Then and Now

Last week I got drunk and did something stupid that I regretted the next morning.  OK, OK not really...but I did somehow decide at 11:00 one night, under the influence of nothing other than a hockey victory, to sign up for the local tri club again.  I was a club member during my first year in triathlon but I wasn't able to participate in a lot of their events and I got dropped like a hot potato the few times I tried to join a group workout.  The year I did Wildflower, I joined their Wildflower training weekend and then camped with the club for the race, but I let my membership lapse after that first year and a half.  Since I've been working with a coach for several years my schedule has never really fit with the club workouts either.  But lately I've been thinking I'd like to get more involved with the sport on a different level, to give back and contribute and hang out with like-minded folks, so what the heck, I signed up.

Mary and I went to the club monthly meeting last night.  It's held in a local sports store so it was a good opportunity to pick up some things on our shopping lists at the same time.  It turned out to be a really good time, with some excellent speakers on the topic of functional strength and how to avoid breaking down from training.  It also really brought home to me how different of a place I am coming from in the sport now than when I began and used to be a member of the club.  Naturally there are a wide range of abilities and experience within a tri club and that's one of the best parts - everything from multi-time Ironman to ultra marathoners to newbies.  As the heavy-on-audience-participation talk about strength and our imbalances went on, I was surprised to learn that quite a few of the people around me didn't incorporate strength work into their routines or know how to do so.  It was in that moment that once again I was grateful to have such a wonderful coach to do all the thinking for me!  Everything the speakers were suggesting that we do, Mary and I already do!  (And I have to give Mary a lot of credit for catching on a whole lot quicker than I did...I sure toiled away in those early years going nowhere for too long, but more on that later)  In any event, the evening was a fun one and we learned the reward for attending a club meeting is scoring big in the monthly raffle - we both picked up some awesome prizes (mine was a free race entry!).

I even bought a club bike kit.  Because if this "big bike block" has taught me anything,
it's that you can never have too many fresh comfy pairs of bike shorts!

As we wandered around Sports Basement doing our shopping before the meeting, I spotted a rack full of swim shampoo/body wash products, specifically the ones I used in my first year of triathlon, and had a total flashback to those days...where a lot of times I just wouldn't quite make it to the pool when I was supposed to, where swimming seemed darned near impossible, and boy was I instantly depressed!

I'm not sure what I was thinking back then, toiling away in the pool by myself thinking that would be the answer to mastering swimming but I am glad for friends who slowly moved me in the right direction.   As I swam this week, I realized how easy it is to just mindlessly do drills and not really connect that form into your regular swim.  I'm grateful to my current coaches for explaining WHY we do certain drills and what they are meant to improve in my stroke.  I'm able to focus on a few key points each week during all of my other swims so I can come back to lessons ready to tackle the next tweak to the stroke.

Anyway, I hope rejoining the tri club brings even more fun to my training and racing life.  We put on the largest kids triathlon in the country and just added a fun new event, a chick chaser 5k, next month.  I think coming at this opportunity from a more experienced place in the sport will help me get even more out of it.

In other news, TrainingPeaks officially debuted the Ambassador program today!  My fellow teammates are some pretty impressive (and fast!) folks and I'm lucky to be included in their ranks.

If you want to check out TrainingPeaks premium membership for yourself, go here and use discount code TPA14 for 15% off!

Sunshine and Hills

I took virtually no photos on my long ride yesterday.  I was too busy trying to keep my power super steady (per Coach's instructions) while following Jeff and George up Gilroy Hot Springs.

All I managed was this one near the top but it pretty much exemplifies the whole ride.  The sun is shining and everything is GREEN!

Today I sandwiched my workouts around a long outing for the dogs.  4 miles of running around off-leash on the Alameda Creek Trail!

 It's all fun and games until someone lies down in a mud puddle.

 Thankfully they all clean up OK!

I finished up week two of this big training block this afternoon and I'm not dead yet, so bring on week three!  2 weeks till the first triathlon of the year.  And another race 2 weeks after that, and another 2 weeks after THAT!  I guess that means the 2012 season is getting real!

Spring is Sprung

We enjoyed a nice long lunchtime walk on the Los Gatos Creek Trail with the beardies today.  This is where I do a lot of my runs.  So nice to see it glitzed up with the wildflowers popping up everywhere!

Poppies - California state flower!

Have a great weekend!

Fueling Fun

I'll keep it simple.  I am madly in love with this cookbook.

It's been helping me add some variety to my diet again and the recipes are SO SIMPLE!  Just a handful of ingredients, no complicated preparation and so good for us athletes!

First I made the Pasta & Eggs.  Incredibly filling and delicious and full of vegetables.

On Sunday I made the sweet potato pancakes as my recovery meal after the long ride.

