run it. I knew I would finish college. I knew I would pass my registration exam for my profession. I know I'll finish my masters (some day). But 140.6 miles of swimming, cycling and running, I'm not so sure.

When one of my co-workers saw me signing up for a race this morning she asked what I was doing. I explained. And then she said "you don't do anything half-way do you". No, no I don't. Let's hope I can go all the way with this one too.

Posted by beth at 7:46 PM | Comments (8)

July 22, 2006

Week's Summary

Now that I have a nice 90 minute nap in my system I can think clearly enough to remember what I did this week...

Sunday - off
Monday - 3500 meter swim w/12x200 meters, core/feet exercises
Tuesday - 3000 meter swim (off-stoke) in am, 26 mile ride w/15 mi crit race in pm, 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchers
Wednesday - 55 min run w/1 mile hard in am, 45 min easy spin in pm, core/feet exercises
Thursday - 45 min ILT (10 min/leg), 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchers
Friday - 45 min run w/30 min up-tempo, core/feet exercises
Saturday - 38 mi ride, 1900 meter swim w/1000 meter time trial, body weight circuitx2

Totals: 64 mi cycling, 90 min on trainer, 8400 meters swimming, 13 miles running (about 10.5 hours including core/body weight exercises)

Posted by beth at 5:00 PM | Comments (1)

Good Day's Work

I had a good training day today. Pretty soon I'm going to be having a good napping day too. Gotta love the weekends! :)

Things got started off with the group ride at 9 am. It was raining as I was driving to the store and I have to admit - I wasn't looking forward to 40 hard miles, in the rain, trying desperately to keep up with people that are faster than me. But things turned out much better than I had hoped. For one, it stopped raining and while the roads were still really wet (and some of the downhills very scary) the weather was pretty nice since the rain cooled things off. Then, as we're standing around, I notice there is another woman! K couldn't come today because she was flying home from California so I was thinking I was going to be the only woman, making my plight to stay with the guys even tougher. But alas, another woman (and she was a triathlete too!) to ride with. Things were looking up.

To top it all off, we rode a lot easier today. Well actually they rode a lot easier today meaning people like me could keep up, even though I had to work harder to do it. All in all it resulted in a very nice ride. I kept up with the group the whole time. I didn't feel like I was going to keel over when we were done. I got a good hard ride in but didn't over-do it. Very nice. :) In total we rode 38 miles in about 1:57:30 or so - about 19.3 MPH average. I'll take it.

Next up was a swim. I was supposed to swim first but there weren't any pools open early enough before the ride to get to the ride on time, so I switched things around. My swim workout was short - only 1900 meters - but involved a 1000 meter time trial.

I drove to the Pitt pool and started my swim about an hour after our ride was over.

400 meters warmup
1000 meter time trial (15:58 - ave 1:36/100 meter)
500 meter cooldown

Short and sweet. I was working on the 1000 meters though. My legs were a little fatigued from the cycling but my arms were feeling fresh. I was pleased with a 16 minute time. My goal was 16:40 (1:40/100 meter) so it was nice to get under that.

And so went my morning/early afternoon. Now I'm ready for a serious nap as is O who ran 20 miles this morning. And Roxy is always ready for a nap. We make quite a trio. :)

Enjoy your Saturday's everyone!

Posted by beth at 2:53 PM | Comments (1)

July 21, 2006

Long Tempo

Today's workout entailed running a long tempo. Gwaghh... Yuck... Blarhh... Blekkky... I think I've said it before and I don't mind saying it again - I just do not like tempo runs. They require too much mental effort and focus, something I'm not incredibly good at. But I know, probably more than anything else, they help my running immensely and (if performed well) give me lots of confidence.

Today's tempo was 30 minutes long. I wasn't pleased when I saw it on my schedule from Coach J but given the fact that I have an Olympic Distance triathlon coming up in 3 weeks (which involves a 10K run at the end), I need to run something more than 5x2 minutes hard!

When I got home from work today I wasn't too motivated to get out the door for said 30 minute tempo. Luckily O agreed to go to the trail with me and walk Roxy while I ran and he was on a tight schedule since he has a softball game tonight. That forced me to get changed and kick it into high gear. Thank goodness for him - otherwise I might still be laying on the floor wondering when exactly I was going to do my tempo... ;)

Also in my favor today was some cooler temps. It was only in the low 80s when we left and because it had just rained it felt a lot less humid. I was still soaked when I was done but it felt better than the usual I-could-slice-the-air-it's-so-thick feeling.

Anyway, we drove to the trail and I started off with a 10 minute warmup. Roxy and O joined me for this. I felt a little tired when we started but nothing too bad. I think my quads probably take the biggest hit between cycling and running. Thankfully I don't seem to use them too much when I swim. Either way, they were feeling the most tired.

After 10 minutes easy I started off on my 30 minute tempo. Thankfully I know my running self pretty well and was able to pick a pace that I thought was challenging but sustainable over the next 4 to 4.5 miles. I should mention that part of this workout was HR related - 10 minutes into the tempo I was to hit my "lap" button on my heart rate monitor so that I could capture my average HR during the last 20 minutes of the tempo. Not too sure what I'm going to do with that number yet but it somehow determines how I train otherwise. I've got a lot to learn.

When I started the tempo I was pretty pleased with how strong I felt. I was hoping to average 7:15 miles but I timed my first true mile in 7:00. The next mile clicked by in 6:58 and the final mile I timed was in 6:52. Honestly, I was thrilled. I really want to be able to run my 10K in my Oly distance tri in 45-46 minutes and after today's tempo I thought it may just be possible. No telling what might happen on race day (aka - I never get to the run because they have to pull me out of the Allegheny River) but today's workout gave me the confidence I probably needed.

So that was that. I cooled down for another 5 minutes for 45 minutes total and 6 miles exactly. I'll take it.

Tomorrow's workout involves a team ride with the Trizilla group and then a swim (with a 1000 meter time trial) afterwards. I better eat my Wheaties tomorrow morning! I got hammered the last time I did a team ride. They are worse than races! Some of the guys will be away tomorrow for a race though so I'm hoping, hoping, hoping the pace may be just a touch easier. One can always hope right?! :)

Hope everyone has a great start to their weekends!

