July 7, 2008

Back to Reality

Well, I woke up this morning and the Boss Dog wasn't waiting for me downstairs. I missed the little guy. As did I miss my training partners Elizabeth, Ness, Jen and Chris. And my oatmeal.

But luckily I did still find a way to move on and go about my day. I had a wonderful time in Chicago but there is always something to be said for routine. Routine feels good every once in a while.

Still, I really would have liked SOMEone to swim my 5000 yds with this morning. :) No takers so off to the YMCA by myself it was. And I had a very good workout ONCE I got going. It took me a while but about 1500 yds into things I started to feel very strong and fluid in the water. Not really too speedy, but strong and fluid. :) I also lifted.

Last night O and I ran 14 miles in 80 degree weather with 100,000% humidity. I dub last week my "heat acclimization week" as I did the majority of my running in temps above 80. That's rough business. Last night it felt a lot like I was breathing through a hot, wet towel! But as I remember correctly by the time I got around to running at Steelhead last year it was in the 80s and roasting. So this is good practice. Of course I'm very much looking forward to some cooler temps for my run tomorrow morning around 5 am. :)

And now it's time to go check out what Roxy is up to. I think I just heard her jump in the bathtub. Storms must be coming!

Good night everyone!

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

July 6, 2008

Camp Conclusion

Yesterday was another great day of training. Starting at the pool with Chris and Liz's masters team.

I've really only been to my masters swim practices which are pretty laid back. We don't swim too long and there is a wide variety of abilities from the really fast to the pretty slow. I fit right in the middle somewhere.

Not so with Elizabeth's team. I think everyone is a national champion! They swim long and EVERYONE swims fast. So when Liz says she can't keep up with her masters teammates it's only because they are the Real Deal. I told her she needs to come to Pittsburgh where she'd be kicking everyone's butts!

Regardless, Liz took me under her wing and joined me in a lane with a man named Fritz. I liked Fritz. He was a cool guy.

At the pool where we swam there was a huge white board mounted on the wall that the masters coach wrote the workout on. One piece at a time. I would have liked to see him try and write the whole workout all at once. He would have needed a much larger board!

But first the warmup. Not too bad. And then a few sets of 50s to get us going. And then the main set. I immediately got scared. It was all stroke and IM! But luckily Liz noticed the fear in my eyes and said I could stick with all free.

At first I felt kind of bad - it's not fair for me to do all free while everyone else is toiling away with breast, back and fly. But then I quickly got over it. Mostly because I STILL had trouble keeping up with everyone! And the intervals were by no means cushy even when I was doing all free! And let me just say, it's not as if I was having a bad day and swimming slowly - no, no, these people are just FAST!

As we were just finishing up the main set I noticed the coach erasing the white board and writing another whole main set. Hmmm...main set #2? Okay then! This set had more stroke and IM but luckily also a good amount of free. But again, no time spent standing around at the wall. Fritz was always pushing off the wall for more!

Of course by this point we had already swam >4000 yds so I figured that was the end. But wouldn't you know that dang white board was being erased again and ANOTHER main set was about to start? When the coach was explaining it my brain wasn't processing. Did he say more 400s and more fly? How could this possibly be? But he was serious. Luckily Liz had swam her quota for the day and set off on a cooldown, as did I. When all was said and done, we had a good 90 minutes of pool time. And then it was hot tub time. I'm going to be severely disappointed when I get back to my YMCA and there is no hot tub waiting at the end of my swim workouts. :)

Next up was our ride. Chris and Liz drove us up to a beautiful area to ride - much more like where I live, out in the country. But much flatter. And a lot more corn. :) There was an hour loop to do and Liz rode it with us showing us where to turn. It was awesome. Beatuiful roads and beautiful countryside. Definitely what one pictures when they think of the midwest. After the first hour Liz went off to do some harder riding while Ness and I started our 2nd loop. And then our 3rd and then our 4th. We rode just a little over 4 hours and got in over 77 miles! And it was an amazing ride. One of the best 4 hour rides I've ever had. The weather could not have been more perfect (sunny, in the high 70s/low 80s, no humidity and very little wind), I had great company, there was no traffic and the scenary was beautiful. We rode past farms and fields of corn and soybeans and cows and horses.

And Ness was so kind to ride with me the whole way. I don't think 4 hours was her original plan but she was great company. We sometimes talked and laughed and sometimes just rode together in silence.

