It’s all about the bike

This is the first week (of 18) on my 70.3 training plan. Truth be told, I could complete the swim and run portions today without any problems. Obviously I’m not in the optimal shape but I could complete it comfortably without any extra training.

The bike. Not so much. This is a totally new activity in my repertoire. Actually, I’ve been scared shitless about the bike. Until today. Today I had the ride of my life. What an awesome ride on my sweet ass Orbea. Seriously. It could not have been any better. I was so nervous about the first ride out on the streets, but everything was glorious.

I have had major hang-ups about the bike because when I lived on the East Coast where drivers not only don’t appreciate cyclist, but they actually carried a serious HATRED. As in one girl who trained with the tri group I joined actually got a bottle thrown at her by a driver. WTF?! I only rode a few times and every time I literally feared for my life. I dropped cycling like a bad habit and took up mountain biking. Much better.

Now here I am again, committed to complete a Half-Iron only now I have all these metal blocks about how awful road riding is. I'm so glad to report those mental blocks have been significantly reduced. I met up with one of the wives from the convention (from my husbands work) I went to a few weeks ago. She and a few of her girlfriends ride every Wednesday and I knew it was now or never. I was so freaking nervous.

We rode for ~25 miles (I forgot to start my Garmin and missed out on the first few miles). It was HILLY. Actually, I don’t know – Is 1,270 ft of elevation gain hilly? Maybe it’s not. I have nothing to compare it to. I just know my quads were cashed toward the end. I admit I even had to walk it up one hill toward the end, but I don’t feel to bad about it since I was the only one with a compact and seriously ran out of gears. Could. not .push. it. any. more. We took it nice and easy on the flats.

My hope is that over time, I’ll be able to spend more time in each gear. That will happen right? Is that the natural progression of improving on a bike? Now I totally understand the difference between a compact and a triple.

I’m posting my Garmin link for all to see:

Untitled by klbarrett at Garmin Connect – Details

My calories burned is almost equal to elevation gained. I wonder if that’s correct.

Cheers and good luck to all those running Boston!

Catch up

why do I always feel like over the last couple of months all my titles have been related to catching up….

• My in-laws were in town over the last few days. They left yesterday. They are great people and I am very lucky. Why do in-laws always think they know your husband better than you do?!  Yes, I understand you’ve known him his whole life, but I am his wife.
• I had a 10k over the weekend to close out my short-course racing season. It went ok. very windy, but a great FLAT course. I ran it as a tempo run instead of a race. I’m ready to move on to longer distances.
• and tri training!
• Hubby leaves  in a few days.
• BOOOOOOOOO

 

Tara from Colorado Runner is having a giveaway. Ryder eyewear. I want, no NEED to win.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten lots of things I wanted to mention, but that’s always how it goes. I need to keep a pen and paper handy to write this stuff down and not forget it until after I hit the publish button.

Have a great day everyone.

Catch – up w/ short race reports

Where to begin? So far behind on blogging. I think I’m just gonna mark ‘all as read’….I’ve been trying to get caught up for days now and it’s not working. It’s way to hard for me to keep up with following everybody I want to follow so I might need to make some adjustments :(

Couples Retreat

The conference in a word: AWESOME. I met some amazing women! It was so wonderful to be surrounded by other wives who have to deal with the same issues regarding our husbands absence. So redeeming to know that the feelings and frustrations I have are all totally normal. No need to explain anything with them. I imagine this is what support military wives get from their peers. They are very fortunate for that! Some of the women live somewhat close (within an hour or two) so we can actually get together when our husbands are away. We also started a group on facebook…..fun times!

It was non-stop fun. There were things planned for us everyday away from the lodge. We had a party bus. You know with open seating, backlights, and tinted windows (even a mirror on the ceiling – holla). The bar was stocked full of wine which we started drinking every day around noon and by the time we got back, we were pretty much loaded. The guys were in classes until 6 and we would come back and meet them for happy hour (at the lodge). The poor men. Our arrival was the highlight of their day….

 

SERIOULSY GOOD TIMES ON THE PARTY BUS!

We were there for 3 full days:

Day 1 – Nike employee store. Everything was half off. I only spend about 200$ but I got a crap ton of stuff.

that gym bag. LOVE. Sorry if you don’t like pink, but this bag is sweet. My number one item on the list was a new gym bag. Score.

Also scored – three casual tees, 1 pair of running tights, 1 nice tech shirt, sweatshirt…..might be forgetting something?

Day 2 – museum/WINERY. Um, can you imagine how loaded we were after spending all day wine tasting. Yeah. I bought 3 bottles – cab, cab franc, and merlot (all reserves). My mother in law is coming into town this weekend so I’m excited to open one.