Posted by beth at 8:09 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2006

ILT

Isolated Leg Training that is. Yeah, I didn't know what it was either until about 3 days ago. :)

Apparently ILT is something cyclists use to strengthen their pedal stroke or make their legs stronger or something like that. Either way it involves pedaling with just one leg while your other leg is propped up on a chair or something of that nature. It's kind of interesting. I tried it for the first time this morning.

Obviously I had my bike set up on the trainer for this one. I put it down in the basement because I think that's the coolest spot in the house. I was still dripping in sweat but I'm sure it would have felt worse outside.

I warmed up easy for 15 minutes and then started this so-called ILT by alternating legs - 30 seconds then 60 seconds then 30 then 60, back and forth between legs until each leg had a total of 10 minutes of pedaling by itself. I cooled down for 10 minutes for a total of 45 minutes. Short and sweet - but VERY tough! My heart rate never got up above 150 but my legs were working hard. At first it seemed easy and I wondered if I was doing it correctly, but it became hard very quickly and the top of my quad back where it joins my hip was getting very, very tired. The goal or focus was to eliminate the "dead spot" at the top of the pedal stroke where you should be pulling up. I suppose that's a way to get much more power - instead of just pushing down on the pedals you pull up too resulting in a quicker cadence = faster pace!

So anyway, that was my fun for the morning and this afternoon I had off! I also only have one workout tomorrow - a tempo type run that I'm going to do after work. I can't believe tomorrow is already Friday. Time sure does fly!

I'm off to fold laundry now and watch Le Tour. I've never really watched the Tour de France before. I've followed it and kept track of who was winning, etc... (and of course it seems like in MY lifetime Lance was the only winner) but this year I have a much more vested interest in actually watching it on tv, especially because the commentators really talk a lot about strategy. I'm in awe of these guys too. I just can't believe how easy they make it look. Up those mountains averaging crazy fast speeds and all in 100+ degree heat, day after day! Simply amazing!

Posted by beth at 9:08 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2006

A Return to the Track

I haven't run hard on a track for a long time. In fact, I know it's been over a year because by this time last year my feet were really bothering me and I was taking time off from running...thus beginning the run/break/run/break/run/break cycle which lead to the "forget running - I want to be a triathlete (!)" phase. Anyway, because I don't ever feel like I'm in good running shape I've been avoiding the track. Doing hard workouts yes, but avoiding the track also because...well...we all know it...the track doesn't lie. The track will tell you how slow you really are. The track will scream it loud and clear with no where to hide. Yes, you were once able to run 5x1600 at 5:45 pace in college. Yes, now your best effort for 1 mile hard is 6:20. Oh well. What can you do?! :)

So anyway, today's workout called for a return to the track. Kind of. I was to basically run a 55 minute run, get my HR up to a certain point, go run a hard mile on the track and then finish the rest of my run. So that's what I did. I ran the long way to the local high school track and showed up after about 27 minutes. I took a quick drink and then ran a lap or so to get my heart rate up to 175. And then I took off like I've done so many times before. And it felt weird to be doing that again.

I had no idea what to expect. 7 minutes? 6 minutes? I was running hard but not trying to kill myself either. First lap in 1:35. Okay - I could deal with that. Keep up this pace and see what happens. 2nd lap in 1:35 again. Alright, I'm okay, let's keep it up. 3rd lap in 1:36. Hmm...pick it up a little...let's try and get this under 6:20. Last lap 1:35. Total time 6:21. After I was done I really couldn't decide how I felt about a 6:21. It's disturbing to realize that I used to be able to run much faster than that for many more repeats than that. But at the same time I'm not sure what I should expect when I only run 3 days/week AT MOST and I've lately been much more concerned with my swimming stroke and criterium cycling tactics.

I walked about a half lap, got another drink and then set off towards home to finish up my run for a total of 55 minutes. I decided somewhere along my way home that I shouldn't worry or think too much about my 6:21. And so I'm not. Afterall, I have another workout this afternoon and another one tomorrow morning and Friday morning and...you get my drift...no one workout should mean too much to us, despite the fact that they sometimes do.

So the rest of the day has been delightful. Did I mention I didn't even get up until 8 am? :) I have to go run some errands this afternoon and then I'll be back to do 45 minutes easy on the bike. I'm about 99.9% sure I'm going to set my bike up on the trainer for this afternoon's ride for several reasons. (1) I am actually doing a trainer workout on the bike tomorrow morning so I'll need to set it up anyway. (2) I'm just supposed to spin easy for 45 minutes which is best accomplished on the trainer where you really can make it easy. And perhaps the biggest reason of all (3) I can't bear the thought of going out in that heat again. Our thermometer reads 89 right now. And I've decided that one can only sweat so much before you run out of sweat. Yep, that's the way it works. So I want to save a little sweat for next summer. :)

Have a great evening everyone!

Posted by beth at 2:45 PM | Comments (7)

July 18, 2006

Oops I Did It Again

Well the short story about the crit tonight is this. I lead half of the last lap and got outsprinted like nobody's business. I know, I know. It's like I have some sick inner-need to lead that last dang lap! And trust me - it gives me grief like you wouldn't believe! The guys on the team are now all mercilessly making fun of me for my tactics, or lack thereof. And they can be brutal too. :)

The long version of the story though is that I did a little better tonight. For one, I broke away from the pack for a good 6 or 7 laps and rode HARD. I was working. My heart rate monitor was going crazy. Another girl went with me and we actually worked together to keep our breakaway, but it didn't last. The pack caught us and we faded back in. I broke away one other time (short-lived) and I covered some moves by others. It was good. I also spent my fair share of laps sitting in the pack and not pedaling but overall I worked a lot harder in this race and that makes me feel at least a tiny bit better that I still ended up 9th (or some other dismal placing like that). I'm getting there. I'm just not strong enough yet.