And that was our day! We drove home, stopped for snacks, and then ordered a Chicago deep dish pizza for dinner. OH MY! O would have been jealous. It was so good and so filling. Now THAT is my kind of pizza!

So now I am sitting in the airport waiting for my flight back home. I was thinking back on the week and all that I learned. I truly can't begin to thank Elizabeth and Chris enough for having us to visit. They fed us, housed us, kept us clean and provided for great training opportunities! Not an easy task! And all for nothing in return! It was definitely a lot to ask but they graciously and selflessly provided. I hope they had as much fun as I did.

I learned so much. I very, very much enjoy spending so much time with such awesome athletes who are so dedicated in their pursuits of excellence. It's a different breed of person than the usual and that was readily evident from the get go. I tried to pick their brains - all of them - Elizabeth and Chris and Ness and Jen, to learn and see their perspective on our sport. And I came away with different ideas and some different experiences.

And let's not forget the fact that it was just fun. Boss? Yeah - he could entertain all day. Ness? Could make me laugh for hours on end. I had a blast and created many great memories.

But now it's back to Pittsburgh. I really miss O and Roxy so it will be great to see them again! I'll get home this afternoon in time for some running and riding and laundry and then it will be back to the daily grind tomorrow.

Thanks for a wonderful, wonderful week in Chicago Elizabeth and Chris! Your generosity has meant the world to me. Now it's time to put my new found knowledge to use.

Posted by beth at 8:28 AM | Comments (4)

July 4, 2008

I Love Ness's Draft

Holy cow, I don't even know where to begin.

But we must start somewhere so here goes! First off, the ride last night. I never blogged about that one. But Ness and Liz did so I don't have to. Crazy laps. That's all you need to know. It was very fun though and riding with so many others made the time go by so fast.

Now moving on to today. I got up and ran easy and short. And then we went to the pool. To swim with Chris and Liz's masters team. I was a little scared but it was really great. And there were many memorable moments. First off, the actual workout. 50s and 100s and 25s, the last of which involved not breathing. Or not breathing very much. The 50s and 100s were on a descending interval starting off on the :50/1:30 and then :45/1:25 and then, yep...you guessed it :40/1:20. I have to admit...I was a little sad when Coach Liz suggested that one.

But the fact of the matter was, Ness was leading the lane and as you can very well tell from my blog title, her draft is a very good thing. I'm not afraid to admit that on the last set I left about 0.0005 seconds AFTER Ness pushed off the wall.

Right before we started the last set on :40/1:20 Liz spoke the Quote of the Day:

"I have come to the Hurt Shop...and I am ready to make a purchase."

Truer words have never been spoken.

Hundreds on the 1:20 aren't something I can usually accomplish. But today we didn't do too bad. Not bad at all. By the end I wasn't sure what was going on though. I just kept swimming until I saw Ness standing at the wall. At that point Chris had also jumped in our lane and when we finished he asked "were you guys swimming a 400?" Yep...that sounds about right... :)

Anyway, we all lifted. Ness got caught in the Web of Stretch and then we all went to Einstein's for coffee/lunch and DP for me (Diet Pepsi of course).

But all of that is neither here nor there because the truly important event was about to take place later in the day. Championship Putt-Putt.

Elizabeth will have pictures on here blog to document the rest of the evening. I'm a bit nervous to see what she'll post. If there is a picture of me looking for my putt-putt ball in a pond or holding a black napkin, remember, pictures can be deceiving.

Regardless, it was a putt-putt championship for the history books. 36 holes total and much was on the line. Loser had to buy everyone else cake. As I said, the stakes were high. The pressure was on.

Add to the fact that Liz and Chris don't play normal putt-putt. Midway through the first game Liz started making up new rules. Rules like "this next hole we will play with our eyes closed" and "now we must tee off turned backwards and through our legs" and "the person who loses this hole gets an additional point added to their score." Rough stuff.

When it was all said and done I finished in 2nd place. I was in 3rd after the initial 18 holes but luckily Chris went out way too hard, bonked and blew to smitherins. His coach may need to work on some pacing strategy with him next time. Ness was the champion and was quite impressive overall. She talked the trash and then she backed it up. Not easy to do. And Liz won the most holes in one award with 2 total. I'd call it dumb luck but she was the only pro athlete in the field and I have to believe that was no coincidence.

Naturally we were all very hungry after our 36 holes (talk about bonking my friends!) and our next plan of attack was dinner. More games and eating and lots of laughing. And then Ness started making "things" out of her napkin. I almost snorted Diet Pepsi out my nose. If you've ever done it, you know how badly that hurts.

