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July 28, 2009

The Taper Is Now My Friend

The taper and I became friends recently. I mentioned in my last blog entry that we were at odds but then yesterday after work I came home, rode my bike and felt GREAT. Woo-hoo for the taper! Instead of feeling the "headwind in both directions" phenomenom I was having the much more enjoyable "tailwind in both directions" feeling. It's funny how the body comes around. Sometimes it comes around fast. Sometimes much more slowly. And sometimes not at all. I've been racing long enough to know that how you feel on race day doesn't always dictate how that race is going to turn out. I've raced very, very tired and still raced well and I've also raced very well rested and raced like crap. BUT, it sure is nicer for the head when you feel good. :)

Anyway, Thursday we leave for Michigan! Steelhead is oddly enough on a Saturday but after some thought I realized so are my other 2 half IMs this year (Oceanside and Clearwater). Apparently I only race 70.3 miles on Saturdays! Regardless, the "packet" is made and thanks to O I know now every resturant within a 200 mile radius of Benton Harbor, MI and can tell you which exit to get off of to get to that resturant. We make sure to note the important things in our race research! Of course the packet also includes things like maps of the race course, which I suppose could also be considered important. :)

So tomorrow I have some training planned, some work, and of course some packing. PACKING! (my favorite) I have made a promise to myself that I will not break anything tomorrow AND that I will make sure both of my race wheels pump up properly PRIOR to 10 pm. As you may or may not recall, I wasn't so good with these promises the night before we left for Philly (my last race) and chaos ensued. Oh well, a little chaos is good for the soul no?

Anyway, to Steelhead we go! I'm very excited and thankful for the opportunity to race at this distance again. I have yet to crack it. One of these days my fitness will catch up to my zealousness over all 70.3 miles and I'll be able to lay down a good time! :)

Posted by beth at 7:53 PM | Comments (15)

July 24, 2009

Scrabble Champion

Well, my week with my mom has come and gone already. Boy time goes by quickly! We had a lot of fun though - hanging out and talking, eating good food, watching movies and relaxing. Mostly though I want to tell you how I am the Scrabble Champion of the World. It's true. On Wednesday my mom, O and I played 3 games of Scrabble - each of us winning one game. That set us up for the Scrable Championship of the World for Thursday evening of which I spanked them all! HA! O kept trying to challenge my words too - although I won't say that I wasn't suspect of a few of his. I honestly didn't know "rouse" was a word. My mom snuck "quo" by us but she has an advantage in that she is a librarian and before that was an English teacher so we tend to believe her (apparently more than we should) when she puts odd looking words on the board. Either way, it was fun. I think I like the smack-talk the most. ;)

Anyway, tomorrow there will be more family time as our family reunion is taking place! (the reason why my mom came to PA in the first place) I will get to see my mom (again - she is staying elsewhere tonight) and my sister and brother in law (from NC who I almost never see). I will also get to see a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles that I don't know. My mom had 4 brothers and her mom had something like 6-7 other siblings. It's a large family. Good thing mom bought name tags for everyone. ;)

As for training - it's coming right along as always and I'm getting QUITE excited for Steelhead which is only 1 week away! I certainly have some unfinished business at Steelhead as last year's race was a complete and utter disaster. (aka - I dropped out) I really do love the race though and am looking forward to making the trip to Michigan again. I sure hope Indiana has improved some of the rest stops on their turnpike though. Geez.

Regardless, I have started a bit of the taper for Steelhead and this time around the taper and I are at odds. Sometimes I like the taper, sometimes not. I am feeling sluggish at this point, and the legs a bit tired, but this is sometimes how the taper treats me. I have a whole week to feel better and since the training volume next week is vastly reduced, a lot of extra time to sleep and rest up! I also got a 90 minute massage today in addition to my regular ART appointment so the body will have no excuses!

Anyway, I'm also getting really excited for IMLP this Sunday! Seems as if I know tons of people racing this year and it's just really, really fun to follow along on the computer and watch people's hard work pay off. Best of luck to all those doing IMLP or racing elsewhere!

Posted by beth at 7:03 PM | Comments (9)

July 19, 2009

Stuff

Yes I do know that my title is rather unoriginal and mostly boring but I just got up from a 2 hour nap and my brain is not creative yet. So this could be a pretty boring/blah blog. But boy was that nap good. I love naps! I especially love Sunday naps after the long run/church/lunch routine!