The guys race was a display of what Coach J likes to call "bringin' it". E, one of the other triathletes for Trizilla was riding tonight. He's very, very close to getting his pro card (triathletes have this odd system wherein you have to earn so many points to get your pro card at which point you can start to earn money and begin races seeded with pros, etc...). E is awesome. He was a collegiate swimmer but seriously crushes people on the bike and in the run too (in his race last weekend his 10K split was around 34 minutes AFTER swimming 1500 meters and biking 40K). Anyway, he broke away from the pack in tonight's crit around lap 10 and just kept it up lap after lap after lap ALL BY HIMSELF! I was so impressed. The pack caught him eventually but with 3 laps to go he took off again and just demolished everyone. It was crazy. A very nice display for sure and something to aspire to.

And so that was my night. Tomorrow we move on to a run and a ride. Oh - and did I mention that I have the day off work tomorrow?!?! I'm SOOO very excited. I have it off because I worked Sunday. Very sweet. And then I'll work Thursday and Friday and have two more days off! Life is too good...

Posted by beth at 9:14 PM | Comments (1)

A Swim or Two

I was having trouble logging onto my blog last night to write so now you all will get treated to my recount of not one but TWO swim workouts. I know - it's your lucky day! :)

Swim workout #1 - yesterday morning

3500 meters total (900 meters warmup/200 meters cooldown)

The workout was supposed to be as follows:
12x200 meters with the odd repeats all on 4 minutes and the even repeats on 3:55, 3:50, 3:45, 3:40, 3:35 and 3:30.

Simple enough right? Well there happened to be a guy that usually swims in the lane faster than my lane that decided to join us for the workout. This is pretty common - people who have just raced or are going to race and want to take it easy. Regardless, he led our workout and let me tell you - I have no idea what he was doing! We definitely did not do the above intervals. We did 12x200 yes, but not in any which way or order. I know it's difficult to add and subtract and keep things straight in your head when you are swimming hard though so I don't fault him. The anal part of me was annoyed but the rational part knew that we did 12x200 and if anything the workout was harder (he erred on too little rest) than it should have been which is fine.

That was it for training on Monday, other than some core exercises when I got home from work. Good thing too because it was blazing hot outside!

Swim workout #2 - this morning

3000 meters total (600 meter warmup/300 meter cooldown)

3 sets of (5x100 and then 200 IM) where the 100s were:
1x100 w/25 m stroke hard
1x100 w/50 m stroke hard
1x100 w/75 m stroke hard
1x100 stroke hard
1x100 easy

My "stroke" was backstroke today. When we were swimming easy I did all free. My IM consisted of free/back/breast/free. Not a traditional IM no, but when one doesn't know how to swim fly, one makes up their own IM. :)

This afternoon/evening I'll be doing the crit race at the oval. It should be hot but I keep telling myself it would be much worse if it was a track workout or a running race or even an easy run! At least with cycling you create your own wind fan. :)

Hope everyone has a great night!

Posted by beth at 1:14 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2006

Another Hot One

It's hot here. Our air conditioner just can't keep up! Our old AC is not doing a good job of making this old house cool. Poor Roxy can't do much but lie around and pant! I know it's hot everywhere though and so now I'm going to stop complaining... :)

Today the training schedule called for a 2:35 (2:20 bike, 15 minute run) brick. I gotta admit, I wasn't really looking forward to having to do this after work when I knew it was going to be very hot and humid and I knew I was going to be tired. But it all worked out well. I left work a little early, came home and took an hour nap, then got on the road around 4 pm.

Things didn't start off too well though. First of all, I broke off part of the valve on my back tire while trying to pump it. Me, not knowing anything about bikes, started to panic. I thought instantly that I was going to get a flat. Turns out it was fine (not without some worry and random checking of the back tire while riding though) but O and I (okay, mostly O) are still going to change that tube tomorrow so nothing bad happens in the future. Bikes drive me crazy. Very finicky and always threatening mechanical difficulties!

So I start off my ride and I'm already hot and bothered by the valve issue and then I just felt like a ton of bricks. I felt so heavy on my bike and the course I choose to do is pretty hilly and, well let's just say I wasn't thinking too positively. But after about 30 minutes things started to come around. I felt better. I stopped worrying about getting a flat. I was hydrating well with my new Aerodrink Bottle. I was through the area that involved heavy traffic and on some nice, country roads. And when the big hills did come I didn't feel superb but I got up them just fine.

I've done this route before and it took me 2:20 exactly - perfect for what I needed today! But when I got home I had rode the full 40 miles (40.05 to be exact) but had only riden for 2:15:22. This was exciting at first because it means I've improved some but then I realized I'd have to run for 20 minutes to do my full 2:35 brick. Doh!

I wasn't expecting much on the run. I really just wanted to get through it. But after I got over my "bike legs" I actually felt pretty good! I'm sure I wasn't running that fast but I felt strong and my heart rate wasn't going crazy. I was encouraged. But I was also very glad to be done. I drank a 20 oz Gatorade faster than I ever have as soon as I could grab it out of the refrigerator. That of course made both my head and my stomach hurt but it tasted soooooo good. :)

And thus finishes what I'm considering my biggest training week since I started all this triathlon business. I did more running and swimming than usual this week with about the same amount of cycling, mostly all in very hot weather. I'm blessed to still be healthy and feeling pretty good (albeit a little tired). Triathletes seem to measure training in "hours/week" and this week netted me a little over 11 hours total. I know that is laughable compared to Ironman training that involves upwards of 20-25 hours/week (yes, it's like a part-time job!) but I'm working my way up! :)

Summary for the week:

Sunday - off
Monday - 3500 meter swim w/4x200, 2x400, 1x800 and core/feet exercises
Tuesday - 3000 meter swim (off stroke stuff) in am, 15 mile crit (26 miles total riding) in pm and 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchers
Wednesday - 45 minute run w/6x20 second striders and core/feet exercises
Thursday - 3000 meter swim w/20x100 in am, 18 mile ride in pm and 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchers
Friday - hilly 55 minute run and core/feet exercises
Saturday - 40 mile ride/20 min run brick, body weight circuitx2

Totals: 84 miles bike, 15.5 miles running (watch out Deena!), 9500 meters swimming

Posted by beth at 8:26 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2006

Scorcher

Holy cow is it hot out there. I mean seriously hot. I know anyone from the south would laugh at today's weather in Pittsburgh, maybe even call it moderate, but to me it's a killer!