And I'm on my 2nd batch of Allen's Rice Cakes, which I've been using for part of my long ride nutrition, as well as pre- and post- workout.  Bacon makes everything better.

For the Puck fans...here he is modeling the Desert Endurance technical top my friend Jen sent me!

I've gotten all sorts of fun packages in the mail lately and more to come (hello, TrainingPeaks racing kit?).  I may have to do a post about all the fun stuff I get to use this year!

In the meantime, here's a great post that weds two of my favorite subjects - how hockey players are using TrainingPeaks to improve their performance!  The Frozen Four (collegiate championship tournament) starts tonight - soooooo exciting!!!!  If you are an existing TrainingPeaks user, check out all the new features that just went into effect today!  If you are not a TrainingPeaks user, WHY THE HECK NOT?!  Please go here and check it out.  Use discount code TPA14 for 15% off!

It's All About The Bike

At least lately it is!  I finished off week #1 of my big bike block with - shocker - a long ride.  But first I had to pry myself away from the Texas 70.3 coverage - it was an exciting weekend of races to really kick off the season in North America and I didn't get to spend nearly as much time tracking as I wanted to.

Kristi and I were finally able to coordinate to ride together!  She's doing Canada as well but she's also doing Honu, which is about 3 weeks ahead of my 1/2IM, so she's a bit ahead of me on volume too.  We know that when it gets to the longer stuff in a few months we'll be on the same general track together and not have to do our really long rides alone.  She's coming down my way for an organized metric century in a couple weeks so I went up to her part of the Bay Area today for something different!

We got some heavy rain showers yesterday and had been anxiously watching the weather report hoping today would not be ruined with nasty weather.  While it was quite windy and it was cold to start the ride, it turned out to be a beautiful day!  I'm grateful to Kris for setting me up to start a wonderful trailhead so I could get my warmup run done somewhere pretty while she was doing the first part of her ride.

The advantage to all this rain is that everything is GREEN now!

Note to self: buy a new helmet.  When the insides start creeping out, it's really time.

I can't get enough of these kinds of views, even if I am crawling along pedaling downhill into headwind :-)

We ended up doing about 45 miles with ~2250 feet of climbing.
I am certainly learning to love the hills again after a few years of racing flatter courses.

And now I've got to recover fast, because week 2 in this block kicks off first thing in the morning with my long run.  So far, I've survived a big load of biking with tired but not thrashed legs (thank you compression tights, food, and ART) and a mostly happy rear end (thank you Trislide).  It's April now too, which means the weather is only going to get better and better - right, Mother Nature? Right?!

Ups and Downs

It's just been one of those weeks.  Is anyone else really really happy that it's almost Friday?!

I've been dealing with massive computer problems since ~Saturday.  My 3-weeks-old external drive died, with all of my photos from the last 10+ years that the Apple store had transferred onto it for me.  I'm now spending a small fortune on data recovery.  I've been trying not to think about it too much or I'll stress worse than I already am.

Welcome to big bike block indeed.  I rode Tuesday...I rode Wednesday...I rode today.  Twice.  My legs are grateful that we won't be riding again for a few days.

Work has been batshitcrazy this week.  Meetings upon meetings, computer issues there too (GAH!), and all sorts of high profile stuff that's good for my career but adds stress.

The boys started their new nose work class this week.  Now that they understand the search game, we are teaching them to search for a specific scent and pairing that with lots and lots of rewards!  Each dog searches in his own way but they all love doing it!

And finally, one of the best parts of my week...I've been working on swim form unlike any past year and hoping that I'd finally break through a big time barrier that's been there for me since I started swimming a few years ago.  We did a timed set in Wednesday night's swim technique session - a bunch of hard 100s, with a little help from pool toys for the later ones.  Well...I swam under my impossible time for every single one of the 100s!  I will say though, it gets really hard to swim all-out with the snorkel on even though you'd think it would help you.  I had that burn in my chest for the rest of the night but still it was worth it!  Now to figure out how to duplicate that effort, repeatedly, until it gets easier!

Happy almost-Friday!

Monday Funday

There simply is no better way to start a Monday than with a long run.  I love the feeling of getting a bunch of miles done before work!

I had this same 90 minute run (amazing that I spent an entire 4.5 minutes waiting at stoplights between the local park and the trail...I guess that's the downside of rush hour timing) a week and a half ago, the morning after my dad's heart attack.  It was nice to see how much faster I could run it - all at an easy pace - when I was well rested!

I finally went and looked up what that Pa:HR number means in the data analysis section.  It's a metric for decoupling as a measure of aerobic fitness and a number under 5% is preferred.  As I negative split this run quite well with minimal increase in heart rate, my Pa:HR of 1.82% makes sense!


I hope everyone has a great week!