I'm Not Dead Yet!

I have a bad habit of blogging after the weekend and then getting sucked into training and work and falling off the map.  But I'm still here and going at it strong!  So far, I am winning when it comes to my biggest week of the year - of course I haven't even trained half of this week's assigned hours yet - BIG weekend ahead.

So what HAVE I been doing?

5:30am masters twice this week already.  (And a big long solo swim tomorrow)

Trying to give my dogs enough exercise without going out in the 90+ degree afternoon heat

Having a BIG reward after a brutal ART session on Monday to loosen up Sunday's painful hip flexors.  Tears could have been shed.  Thankfully by the time I had to ride hard on Wednesday morning it was much much better and after another round of ART Wednesday afternoon is feeling fantastic.

Rejoicing at the return of hockey!

Making some changes to my bike fit with the ever-patient Bruce over at Concept Cyclery.  I've been on this bike now for almost 5 months so it was time to re-assess and see if we could put me in a more aggressive position.  Thanks to all my lovely ART work, Bruce said my pedal stroke and form have improved dramatically, which helped support the changes we made.

Tripping over a crack in the sidewalk while running after masters today.  I carried on with the workout and might have started scaring people heading out on their morning commute.

Bathing my boys so they'd be clean for an overnight stay at my mom's house

Visiting with a possible future addition to our house :-)  More on that in a couple weeks...

Ironman Ate My Weekend

But first, a few shots from yesterday's ride event.  I was a bad event director and only took a few photos.  So sue me, I was BUSY! :-)

It was a beautiful day for a ride!

The dogs were good about hanging out in between things.

Anyway, on to today...where I had a long ride on tap and a husband with his bike repaired to drag me around the valley.  Knowing my legs might still be a bit taxed from racing last weekend, Coach said shameless drafting was allowed!

I suppose I have to admit that fall is coming, we started riding at 7am and the sun still wasn't up!

 Hello, sun, can we have some warmth now? I haven't been able to feel my fingers since we started.

 Red bell pepper fields

 After Jeff and I did one loop of our long route down to Gilroy and back, we swung back to the car to refill our bottles and pick up another ride companion, George!  This was my view for the rest of the day.

 It was somewhere around the point of this picture (mile 55 or so) that my right hip flexor started expressing very angry thoughts about riding.

 As perhaps a gift, it was shortly after that that I flatted with 2 thorns in my front tire.  There are no photos of me lying on the shoulder stretching my hip out but it happened.  I was awfully chipper about changing my flat though - it went easily AND two different drivers pulled over to see if I needed help.  One of them had just finished his own ride and had a full-sized pump in his truck - it saved me a CO2 cartridge!

 From there, sadly my hip had some rough and painful moments.  I tried to get through them by smiling for as long as possible.

 But there were a few tears shed in my official Ironman Training Mandatory Meltdown.  I think I got mad at Jeff for slowing down in front of me and then he got behind me and that made me madder because I couldn't draft in the wind and I was going so slow because my hip hurt?  Anyway, sniffle-sob-pityparty and then I was better.  And the boys pulled me and I pulled them and eventually we were DONE with the ride.  I'd gone from freezing before sunrise to cooking in 85 degree heat and pedaled for nearly 5.5 hours.

 I arranged to meet Jeff at a Taco Bell several miles down the road and headed off on my run off the bike while he gave George a ride home.  I call this my "practicing for training in Kona" picture because it was hot, there was no shade, and the landscape was all asphalt and dry fields.

As it turned out, I had a fantastic run in the heat, covering more distance than I expected while feeling great throughout.  I sat in the shade at Taco Bell till Jeff showed up and then asked him to buy me a sugary soda as a reward :)

"Recovery" week is done and there's a BIG training week ahead!  Thankfully I've already arranged to see my ART doc tomorrow and Wednesday to address the hip crankiness before it become a real problem.  Onward!

Recovering

I've been working hard at recovering from Big Kahuna this week...lots of sleep, lighter workouts during the week and generally just taking it easy.  This weekend I'm back at it pretty strong as I've got a long ride on tap for Sunday.  Today (Saturday) was spent executing a different kind of plan, putting on a charity ride that I started last year in honor of a family friend!  Everything went smooth this year as the riders were happy with the route, the food and their prizes!  The only casualty of the day was Jeff's bike, as his derailleur snapped on the first climb and he had to be picked up from there!  Hopefully it will be fixed in time for him to pull me around the valley tomorrow; otherwise I'm in for another solo ride.  I brought the dogs along and they managed to schmooze with the crowd and wear themselves out - bonus!