But I have no room to complain. I ran for 55 minutes and O is running for 2 hours and 30 minutes. Yep, he's got it A LOT worse. :) He's doing his long run for the week as I type because he's unable to do it tomorrow. That's rough. He just stopped by the house for some water and I told him if he can survive a 17 mile run in 86 degree weather (that feels like 92 per weather.com but REALLY feels like 10,092) than he can survive anything come race day. Good mental training you know? :)

My run actually went better than I thought it would. My ability to run in the heat continues to improve. I don't know if it's so much my ability as it is my mindset. I just don't mind it as much anymore. Plus, I know that in most triathlons with the run being at the END of the race, it has been and will continue to be hot while I'm trying to run hard. Best I get used to it now.

Anyway, I ran for 55 minutes total with the first half of the run being (purposely) hilly. At first I was going to run up the hills hard but given the conditions my heart rate was plenty high just running up the hills normally. I therefore just focused on being strong and smooth up the hills. And then for the 2nd half of the run (which was flatter) I focused on maintaining my form and pace, despite the fact that I was getting pretty tired. I find that since I only run 2 or 3 days a week now it's a lot easier for me to focus on what I'm doing and make each run count for something.

Regardless, I survived. And I wasn't running as slowly as I thought. I timed one lap on the high school track (where I stopped to get a drink of water) at 7:40 pace. I know I wasn't running that pace the whole time, but I would believe I averaged around 7:50-8 minute pace.

Tomorrow is a big brick (big for me anyway) - 2:20 bike followed by 15 min run. The tough part about it is I have to work tomorrow so I'll be doing this at about 3 pm by myself. What was that I said about good mental training? :)

I hope everyone has a great start to their weekends!

Posted by beth at 6:18 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2006

No Power = No Fun

Craziness in Oakland today! Very early on (read 5:50 am, approximately 5 minutes into my swim workout this morning) the power went out on all of Pitt's campus. And by the time I left work at 4:30 pm, it still hadn't come back on. That equals one big headache for anyone who lived, worked or breathed in Oakland today!

Swimming in the dark is kind of fun. I was worried they were going to make us get out but we just kept right on going. It really wasn't too bad although I do have tinted goggles that made things look quite a bit darker and more eery. The bad part of no power at the pool is that means no clocks at the pool. It's pretty hard trying to lead your group timing yourself on a watch that you cannot see. The good news is, about halfway through the workout someone found battery operated clocks and I was very excited. Much easier to keep track of your intervals that way.

Swim workout for the day:
4 sets of 5x100 as:
3x100 at pace
1x100 easy
1x100 all out

1st set on 2:05
2nd set on 2
3rd set on 1:55
4th set on 1:50

With warmup (700 meters) and cooldown (300 meters) I swam 3000 meters total and thus finished my biggest swim week yet - 9500 meters or over 10,000 yards! :) If my training log didn't tell me I had swam a lot this week my shoulders are certainly screaming it loud and clear. I'm blaming my arm soreness on the back/breast stroke that I attempted on Tuesday though. Evil, no good strokes... :)

Work was just chaos. Of course essential operations continued with back-up generators (ie: ventilators, pharmacy fridges, etc...) but things like computers and air conditioning didn't work. It was like an oven in that place! They brought in huge fans for the patients but the rest of us (and rightfully so) were very, very hot. You can ask O - when I'm hot, I'm bothered and NOT in a good mood. I was reminded yet again how dependent we are on computers to take care of patients. Lab data, OR/procedure reports weren't available. It was very hard to feel confident about my TPN orders this morning! I wonder how doctors used to take care of people before we had the technology and monitoring tools that we have now. In a way, I wonder if we've become too dependent on these things. Anyway, I mostly tried to get what I could done and stay out of the way. Not all the ORs were operational so they were carting patients off to other hospitals for emergent surgery, etc... Argh! All was supposed to be fixed by 8 pm tonight so hopefully tomorrow everything will be A-okay!

When I got home I quickly changed and got on "the" road bike. I call it "the" road bike because it's not mine, it's Trizilla's bike. I just get to ride it sometimes. Anyway, I rode it down to the shop which turns out to be exactly 18.0 miles from our garage door. Kim was doing a talk at the shop tonight about sports nutrition (she is a dietitian too) so O and I went along for moral support. She did a great job and had a good audience. Anyway, I rode the bike to the shop and O drove down so I had a ride home. Worked out perfectly! I rode pretty easy and it's relatively flat so it wasn't too bad of a 2nd workout. My legs are tired and it was 90 degrees and humid so killing myself wasn't an option tonight.

And now I must sleep! Good night all!

Posted by beth at 10:19 PM | Comments (2)

July 12, 2006

It's a Jungle Out There

Mental note - when it's 78 degrees with 100,000% humidity, DO NOT run at 12:45 pm. Ooops. :)

I didn't have to work today since I work Saturday and so I slept in. Boy did that feel good. Really good. When I finally woke up around 8 am it was pouring. My body felt all stiff and bunged up too so I decided I would eat breakfast and run later. Later turned out to be about 5 hours later. Oh well. I did get a lot done in those 5 hours at least. :)

It's so humid here! It keeps raining off and on. I did get to run during a dry patch though. I went down to the trail where it was a tad bit cooler but felt like a jungle with all the greenery and bugs around. Truthfully though, if I had worked and ran after work at 4 pm it wouldn't have been much better. Plus, for some odd reason, running in the heat doesn't seem to bother me as much as it used to. I NEVER would have run at 12:45 pm in the middle of the summer before. Today I didn't think twice about it.

Anyway, I ran 6 miles total. I ran out to the 3 mile marker easy (24:02) and then turned around and picked it up some (23:03 back). At mile 4 I threw in 6x20 second striders to get the legs moving. Although my body feels a little beat up, I felt strong running. Good deal!

Today I trialed my new Lock Laces. Let me tell you - these are the ticket! I'm talking T2 in under 1 minute. In triathlon it's all about the wetsuit, aerobars and lock laces. :) The first two are $$$$ but luckily the laces only set me back $6. :)

Have a great day everyone!