Anyway, my mom is coming to town! My parents live in South Carolina so I don't see them often. Mostly just holidays. And they come to some of my races! But our family reunion is soon and so mom is coming to stay for a few days beforehand. Which means we have to buy coffee. :) Oh and find our coffee machine.

Neither O nor I drink coffee but for our wedding we did get a coffee machine and for good reason - apparently other people like to drink the stuff and when they visit, we have a means of preparing it for them! Now don't get me wrong, I sometimes WISHED I drank coffee. It smells good and apparently has quite a ways of keeping you awake and alert. But I just don't like the taste. Unless there is a pound of sugar in it which just doesn't seem too healthy and then it still makes my breath stink. So yes, when my mom comes, we pull out the coffee maker and put coffee filters on the grocery list. Woo-hoo!

What else? Training! Yes training is going well and I'm REALLY looking forward to racing again. I am not racing at all in July which of course I purposely planned because I raced a lot last year and it kind of tired me out. Mostly because I think there are very, very few races in my area and so racing always involves quite a lot of travel for us. The travel is more tiring than the race sometimes! But anyway, the point is, I designed the season with a little less racing and that left July blank which has been really, really great for training purposes but BY GOLLY I WANT TO RACE! Racing is surely the best part of it all! Luckily in August I get to race twice! But in the mean time, the training has been coming along very nicely and I can see the benefits of spending a good chunk of time focused on training only. Swimming has been especially good. Sometimes something just clicks for me in that sport and I can take a big leap forward and then sometimes I get stuck in the same rut for months and months at a time. Recently I must have had a click! Also, I've been swimming a lot, a byproduct of running just a little less so that my hamstrings stay intact. It's been working out pretty well because my running seems just as good on less mileage (famous last words) but my cycling/swimming seem better when I do more (probably because I've been a runner forever but only a cyclist/swimmer for 3 years). This past week I almost hit the 20,000 yd mark which would have been nice but I wasn't going to do an extra couple hundred yards just to hit some arbitrary mark. That actually signifies huge growth for me because I've been known in the past to do a few extra running miles here or there just to hit a 70 or 80 mile week (when I was a runner only) and that just seems...silly.

Wow, that was a long paragraph!

So yes, life is just grand! I best get moving on the day though because my to-do-list still has some unfinished business. Plus I'd like to see how all the racing turned out today! I'm sure everyone did wonderfully!

Hope everyone has a great start to their week!

Posted by beth at 3:31 PM | Comments (8)

July 15, 2009

Turning Up The Heat

First I'd like to say that I really like my YMCA. Actually, I love my YMCA. I've never been a member of a "gym", like one of those fancy places that gives you a towel when you walk in. But if I had to guess, I'm thinking I would much prefer a good old YMCA any day anyway. Why? Well first of all, for O and I both, our Y memberships are $7.50/month. Yes, that's right, $7.50/month. For both of us. Okay, part of that is because I am a Y employee but still - it's essentially FREE! Second of all, the Y has everything I need. A pool (the biggie) and a weight room. And third (and most importantly of all) I seriously LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the people at my YMCA. I love all the little old ladies in the locker room and the guys in the weight room that are nice to me even though I'm pretty much the only female in there (ever), and the people that work at the YMCA and Pam and Kathy, the lifeguards that are just so kind to me and always take care of me and have a real interest in my life which means so much to me. It's just a great place to be that Y. And even though NOTHING is new (and some of the stuff in the weight room looks to be centuries old) and it's closed on Sundays and holidays and the pool temperature is like 95 degrees (okay, not really), I wouldn't even consider going somewhere else. Three cheers for the YMCA! :)

(by the way, when I was there swimming this morning one of the employees asked me if I'd be interested in coaching swim team in the fall because the previous coach is not returning and I actually thought "hmmm...maybe that would be really cool - more time at the Y!" but then I remembered I don't even know how to do butterfly and figured it would be kind of a crime for me to EVER to be a swim coach :)

Second I would like to say that the TdF is so AWESOME! True, I think I've said this in my previous 3-4 blog entries but I just finished watching today's stage and the finishes are just...so...SPECTACULAR! Bike racing has so much drama!

Third I would like to say that I'm becoming increasingly concerned that I might melt in Alabama in August. Hear me out on this one.