Of course now we are all blogging and eating the spoils of victory - our cake that Chris had to buy us for losing putt-putt. Cake never tasted so good. That is until Ness remembered that there are walnuts in carrot cake of which she is allergic to. She's still breathing at this point though so I'm not worried.

Camp sure is fun. Too bad tomorrow will be taken up by lots of riding...otherwise I we would have time for me to show Ness how putt-putt is REALLY played.

PS Boss is still cute!

Posted by beth at 9:45 PM | Comments (2)

July 3, 2008

Red Bear, Running and More

Well word on the street is, Red Bear was in town. In this very house. And I missed it.

I can't believe I missed the Red Bear! He came and left all while I was sleeping the night away. The only remnants of the Red Bear this morning were a pillow and blanket on the couch. And perhaps a few tufts of red fur. Okay...not really any red fur, but you know what I mean. So I'm not any closer to knowing who the Red Bear really is, other than the fact that he is elusive. Perhaps his new name should be The Elusive Red Bear.

In other news, we went running this morning. Elizabeth took us to a beautiful forest perserve. I had a nice 70 minute aerobic run to do, Ness had some running to do and Elizabeth had hill repeats. Gotta say I wasn't too jealous of her. :)

I ran on a incredible crushed limestone trail and the weather was gorgeous! All the heat and humidity of yesterday was gone and instead replaced with a beautiful sunny, cool, breezy day. Amazing! Especially because I know it's STILL raining at home. I lucked out this week for sure. I'll have to say that there are some great places to train in the suburbs of Chicago and lots of open water BUT the only down side is, there is a lot of driving to get to everything. That only adds to the total workout time. Which makes me feel blessed that I can ride and run right out my front door. (and my pool is a mere 5 minutes away)

Anyway that was our morning. Lunch, blogging, relaxing, (and Elizabeth actually working - glad SOMEONE works around here) has filled the hours since and soon we are leaving for a group ride. I haven't been on a group ride in a longggggg time so it should be fun. But I hear this specific ride is really big so I'm a bit nervous!

Details to come I'm sure. And pictures too...if one of us could actually remember to bring a camera! (I think we need Marit, the official camp photographer!)

Posted by beth at 4:53 PM | Comments (1)

July 2, 2008

Camp Continues

1) Boss is still cute.

2) I've deemed Liz the healthiest eater of all time. A dietitian's dream. When I was telling O of this this afternoon when I talked with him on the phone he said "oh no, does that mean we are going to have spinach and hummus on our grocery list?" You could sense the fear. Worry not O, I could never give up pizza. :)

3) I've also deemed Liz World's Fastest Typer - she types fast and furious.

4) Chris is the the fixer of all things bike. He's currently building wheels. Who in the world knows how to do that?

5) Ness just plain makes me laugh.

6) Jen could very well be the spunkiest person I know. Spunky being a very good thing of course. :) I'm amazed at her energy.

This morning we went to the track. Well, to me it seemed like it was more like 3 in the afternoon. But that's because I'm an hour behind here and also because, as previously documented, I usually do my workouts very early in the morning.

Getting up at 4:45 am for a track workout (done purely so I can get to work at a decent time) isn't always fun but it does have it's benefits. First and foremost of which is, the temps are usually in the 50s or 60s and sometimes if there is a heat wave going on, in the 70s. In other words, the conditions are usually ideal for running fast.

This is good and bad. You have the confidence of knowing that you can run fast and that you can feel good doing it. It's a lot easier to recover from a workout done in the 50s than done in the 80s. And the list goes on.

But enter Liz and Jen who apparentely eat nails for breakfast (although they claim to always eat oatmeal). Don't believe these tales of oatmeal. It's pure nails.

They apparently always do their workouts at this 10 to 11 am hour when it's...oh, I don't know...80 degrees, humid and windy. Ouch.

So we drove to the track and I knew it was going to be rough. Jen and I did the same workout while Ness and Liz were also off working hard running their own version of crazy laps. Crazy laps indeed.

I had some time goals in my mind for the workout we were doing as based on the last time I did this workout but after the first repeat I immediately ammended those goals. Jen graciously agreed. There was no way I was going to be able to repeat the same performance when it was 30 degrees hotter.

And the workout was still painful and I still suffered. But it was SUCH a great workout regardless. Because it was really good practice for racing. In fact it was very much like the run portion of a race where it's hot and humid and you feel like pooh. And you want to stop. And mentally you are struggling to stay in it. But you keep going anyway. Because that's what you do.