Posted by beth at 3:50 PM | Comments (1)

July 11, 2006

Different Strokes for Different Folks & Utter Frustration

Workout #1 - Different Strokes for Different Folks

So I've never really been to a Tuesday masters practice. I went once (I believe), the day after Memorial Day but I don't think it was a regular Tuesday because we hadn't met that previous Monday. Anyway, the point of all this is, I was not privy to the fact that Tuesdays are "off-stroke" days meaning NOT freestyle. Uh oh. Does it matter that I don't really know how to do anything but freestyle? :)

The workout was as such:

3 sets of:
2x50 fly
2x50 back
2x50 breast
2x50 freestyle (thank goodness!)
3x100 stroke of your choice

Hmm... I told Jen the coach that I didn't really know any other strokes. I mean I kind of do. Everyone sort of knows how to backstroke and I kind of know breast but I knew it wouldn't be pretty. She said she would help me if I wanted to give the other strokes a try or I could swim all free. I didn't want to be a party pooper so I tried...everything but butterfly of course. They would have had to rescue me if I tried fly. I would have swallowed so much water I would have sunk straight to the bottom.

So anyway, I did okay. She said my backstroke looked fine. Breaststroke? Well, it needed some work. She gave me some pointers and I worked on it. I did the workout as planned except for not doing fly (substituted free instead) and for the "stroke of your choice" I breaststroked down and backstroked back up. I'm not really sure what my rest intervals were. I was just trying to keep up with my lane - maybe 5-15 seconds rest after each interval? Either way, I will be VERY glad when Thursday comes and we are back to freestyle. :) Total swim 3000 meters w/warmup and cooldown.

Workout #2 - Utter Frustration

I didn't have my teammate K tonight for the crit because she's eating nachos and hotdogs at the All-Star game tonight. Bum. :) So it was just me and about 20 other women riders. Big field tonight. There was also one guy, a younger kid, that wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Worse than me I think. I can feel his pain... :)

Anyway, I must admit I wasn't gung ho at first about going crazy and making every lap 25 MPH. I was a little on the tired side and didn't have a teammate and so I sat in the middle for about 5 laps (30 laps total). Then I got annoyed. I just can't even explain it. Nobody wants to seem to ride hard! But the problem is, if you are the one that takes it out and really makes it a race you end up doing ALL the work in the front and killing yourself. Okay, so you slow down some and make it known that you don't want to pull anymore - then nobody else stands up and EVERYONE slows back down and is in the race again and all you've really accomplished is tiring yourself out. ?!?$#@#$%#@$!!! It kills me. I swear one of these times I'm just going to push and push and push and push as hard as I can and see what happens. That's big talk though - actually going out and doing it is quite another story.

Anyway, with about 6 laps to go I had enough. I took off, not really trying to break away but more just wanting to pull everyone through a fast lap. When I came around again nobody was taking it from me and I hear one of my guy teammates yelling to me "string it out, hold on". I glance back and see - I've actually broken away! That's the one positive thing of this race tonight - the first time I was actually able to free myself from the pack and break away, make 'em work and make 'em hurt to try and get me. I came around again and he's still yelling to me "keep stringing it out..." and for a moment I thought I might actually be able to do this...but then, a lap later with 3 to go, I see they are on my shoulder again. Bugger! I'm not strong enough (yet) to break away and stay away like that. Double @#$#@%#$%$@#!!! So we have 3 laps to go and they are back on me and so I go out to let someone else lead for a while. Naturally we putz around for a while and someone FINALLY decides to take it. I tuck in in about 3rd place and am pleased with my positioning.

Bell lap comes and won't you know it, we are dwadling again. Nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to lead that last lap. So I just take it. I can't stand it anymore and the very predictable outcome occurs - I get outsprinted by everyone and their brother. Triple @#$%$#%@#$%!@#$%!!! I was so fired up when I was done I just couldn't take it. I think why it annoys me so much is because it's so UN-like running. I know people sit and kick in running too but in pretty much every race I've ever run I can say that I really gave it my all, I ran as hard as I could and if I got outkicked, so be it. There is just too much strategy and teamwork in these crits to make that same thing happen. That, and I'm not strong enough to annihilate people like I want to. Quadruple @#$%#@$@#$#@!!!!

So I can't wait until next week. With K there maybe we can make them work a little harder and at least take some sprint out of their legs. It's been a long time since I've felt this kind of fire in me. I think it's great. I think it will make me a better rider and therefore a better triathlete. And so I leave you with one last @#$#@%!#$%@#$%!!! Good night everyone! :)

PS Total 26 miles of riding w/warmup and cooldown. 15 mile race w/winning time of 40:16 (and I was about 2 seconds behind).

Posted by beth at 9:34 PM | Comments (3)

July 10, 2006

Runaway Roxy

Roxy ran away tonight. It was pretty short lived though. She escaped and ran up our back alley, crossed a semi-busy road and then scooted up another alley. But then she stopped and stood there and O (who had been chasing after her) scooped her up and carried her home. I suspect if we waited it out she eventually would have showed up again. Afterall, there is no nice, comfy bed to sleep in outside in the wilderness! Bad dog!

Otherwise the day was pretty uneventful. This morning I went to the pool for the masters practice and we did some longggggg intervals...

800 meters warmup
4x200 meters on 4
2x400 meters on 7:40
about 1:30-2 minute rest
800 meters hard (completed in 13:09)
300 meters cooldown (3500 meters total)

That last 800 was hard and I was glad to be done. It gave me some confidence though for my upcoming (and first) Olympic distance tri in early August. The Olympic distance swim is 1500 meters and that, my friends, seems like a longgggg way in open water. This tri in particular is in downtown Pittsburgh and we will be swimming in the Allegheny River. Umm...am I right to assume there will be a current? Anyway, I would be THRILLED if I got out of the water in under 30 minutes and so today's 13:09 for slightly more than half of a 1500 and after already swimming 2400 meters, boosted me up a little. Now, I know that swimming in the river with 100s of my closest friends will be a whole different ballgame, but nevertheless, I would like to live in my fantasy world for a bit longer... :)

So that's that! Tomorrow - more swimming in the am and then crit #3 in the pm. Coach J tells me that I need to swim 3 times/week because it's my weakest sport and more time in the pool = stronger swimmer. I'm beginning to believe that running is my weakest sport but who am I to say... :) Good night everyone!