I am really, really excited to do AG Nationals in Tuscaloosa, AL in mid August. I did AG Nationals 2 years ago but it was right after I was hit by a truck while riding my bike and leading up to the race I had run about 3 times in the span of a month. So...yeah, not my best performace. But I LOVED the race and really wanted to return. Last year I didn't go because I already had too many races on the schedule where we needed to fly and budget wise, Portland didn't fit into the plan. Boo. So this year I was excited to get to go again! And Alabama - wow - never been there before!

And then I started to think about how hot this race just might be. Oh boy.

I've never been to AL but I have been to South Carolina in the summer and the humidity and heat is so bad you can barely breathe. SO, this will certainly be a challenge. Add to the fact that it's just not been very hot around Pittsburgh thus far this summer and thus arises my concern for major melt-age come August.

As a runner, cooler weather is my favorite. I really have never met a runner that LOVES to run in the heat. Let's face it - the mid 40s to low 50s is ideal running weather. But then I took up triathlon and realized that "ideal" running conditions went right out the back window along with my track spikes. Wowsers. I haven't raced in Kona so it's not like I even have seen the worst of the worst but I have been through some really hot ones. Last year in NYC it was in the high 80s/low 90s with MAJOR humidity by the time we ran and I felt like I was running backwards (although come to think of it, that was the only race last year where I broke 40 minutes in the 10K so maybe I won't die in AL? :)

Regardless, it ALSO occured to me that the swim likely won't be wetsuit legal in AL. Duh! But I wasn't exactly sure (it was wetsuit legal in Buffalo Springs I reasoned) so I consulted the ever knowledgeable slowtwich forum. :) Sure enough, there was a thread on the triathlon forum regarding this very topic. And this is what I found:

"I don't know the exact temperature, but most likely it won't even be close to wetsuit legal. It's hot as balls in Tuscaloosa right now."

and

"The run will be a real treat. Yall may want to set up a treadmill in a sauna and add about 5 heat lamps pointing at you to simulate the last half of the run."

and

"I lived in Alabama from 84 - 2001 and during that whole time I never had a single triathlon that was even close to being wetsuit legal during the summer."

Well okay then - that answers that question! :)

Anyway, today I'm waiting until it's in the 80s to do my running workout. I can't take credit for that one - O actually suggested it. I wanted to do my workout this morning when it was in the low 50s. I'm so bad. :)

And come race day, melt-age or not, I'll give it my best. Our bodies are infinitely more capable than we can imagine. And speaking of "infinite" - I might think about adding a shaker of salt (or two) to my Infinit sports drink in AL - Lord knows I'll need it. ;)

The start of my one and only non-wetsuit swim last year in Charlotte, NC. I actually had a great swim. Of course I know I'm slower without a wetsuit and the strong swimmers will be even stronger than me in comparison HOWEVER I actually prefer to swim without a wetsuit. I'm a BIG kicker and the wetsuit takes that away from me. That and I feel like I'm being strangled by the wetsuit the whole time. :)

Have a great day everyone!

Posted by beth at 11:33 AM | Comments (9)

July 12, 2009

Has It Really Been A Full Week Already?

Hmm...seems as if I've been neglecting my blog for a bit...

Also, did anyone else notice that it's already MID-July?

YIKES!

Anyway, I had a great week. It was busy but fun and training was awesome!

Highlights:
1) Watching Le Tour. It's so fun and I'm really glad it's 3 weeks long because we aren't even halfway through!

2) Visiting some of my best college buds today. It was a beautiful day for a picnic!

3) Seeing one of my training partners get married yesterday. Watching drunk people dance is funny!

4) Getting lots of work done! Yahoo!

5) Running with O. It's my favorite. On Wednesday morning I coerced him into doing my hard run workout with me. And then this morning we had a great long run on my favorite trail.

6) Yesterday morning I started my long ride early (about 6 am) and rode for about 30 miles before I looped back to home to pick up O. Riding early on a weekend morning has to be my favorite thing to do. No cars. Just peace. The river was beautiful. Ahh...

7) And so as not to forget the swim...yesterday I had what I'm calling my best swim ever. This was rather surprising because (1) I swam after my long brick and (2) I really didn't even want to do the workout. Oh, and it was 600 repeats. Ugh. In my hot YMCA pool by myself. Double ugh. But sometimes our bodies surprise us 'eh? And improvement comes when it wants to, not when we want it to.