While I was off doing the race thing last weekend, Stan was again tearing it up at a local dog show, going Best Opposite one day and Best of Breed the other.  Last week we started him in a whole 'nother performance sport as well - Nosework!  So far, he LOVES it as the main idea is to find the food in the box (party time in Stan's world).  Eventually he'll learn to scent out and find certain odors.  Right now he is still learning the game of trusting his nose to find the hide.

Here is some video from our 2nd nose work class and some new challenges thrown at him.  The airflow in this room is very difficult for the dogs as it swirls AND it's a petstore so there are already lots of good food smells around.   Once he remembered why he was there, he did great!  And he was EXHAUSTED after class from all that brainwork.  I love tired dogs.




And with that, I'm back to putting my feet up and resting for tomorrow!  Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Big Kahuna Triathlon Race Report

Race morning started off dark and early with the alarm at 3:45 am.  Surprisingly I had no trouble sleeping solidly once I'd finally given up on reading and turned off the light.  I was tempted to hit snooze but I knew I needed to get going.  Copious amounts of sunblock applied to the body, followed by clothes, loading my bottles on my bike, grabbing breakfast and hitting the road just after 4am.  Going over The Hill (what we call the mountains in between our valley and the coast) on Highway 17 I encountered some night construction and lane closures but had adequate time to get to my usual "super secret" parking area and roll down the hill into transition.  Which was supposed to open at 5 but was already open and filling with bikes when I arrived at 4:58.  Still I nabbed a prime spot right between the swim in/bike in-out/run out.  My transition area was set up by 5:08 and then I just had to wait!

Thankfully not too long after that I found Jill and was able to harass her in between stints at the portajohn line.  Before long it was time to start the walk down to the beach for the pre-race meeting and a warmup swim.

We found Jeff and Nigel waiting when we got to the beach.  Surprisingly I was really not nervous - I felt very steady and just wanted to get on with it!

I was having enough fun to ham it up for the camera with my "game face."  Jill's coach was one of the race announcers and she kept us entertained while we waited.

After a brisk warmup swim (the water was a balmy - for here, it really is - 59 degrees!), it was time to get in line with my wave.  Women 35 and under went off at 7:15, in the 4th wave.

Yes, I really was the smallest person in my wave.

And then finally we were off!


For a 1.2 mile swim around the Santa Cruz pier, with nary a buoy in sight.  The only 2 turn buoys were over 1/2 a mile offshore and not visible over the swell until you got really close to them.  It made for some interesting sighting!

In the end, I emerged from the murky and cold Pacific in 47:20, over 2 minutes faster than my best 1/2IM swim.  With all the sighting issues involved, I'll take it!

And then it was off for a long run (over 1/3mi) up the beach and through the city streets to transition.  My actual time in the transition area was pretty short and despite the complete absence of one of my nutrition items for the bike (thanks to the men racked around me), I was on my way before long.  T1 time, including the run: 4:15.

I had actually been very nervous about the bike leg of this race since test-riding a portion of it last weekend.  It was relentlessly hilly, which I hadn't remembered, and my confidence was shaken a bit.  Still, I came up with a plan of attack and intended to stay strong and positive to execute it.

As it turned out, the bike felt FABULOUS!  I've never done a 1/2IM ride that felt so great where I didn't spend the last 5-10 miles wishing for it to end already.  Yes, it was hilly.  Yes, it was windy - so windy that it took me 12 minutes longer to return to town that it took to make the turnaround.  But I just felt steady throughout!  I attacked the downhills (because at my size gravity is not enough to get down them as fast as I want) and I held back as I spun the uphills (yet still passed people who'd fly by me on the downhill and grind to a halt going up).

I came back into town all smiles with a HUGE bike PR.  3:09:37 for an average of 17.7 mph.

I was very quick in and out of transition (0:37 with the 8th fastest T2 of the entire race!) and then it was time to RUN!

I made sure to dial my pace back heavily in the early miles to save something for later.  Jeff and friends biked down the road on my course for a couple minutes to cheer for me before I told them I had to stop talking and focus!

The run course follows a nice scenic path along the coast before turning onto the trails of a state park best known for its mountain biking.  Dirt and hills, oh yeah!  Unfortunately that didn't do great things for my legs when I was supposed to pick up the pace - I was lucky to hold on to the one I'd had for a while.  I realized once I reached the tiki turnaround that the run course was going to be a fair bit longer the 13.1 miles!  Shortly after emerging from the state park on the return trip, the sun came out, things got hotter, and my stomach announced it was done with this whole race thing.