Posted by beth at 8:03 PM | Comments (1)

July 9, 2006

Another Try

You guys are so encouraging and well...just plain nice! I appreciate everyone's comments re: yesterday's race. You make me smile and remind me how glad I am to be a part of the running-blogs.com community! :)

Anyway, I thought I would try uploading this picture one more time before I took Alison up on her offer to help me, and viola it worked! :) It was probably because I used O's computer instead. My computer does weird things sometimes... Thanks anyway Alison!

I'm a little on the sore side today, mostly my calves and quads. I'm off to take Roxy for a walk before church though. And then that nap that I have planned AFTER church will probably help too. :)

Summary for last week:
Sunday - off
Monday - 3600 meter swim w/9x300 meters, core/feet exercises
Tuesday - 40 minute run, core/feet exercises
Wednesday - 24 mi bike
Thursday - 3000 meter swim w/21x100 meters, 2x25 pushups and 2x100 crunchers
Friday - 17 mi bike
Saturday - Morraine State Park Sprint Tri (400 meter swim, 7 mi bike, 5K run) and believe it or not I actually cooled down, 20 minute easy run w/Kim
Sunday - off! :)

Have a great day everyone!

Posted by beth at 8:08 AM | Comments (4)

July 8, 2006

I'll Take It

Today's race went pretty well. I think. I didn't ride fast. I certainly didn't run fast. Come to think of it, I didn't really swim fast either. But combined altogether I actually won the race! That's the good news about triathlon. You don't have to be a superstar in any one thing, you just have to be "okay" at all three. :)

Anyway, the race got off to a stellar start by starting 45 minutes late. Um seriously folks. When you are as nervous as I am you don't want to stand around on the lake shore and think about the swim for the next 45 minutes. Not a great race strategy! When we finally did get started though I was fine, other than the bashing I was taking from the other swimmers in my wave! This swim was much more brutal than my swim the first time. I'm sure it can get MUCH worse too, but I was pretty consistently getting either kicked or hit with someone's arms. I never took a bad one to the face though. My goggles stayed on. All in all I think I made it out okay. All the women started together today so my wave was bigger than last time, more like 80-100 vs the 40 or so I started with last time.

From O's report, I made it out of the water in about 5th place. I'll take that. Out of three sports I'll say so far I'm most pleased with my swimming. I'm not a great swimmer and I'm sure my stroke isn't pretty but I can hang in there better than I usually think I can.

Regardless, today I wore my wetsuit and I'll have to say it helped. You just feel so much more buoyant! And I got it off pretty easy too - half way off by the time I got to my bike and then all the way off once I could sit down. Thankfully the things come off a lot easier than they go on!

The bike was short. Really short. Only 7 miles short. But they snuck 2 BIG hills in there to make is challenging! I don't remember passing too many women on the bike but I must have because by the time I started the run I was winning. Regardless, the official results aren't up yet but from O's watch split, I averaged about 18.5 MPH on the bike. Not too good but then again it was hilly.

My T2 wasn't too bad but I'm definitely going to invest in a pair of those shoelaces that you just pull on to get tight because my hands were seriously shaking when I tried to tie my running shoes. I finally got going and actually didn't feel too bad when I started. I was feeling the pressure of leading though.

The run course was out and back on a rolling bike path. I can't say that I enjoyed it that much, mostly because I felt like we just kept going and going and going and going out and I kept wondering where in the world the turnaround was!!! When I finally reached it I saw that the 2nd place women was pretty much right behind me. Uh - oh! I told myself to get moving and so I started to run harder and I focused on picking off the guys ahead of me, one by one. I felt like the woman was right behind me the whole time but I ended up about 26 seconds ahead of her so I guess my running in fear did the trick. :)

I was very happy to be done! My total time was 55:51. My swim was about 8 minutes, bike 22:40 and run 21:55 (ugh!) with my T1 and T2 about 1:45/1:30 respectively. Those are all from O's watch though he probably has them pretty accurate. K, my training buddy, placed 3rd. She made up over a minute on me in the bike and run (she's a very good runner and I'm sure she had the best run split) but got out of the water 2:30 after me. Once she learns how to swim I'm in serious trouble! :)

Overall a very successful morning! I had a lot of fun again and I was very excited to win, especially because I probably won't get the chance to win again this summer as the rest of my races are bigger and more competititve. I learned quite a few more things and practiced the wetsuit. K did great and one of my co-workers also did the race, her first tri! Yeah for trying new things!

And so I leave you a picture of the 3 of us, me on the left, K on the right and my co-worker, a former collegiate volleyball player (!) in the middle. :)

UPDATE: I can't get the picture to upload properly so you're out of luck. No picture. I know - how will you every survive? :)

Posted by beth at 4:30 PM | Comments (6)

July 7, 2006

Triathlon #2 Coming Right Up

My second triathlon of the season is coming up tomorrow!! It seems strange that it is. I was so focused and nervous for the first one, and then relieved that it went well, that I've forgotten that I have about 5 more planned over the next 10 weeks. What the heck?! :)

The tri I'm doing tomorrow is at a state park north of where we live. Because I've never done any of these races before, I don't know what to expect, but I'm guessing tomorrow's race is going to be relatively small. It's also short, the shortest one I'm going to be doing this summer (1/4 mile swim, 7 mile bike, 5K run). I'm still really excited for it and starting to get nervous! I usually don't like to race a lot (running races, tris or otherwise) because racing is stressful but I need all the experience and practice I can get when it comes to stuff like transitions, open water swimming, etc... So I say - the more tris this summer, the merrier! :)

I'm not sure what my goals are going to be for tomorrow. It's so hard to say with these sprint races because the distances aren't standard and I certainly don't know the competition well enough to aim for "winning my age group" or "placing in the top 5 overall", etc... Since it's a 5K like my last tri, I could aim for a faster run split (21:30) but I hear the course is hilly (bike and run) and so I'm not sure... I think I'm just going to have to see what the day provides and make pre-race or mid-race goals! :) One thing I am going to do is wear my wetsuit, which I didn't do in the last race. Coach J scolded me for not wearing it last time. I still maintain that the amount of time it will take me to get it off in transition is not worth the amount of time it will save me in the swim but he insists that if you are allowed, YOU ALWAYS WEAR YOUR WETSUIT! I know it's a good thing to get used to for when I start to race longer distances and will really benefit from the buoyancy they provide.