I was trying to think of low-lights but there really weren't any. Not any that I can remember anyway. I tend to have a selective memory though...which really is quite a wonderful thing! :)

I hope everyone has a great start to their weeks!

Posted by beth at 9:16 PM | Comments (5)

July 6, 2009

Man Can That Cavendish Sprint!

Holy cats! I love watching Le Tour. I especially love the build-up as a stage is about to end and everyone gets antsy and everyone starts to position themselves for the sprint and then BAM - The Manx Missile shoots out in a awesome display of raw power and beats them all to the line! WHEW! I better calm down or my HR will be anaerobic soon. Not good for the training you know... :)

Anyway, I've thoroughly enjoyed watching the TdF thus far and will probably be even more glued to the television once the mountain stages begin. I love the climbing!

Not that I have time to be watching tv or anything. MAN is life busy! But it's all good and in fact this past holiday weekend was a great opportunity to NOT be busy for once and do...nothing. Other than training of course. I love doing nothing. Nothing might be my favorite thing to do.

Regardless - an update on the foot! This past Thursday when I went to see the ART doctor (who works on the hamstring), he looked at my foot and poked and proded and pulled and after many whimpers on my part determined that my toe joint was probably sprained (again I say - STUPID ROCK!) and that just like an ankle sprain, it would just need some time. He told me to keep it moving, keep stretching and jostling the joint and so I did all day Thursday and Friday. Luckily swimming and biking were fine so I did lots of that.

As I headed out on my bike (again!) on Saturday I was really hoping I would be able to do my transition run after so I optimistically set out my run shoes/visor. I had a great (long) ride finishing with just a little under 80 miles (no rolling the eyes you IM people - that's long for me!) and I only had one near meltdown when (after doing the hard portion of the ride) I was in bonk-mode and found myself aimlessly pedaling through Oakmont about 15 miles from home. Luckily I had lots of nutrition left and after a gel and some fluid found my way back to The Heights with no big issues.

Then...the run. And my foot felt pretty good! A little sore but doable.

When I woke up on Sunday and my foot didn't seem too much worse for the wear I decided to try my long run. O and I ran 14 miles and I'm happy to report - FOOT IS STILL INTACT! A little sore yes, but about 10 gazillion times better than at this point last week. Yay foot!

This morning I swam about 10 gazillion meters. Okay, only like 5000, but still, that felt like an awful lot. And plus, isn't that like 5500 yards? :) It was a very good swim though and when we had to do 500s on 7:30 I only sort of cried a little. (and then when I lifted later on my arms only sort of cried A LOT!)

Anyway - this week is busy! Lots of training (yay fun!), lots of work (not as fun but the paycheck is fun!) AND a wedding on Saturday! And a visit with some college friends on Sunday! I love weddings. And this one is at the Oakmont Country Club (site of several US Opens - the golf course that is). The last time I went to the Oakmont Country Club (trust me, we only go there when we are invited for weddings - not a place we just casually go on a Tuesday night you know!) I made the (HUGE) mistake of wearing a jean jacket. Yes, a jean jacket. I did have a nice dress on underneath though! But still, a major no-no. And yes, my jacket was confiscated at the door. NO JEAN ALLOWED! Oooops! :) Needless to say, I won't make that same mistake this time. And thanks to the Columbia Triathlon, I even have a nice watch to wear. Watch out fashion police!

Hope everyone has a great start to their week!

Posted by beth at 9:17 PM | Comments (8)

July 3, 2009

A Must Watch

I'm sure you've all heard of the Wassner twins, both professional triathletes and both very, very fast! You may also know about their involvement with TEAM FIGHT and the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. Laurel is a cancer survivor and I think her story is pretty awesome and inspiring.

Last year I think I raced at about 4 or 5 of the same races that the Wassners did - St. Anthony's, Columbia, Philly, NYC... And again this year I've seen them a few times. They race with such intensity but Laurel still always has a smile on her face! Anyway, I'm a big fan.

At Philly this year when Bec was given the mic for her victory speech, she mentioned the new Nike/LiveStrong ad campaign that was going to debut that night. So of course I had to go to the Nike website to check things out. I saw the Lance Armstrong ad on tv for the first time tonight. I swear those commercials always almost make me tear up.