I wouldn't want to run my track workouts in the high heat every week, but I realized today that it's not such a bad idea every once in a while. You learn to perservere better that way. And we all know perserverence is what racing is all about.

Regardless, when we were all done with our workouts we cooled down together and then back to Liz's for lunch and recovery and mostly me being lazy while everyone else did work. I'm good at being lazy.

The next agenda item was swimming. An open water swim race was on the docket but the weather had other ideas. Unfortunately the swim was cancelled as storms rolled in so instead we went to Liz and Chris's gym to swim with a few others.

The pool was really nice! And the water chilly. Which at first didn't feel good but was REALLY nice while we were swimming our 500s. Yeah - 500s. But all was well and other than almost getting lapped when we were doing 250 pulls and then Ness trying to take my hand off (I've renamed her LANE HOG), all was well. I can't say it enough - just how nice it is to be around and train with strong, talented women who share the same passion and focus. I'm so thankful for it. And I've already learned a lot from these guys.

Oh wait - did I forget to mention the hot tub after the swim? Um yeah...my YMCA definitely needs one of those!

Finally we finished up with some dinner at Noodles which is the bomb. O and I had eaten there last year when we were in Portland, OR but I had forgotten about it because there are none in Pittsburgh. That might be a good thing - because I would ALWAYS want to be eating there!

And so it goes. Camp day #2. Looking forward to seeing what day #3 holds!

Posted by beth at 5:53 PM | Comments (5)

July 1, 2008

Camp Has Begun

Well clearly I've already fallen behind. Liz and Ness have already blogged about day #1 of camp and I have yet to begin! That's what happens when you go to the grocery store to feed your serious need for Diet Pepsi while they are back at home on the computers. And there are a lot of computers. One for each of us although we have yet to resort to email communication. We are doing just fine talking face to face thankyouverymuch.

Regardless, camp is all I had hoped it to be and more. First of all, Chris and Elizabeth live in a beautiful home and I have my own room and the sheets smell REALLY good. I've already put in my request to stay...for a long time. But I will really miss O and Roxy so I've requested that they be allowed to stay too. After all, I think Roxy and Boss would really get along well.

Speaking of Boss, I have to admit it - he's got a serious case of the cutes. Wow. That dog is cute!! Elizabeth isn't kidding around when she talks about him. And the crazy laps? Very cute. But I think it's the ears that do it for me. They are big and animated. And very, very cute.

Regardless, today we did a couple workouts after we picked Ness up at the airport. I immediately knew I was really going to like Ness when we spotted her standing at passenger pickup at the airport with her aerohelmet on. Now that's my kind of girl. Let it be known there has been no shortage of laughter around here!

Back home from the airport we did a few things and then Jen arrived. I've met Jen before so I knew what to expect but still, her fire and spirit and smile amaze me. And then off to the quarry/pool/swimming hole it was.

The swimming was great - sort of like open water but not. It was outside and that alone made it much better than my home pool. We did some work in the lanes and then Ness, Liz and Jen were nice enough to practice some dives into the water with me. My next race requires a dive in and I've already been fretting about that for quite some time. No big deal though. Just keep the chin tucked as Ness told me.

After the swim Liz took us to the famous Fermilab to ride. I've read so much about it before! It's not at all what I expected but really a great place to ride in many senses. Very low traffic and good roads. And it's bigger than I thought. And as I realized, the midwest certainly doesn't have hills like back home but the wind could very well be worse. And Liz said that today wasn't windy. Hmm... As expected, "wind" might be redefined for me after this trip.

Anyway, we did a great workout and I truly, truly enjoyed having 2 very strong riders to work hard with. Liz pedals on that bike like I've never seen before. WOW! I really enjoyed myself and was sorry for the ride to be over. Although there is more riding to be done this week so no worries.

Hmm...what else. Liz made us dinner and it was soooooooo good. Seriously, I'm not going home. Last night Chris built my bike for me in about 3 minutes. No, make that 2.5 minutes. Seriously, I'm not going home. Ness makes me laugh, really hard. Actually EVERYone makes me laugh. And no, I don't plan on going home.

But wait, Boss is about to put on a show with his red blanket so I've got to go.

Tomorrow is "track" as everyone calls it around here and some more open water swimming. This really is the life.

Posted by beth at 10:20 PM | Comments (4)