ANYWAY, today when I got home from work it was glorious outside! I got my gear on and went out for a ride on my tri bike. I haven't ridden from home for so long I nearly forgot how to navigate my favorite ride! (okay, not really, but it has been a while since I've ridden from home...) I rode at a moderate pace, spun up some hills and went a little harder up others. I rode 17.2 miles total and averaged 18.94 MPH. That in and of itself gives me confidence that all this riding with the cycling group and doing the crits is making me a stronger rider. I've never averaged a ride that fast on that route and today I was holding myself back some. Yeah for seeing a benefit from training hard! :)

And so now it's time for a shower and some stretching and then the arduous task of packing up the car for tomorrow. Packing the car for a tri is MUCH worse than for a running race. Running race items include (1) racing flats and (2) water bottle. Tri race items include (1) bike (duh!), (2) bike pump, (3) helmet, (4) cycling shoes, (5) water bottles for bike, (6) goggles, (7) wetsuit, (8) swim cap, (9) Body Glide (so your wetsuit doesn't attack you), (10) running shoes, (11) and the list goes on and on and on and on.... :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Posted by beth at 6:29 PM | Comments (3)

July 6, 2006

20 + 1

This morning at the pool when the workout was announced as 21x100 I instantly had a sneaking suspicion that the last 100 might be an "all-out" type of deal. Indeed it was. The first 20 at pace, the last one all out. I kind of like that hard last one though. It reminds me of my high school coach and the "gut-busters" we used to do. A gut-buster was an unannounced (until the END of the workout that is) all out 400 on the track, usually after hill repeat workouts. Coach would yell "GUT-BUSTER!" and we'd all groan and then go down to the track and run as hard as we could once around the track on very tired legs. The key was that in a race, when we had about 400 to go, Coach would yell gut-buster and we would remember that indeed we had the ability and the tenacity to dig down deep one last time. It was a good idea. If I'm ever a coach, I might use that trick.

Anyway, I've gone way off track...

The pool was long course again this morning. I'm starting to think that short course isn't coming back for a while. It's been over 3 weeks of no short course. Perhaps it will come back again in the fall. Regardless I was helping set up lane lines this morning so I only got 500 meters warmup before we started the workout...which was...

6x100 meters on 1:45
5x100 on 1:50
4x100 on 1:55
3x100 on 2
2x100 on 2:05
last 100 meters all out - my time was 1:20

Now this isn't usually how we do things - in fact quite the opposite. We usually get FASTER with each interval set but let me tell you, this was just as difficult! I may have underestimated the workout some, thinking that it was going to get easier, but the first 11 repeats were pretty hard and not a lot of rest and so the rest of the workout felt pretty hard too! I survived though and was pleased with my 1:20 effort at the end. My arms are tired now.

In other news, I had quite a heartbreaking patient today. Actually, it was the patient's husband that had me all ripped up inside. The patient has a huge tumor/hernia type deal but is at very high surgical risk due to a bad heart/age and so they are trying to decide if she should have the surgery or if they want palliative care and in the mean time she can't eat or be fed through her GI tract because of this tumor and he's trying to decide if he should continue this whole thing or not.

When I went to talk to him he was so nice and had lots of questions and then he started to talk about his marriage and the tears welled up in his eyes, I think because he was imaging life without her. They have been married 65 years!!!!!!! It's amazing to me. AND he said they started dating 5 years before that (high school sweathearts) so he told me he tells everyone they have been married for 70 years. The tears started to flow and I got choked up myself and I wanted to give him a big hug like you wouldn't believe! I was able to get him laughing again though, and he told me stories about his wife and through it all he was holding her hand. It broke my heart to see how heart broken he was! I think he's going to decide to withdrawl support which is by far the harder choice but in so many cases (in my opinion) the right choice. It's times like these that I'm thankful my job helps me to realize a much bigger picture. As athletes we get bogged down in the details sometimes, when really the details are pretty meaningless.

So now it's about time to get going home! I hope everyone has a wonderful Thursday night.

Posted by beth at 4:03 PM | Comments (4)

July 5, 2006

Ghetto Cooldown

Today K and I met at the bike shop and set off for a ride. We took it nice and easy today, averaging close to 18 MPH but all on flat so not too bad. I actually rode my tri bike. I haven't been on it for close to 2 weeks!

We ended our ride at the oval where the guys were racing tonight. We learned some strategy, saw some team riding in action and then decided that since K and I are a team of two, we probably won't be doing much of that in our races. :) We were about ready to head on our way back to the shop when one of the guys asked if we wanted to go on the ghetto ride with them. Ghetto ride?

When one of them asks us something it's more like telling us something so we went along, not quite sure what we were getting into. Basically it turned out to be their cooldown although an odd cooldown given the fact that they would randomly start sprinting uphills and whatnot. I can never figure out if they are doing that kind of stuff on purpose or if it's just the fact that they are guys being guys. Anyway, it became very clear very quickly why it was called the ghetto ride. Yup - we were riding through the ghettos of Pittsburgh no doubt! That's all the motivation you need to stay up with the pack. :) They were just riding easy though considering they had all just raced.

After all that K and I rode back to the shop (the short way) and ended the evening with just over 24 miles. Pretty good night, especially considering we made it out of the ghetto alive... :)

Posted by beth at 9:24 PM | Comments (1)

July 4, 2006

Happy Fourth!

Happy Birthday USA! :)

Today I worked, one of the two holidays I work this year. It wasn't bad for many reasons...