But what you REALLY have to check out is this video. While you are on the site check out all the videos. I LOVE them. And I would be way too embarrassed to tell you how many times I've watched the video about the Wassners and Lance Mackey. :) (by the way, the video footage from the Wassner video is from Columbia!)

Cancer is such a devastating disease. And we are all touched by it in some way. Or we will be. I'm so inspired by the strength that cancer victims display day in and day out for a battle that I'm sure they didn't want to fight. Pretty darn amazing if you ask me.

Happy 4th everyone!

Posted by beth at 7:00 PM | Comments (4)

July 1, 2009

Happy July!

And if you are Canadien, Happy Canada Day! (what is Canada Day anyway? kind of like our July 4th?)

Anyway, my foot is on the mend. I know you were all wondering. Actually, you could probably all care less. :) But, I have to admit that I was getting worried. Foot (which I smashed on a rock coming out of the water in Philly in case you didn't read the race report) definitely hurt on Sunday but come Monday I thought I was going to have to saw it off. On Monday it REALLY hurt. Like can't put any weight on it type of hurt.

So what did I do? I took lots of Ibuprofen, iced it like crazy and sat at my computer for 10 hours catching up on work. And tried to convince myself that it really wasn't broken. And hoped like heck it would feel better on Tuesday.

Tuesday rolled around and it still hurt really badly. I did get on my trainer to ride my bike and was very, very relieved to not feel any pain pushing the pedals. Or only very, very slight pain. Well, I might not be able to walk, run or swim again but at least I can ride my bike!

Also on Tuesday, I was scheduled to work at the hospital. This was a little worrisome because that involves a lot of walking. My foot definitely felt better with my running shoes on but still, ouch. I got through the day though. Still, on my drive home I was convinced that I really did break my foot. I mean really, can a bruise hurt this badly?

Luckily Julia (PT extraordinnaire) came to my rescue. She commented on FB about how inflammation (which I had a LOT of - couldn't even move my toes there was so much swollen-ness/inflammation in the area) peaked at ~72 hours and then things would calm down from there. Hmm...now THAT'S a little tidbit that I could work with! I emailed Julia with all kind of questions and she calmed my fears. She should of just said, "no pycho, your foot isn't broken, now JUST CALM DOWN!" but she was much nicer than that. :)

THANKFULLY, when I woke up this morning (indeed ~72 hours after the initial trauma), my foot felt somewhat better. Yes, still very sore to walk on but now I didn't wince with every step and I could move my toes around! And with shoes on, walking was definitely much more bearable! (barefoot walking is still out of the question)

So I went to the YMCA for a morning of fun. First up was my swim workout which I was kind of worried about because pushing off the wall seemed like it was going to be painful. But I told myself I could still do the swim and just not use the walls if worse came to worse. Luckily, pushing off the wall was only slightly painful so I was able to swim normally! Then I did my running workout in the deep end of the pool. Then I got out of the pool and had very wrinkly fingers from being in the water for wayyyy too long. :)

I also lifted while I was at the YMCA and noticed that I wasn't even limping anymore! Yes, things with the foot are definitely improving. Thank goodness! Don't think I will be running any time soon but I'm just happy to see some progress. My coach told me the rest would do me good. Bottom line though, and moral of the story is, avoid the rocks at the swim exit my friends!

In other news, I felt really good swimming this morning which was extremely nice because the last time I felt good swimming seemed like about 5 months ago. Ok, that's a huge exaggeration. But it did make me very happy. Also, our dog is a bread thief. If you've been reading this blog long enough you might remember the time Roxy stole and ate an entire fruit cake around Christmas time about 3-4 years ago. Then, she figured out how to open our bread drawer and ate about 2-3 loaves of bread before we finally wised up and moved our bread to higher ground. Well over the weekend when we were in Philly Roxy spent her days at Oscar's parent's house. Being the rude little house guest that she is, she decided to help herself to about 1/2 of a loaf of freshly baked bread that was cooling on the counter. Of course the other half of the loaf was rendered useless with dog slobber all over it. I have no doubt she would have devoured the whole thing had she not been caught in act. BAD DOG! (but really cute and, in the end, that is how she saves herself every time)

Okay, back to work! Hope everyone is having a wonderful start to July!

Posted by beth at 2:36 PM | Comments (7)