The last couple miles were purely a mental battle to make it to the finish - I was officially FRIED.  I reminded myself often of one thing throughout race day and it was what kept me going at the end - YOU WANT THIS.  You didn't work this hard all year for the goals you set to let it go now, you WANTED to be here, in this moment, facing the point of breaking and make it to the finish line knowing you beat that pain and Kept. Moving. Forward.  You've dreamed of a day like this.

Sorry for the melodramatic interlude :)  Anyway, when you finally descend from West Cliff Drive to sea level, the course does the most unkind thing possible and leads you down the beach, where you get to run the last 1/3 mile (you know, that extra 1/3 mile that took it over 13.1 miles) on SAND.  I immediately ran to the waterline to get the firmest ground I could and then it was just time to focus on that finish arch (and not run into all the families playing on the beach).

Total run ended up being 2:07:11 - nothing special in terms of what I've run in the past but it got the job done in the conditions I faced on the day and I kept moving no matter how bad it felt.

In the end, I finished in 6:09:02 for a whopping 14:15 PR!  Slowly I am inching closer to the times I know I am capable of, thanks to all of Coach's hard work on me. 

And then I was done.  And not smiling anymore because HOLY SHITBALLS my legs hurt!  I threw my finish medal and water bottle at Jeff and marched straight into the ocean to ice them.

 Aaaaaahhhh, much better.

Best finish medal ever to approximate faces of finishers at the line?

My training schedule for today said Eat something FUN.  Don't mind if I do.  I'm pretty sure I earned it!

Taper Twitches

You'd think that since I was training less and less the last week or two, I'd be posting more.  But alas, I bought a new laptop to replace my slowly-dying-an-ugly-death HP laptop and it's taken a while to get everything transferred and re-learn the basics of using a Mac.

I've had plenty of time to think about things and appreciate the small moments, like sunrise while running the dogs at the high school.

Workouts done on the coast over a holiday weekend end with a little beach time.  

The sun came out eventually, really

The bonus feature of a Northern California beach is, it doubles as an ice bath!

In any event, maybe taper or hormones or 10 hours of sleep a night makes me introspective but, in the course of driving ~250 miles today (drive dog to dog show, drive back, drive to packet pickup, drive back), I had a lot of time to think.  About the life I had 10 years ago and how much it has changed.  I originally wrote a lot of this out in detail but decided to pass on posting it...I suppose I should respect the privacy of the party in question.

The point is, triathlon for me has really been a way to define my life on my own terms, instead of how others chose to define it for me in the past.  I'm ever grateful for my husband, who from the day we got together has always encouraged me to do whatever makes me happy, without judgement, and not allowed me to fall into the easy trap of letting someone else make decisions for me.  I don't think there's been a crazy hare-brained Molly scheme yet that he hasn't supported 100%.  Including - seriously - "oh c'mon, take off your swim trunks and give them to that girl who's asking so she can win the contest."

In that past life, I was told plenty of things about what I "was" and "was not," and I "was not" an athlete (and yet I "was not" ever ladylike enough either).  I remember seeing something about this local race down in Santa Cruz and thinking how neat it sounded but I "was not" someone who could do that kind of thing.

And then I started running and I was a runner.  I saw that race in Santa Cruz again and thought - too bad I can't swim.  And then I started swimming and biking and did my first triathlon.  I saw that race again and thought - I can't swim in the ocean, I'll never do a 1/2IM...but if I ever did...that's the one I'd do.

So tomorrow, when I finally toe the line at Big Kahuna after 4 other 1/2IMs and 1 IM, I will remember the journey it's taken to reach this point and know that - PR, no PR, whatever - only I get to define what's a successful race.  Just making it to that point, I win - so let's go have some fun tomorrow!

And in other news…

I’m enjoying a lighter volume week of training, though still some tough stuff to keep me focused while I taper for Big Kahuna.

I found time to get my car washed.  For the first time since I bought it March 30th. (photo taken at carwash)

I saw Dr Brink for some ART on my calves and hips.  A VERY welcome intervention after Sunday’s 100-miler, and something I will be doing consistently until Ironman.  As a reward for surviving the pain, I went to Yogurtland, which is right across the street.

Despite still having 11+ weeks to go before my last race of the  year, I started putting together my 2012 season…I decided I want to challenge myself with more hilly courses next year.  On coach’s suggestion, I threw my name into the lottery for Escape from Alcatraz this morning. *fingers crossed*

Oh and – along with my training partner Nigel, my brother, his girlfriend, BSC and some other friends who haven’t come out of the closet yet – I got online at noon on Monday and put this little event on my calendar. :-)

Fun times ahead!