1) it rained all day and was pretty yucky here so I probably wouldn't have done anything fun with the day off
2) no traffic to speak of either going to or coming home from work
3) getting paid time and a half
4) it was a pretty easy day and I left an hour early

I got home around 3:20 pm and started the afternoon off right with a 90 minute nap. I was half watching Germany vs Italy in the World Cup, half sleeping. Okay, maybe it was 75% sleeping, 25% watching... :) And then my training buddy called and woke me up. Good thing because it was almost 5 pm! We talked for a while, made plans to ride together tomorrow and then O and I finally got out the door for our run around 5:40. Whew!

We ran for an easy 40 minutes through our neighborhood and it seemed as if every house was grilling burgers and BOY DID THEY SMELL GOOD! I felt pretty good running. I wore my heart rate monitor and now that I have the little doo-dad that allows me to download data from the watch to the computer, I might try and make some graphs tonight! I can tell this heart rate monitor business is going to be trouble for me... :)

Have a great night everyone!

Posted by beth at 6:36 PM | Comments (2)

July 3, 2006

Long Swim

Our swim coach is away this week so one of the guys that swims with the group told us the workout. He started off by saying that his arms were pretty tired from racing this weekend (most of the group did a 2 mile open water swim race on Saturday) and then told us today's workout would be a little on the easier side. And then he told us the workout. 9x300 meters. Hmm.. I did the multiplication in my head about 10 times and then decided that indeed that was a 2700 meter set, the longest I've ever done. I had already warmed up with 800 meters of swimming. Heck - I was going to get away with one short cooldown today! :)

Actually, I don't complain about long, slower workouts. I do better on those than the really fast stuff without much rest. ("really fast" being a relative term of course... :)

The 300s were in done in 3 sets of 3
3x300 on 6
3x300 on 5:45
3x300 on 5:30

I only did a 100 meter cooldown and still had 3600 meters for the day. Sweet.

I did almost every single 300 in 5 minutes. It was kind of funny. The last one I did in 4:59. What's up with that? I obviously had to exert more effort towards the end with less rest and increasingly tired wings, but I still thought it was fun that I did consistent 5s.

I also found out today that one of the women that swims with our group completed Ironman Coeur d'Alene last weekend in 10:25:17 including a bike split of 5:23:30 and a marathon split of 3:43:24. That's sick! I can think of a whole heck of a lot of people that would like to run a marathon in 3:43 period, let alone swimming 2.4 miles first and then riding your bike for 112 miles and oh did I mention by the time they were running the temps were up in the high 80s and into the 90s? I can't wait to talk with her when she gets back, although I suspect she may not be around for a while. No telling how long it takes to recover from an Ironman. She won her age group (40-44) but must have turned down her spot for Hawaii as she wasn't listed as a Hawaii qualifier. Crazy stuff folks!

Posted by beth at 8:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 1, 2006

Week Summary

Sunday - off
Monday - (am) 3500 meter swim w/2x(300,200,100,100,200,300) and (pm) 20 mile bike ride
Tuesday - 15 mile bike race (20 miles total riding), 20 minute run, core/feet exercises
Wednesday - 7.5 mile bike race (13 miles total riding), 2x25 pushups, 2x100 crunchers
Thursday - 3200 meter swim w/16x150, core/feet exercises
Friday - 45 min run w/15 minutes tempo, core/feet exercises
Saturday - 40 miles of evil :), body weight circuitx2

PS The road bike I rode this morning from the store doesn't have a computer so I don't know our average speed but every time I glanced at someone else's computer we were riding at least 23 miles an hour. I might have averaged over 20 for the whole ride but it's hard to tell given stops and traffic lights, oh and the fact that at the end, I was really slow. :)

Posted by beth at 5:57 PM | Comments (1)

Hammered

Today at Trizilla's team ride I got hammered. Hammered up one side and hammered down the other. Oh, and then hammered some more. Holy cow. Those guys ride. And they ride hard!

The rides start at 9 so I show up at the store around 8:45 all ready to go and excited. Then I realized I forgot my Gatorade and water bottle. Not good. I tell K and she gives me one of hers. A very nice thing to do considering we both should have had at least 2 bottles with us.

Now I should have known that this wasn't going to be a leisurely ride and indeed I did surmise that it would be hard. Afterall, K and I were riding with about 10-15 other MEN, almost all of whom are pure cyclists (read not triathletes and therefore cycle ALL THE TIME) and all of whom are at least relatively competitive (they also all ride in the crits). Of course it was going to be hard and we weren't going to always be able to keep up with them. But dang, I couldn't have imagined how hard it would be.

We started off and I thought, okay, this isn't so bad. But once we got to the main road where we were riding the "real" ride started and I knew I was going to be in for a long day. Funny enough we were riding in the area where O and I used to live before we bought our house and so I knew what was coming and there were times when I was thinking "oh God no - we have to go up that hill?!?!" :)

But I survived. Kim and I didn't keep up all the time but they all regroup every once in a while and we'd find them again and one of the guys was nice enough to stay back with us at the end. Towards the end I couldn't wait to be done. My quads are never going to be the same. I just can't get over how fast those guys go! And they make it look easy. Altogether I rode 40 miles and let me tell you - without a doubt - those were the 40 fastest miles of my life.

There was another crash today also. It was towards the beginning of our ride and I was actually riding alongside the guy that went down. He got too close to the wheel in front of him and lost control of his bike and of course he was right in the middle of the pack so everyone around him and in back of him got thrown off their groove. I managed to stay upright and on my bike (merely by luck) but everyone wasn't so lucky. Nobody was seriously hurt, just lots of road rash and some bungled up bikes. I seriously have to stop witnessing crashes because they scare me and do not make for a happy Beth! I noticed as I got more and more tired on the ride my bike handling skills were starting to diminish. Kind of like when you do a really long run and all you can think about is putting one foot in front of the other, all other brain function ceases. Trouble is, on a bike there is a lot more risk. Gotta be careful of that!

So yeah - I will definitely keep coming to the group rides. I know they will make me much stronger of a rider than I am now. Each time I go my goal will be for K and I to stay up with them just a little longer, or hammer up that hill just a little faster or ride the flats with a little more power. It's been a long time since I was the one holding up the group and EVERYONE was better than me. It's a hard position to be in, but at the same time, it's a great position because there is only one way to go. :)

Happy 4th of July weekend everyone!

Posted by beth at 4:33 PM | Comments (0)