Day 3 – spa. I got a deep tissue massage. It was perfect. The girl who administered was a triathlete. Score! So many knots. She worked me over big time. High standards for my next one.

Misc. – I also won a $60 bottle of wine and a $70 bottle in a trivia game and Monte Carlo night respectively. I wonder who I should drink these with?

_____________________________________________________________

I’ve also had 3 races the last 3 weekends and I’m exhausted. One more this weekend and then I can switch gears to half marathon and half iron training.

race #1 March 13 – 5k PR (26:10)

race #2 March 21 – The big Climb (15:38)

The big climb (racing up 69 flights of stairs):

The time wasn’t what I was looking for, but I pushed hard so it is what it is. I didn’t really train for it (besides running) and my legs were feeling it half way up. The real issue was my lungs. This was a major lung burner! Once I got to the top, it took about 15 minutes for my lungs to feel normal again. Crazy! I’ve never experienced that before.

 

 

 

   Team Brady Bunch: Pre climb

Post Climb w/team mascot – Brady :)

race # 3 March 27 -  5k (26:35)

overall – 45

div place – 2/54

sex place – 12

Obviously with that time and those stats this wasn’t a very fast group. I hated the course. How many turns can you get in a 3 mile radius? Apparently, a lot. There were two hills (hills by 5k standard) and part of the course was gravel. WTF?!

 Garmin Connect - Activity Details for Untitled

Can’t win em all I guess. It was a shitty feeling in the last 800 meters when i could feel myself slowing down and not being able to do a damn thing about it. Got chick’d by two girls and had no kick. I can’t say I could have dug any deeper or tried any harder. I left it all out there. I just didn’t have the juice for a PR.

I’m fine with it.

 

 

already tired at the end of warm up – not good. 

start 

just got chick’d. Puke starting to rise.

Sorry about the long post. I tried to entertain you with lots of pictures. LOVE.

Peace Out

I forgot to mention that I’m leaving town this week for a couples retreat. Jk. My husband’s company is having a conference at a very beautiful and kinda expensive place called, Skamania Lodge. Their restaurant is supposed to be top notch. 

Hello Columbia Rive Gorge. Hello Spa. Hello open bar. I’ll try to be a good girl. No promises. Hopefully there’ll be some cool wives since the men will be in conferences all day…..(hubby not as excited about this trip as I am). The best part is we don’t have to fly out like all the other suckas. We get to road trip. Love.

p.s. I’m telling you this because I’m not sure what the blogging availability will be. I’ll have my iPhone, but I’m not sure what the service will be like and some peoples blogs are more difficult to comment on with my phone……I’ll try to read, but might not comment.

Have a GREAT week peeps.

Race Report: St. Patty’s 5k

Pre-race:

The day before the race I pounded water, ate no refined sugars and stretched out a ton.

My coach gave me the game plan: first half a comfortable tempo, the second half concentrate on passing people left and right.

The start wasn’t until 9am and it was only a few minutes away so I had a nice leisurely morning. I was Out of English muffins (which is so unlike me since I’m very anal about my food intake when it comes to my workouts/races) so I substituted a piece of whole grain bread and I didn’t get my panties in a bunch like I normally would have. Surprisingly, I was feeling super cool calm and collected considering how much importance this race was going to be, starting out the race season and all.

I knew the start was going to be an absolute cluster*uck because of the ingress/egress situation so the plan was for my husband to park at the turnaround area (or what I thought was the turnaround) and I would warm up by jogging to the start and then cool down by jogging back to the truck afterwards thus steering clear from the crowds.

I jogged an easy pace to the start, working in some plyos and strides to warm my legs up.

Warm up – 1.99 miles – legs felt solid (notice 2 mile warm up not the 1.5 it should have been if I judged the turnaround correctly. dumbass.)

The Race:

So I totally underestimated the pack. 5k’s are such a mixed bag and I never know where to start. Usually I shoot for the middle-back of the pack, but this time I just jumped in at the back and that was a total mistake. I lit

erally spent the first 800 meters dodging, sprinting around, dodging, jumping curbs, accelerating, slowing down….you get it. So many walkers and slower joggers.

I wanted to go out at 8:45 – 8:50 pace, but after I was able to find a spot in the crowd where I wasn’t vying for position I looked down and saw 8:30. I felt good so I held it there wondering if this was going to bite me in the ass 10 minutes later.

At the turnaround I was disappointed to see that I totally misjudged it and my poor husband was no where in sight because I told him where to be. FAIL. I felt horrible because I knew how horrible he was going to feel. That lasted for about six seconds and then I laid down the hammer. I started passing people left and right. It was awesome. My pace only dropped down to 8:24 but I was running hard. I had my iPod, but I wasn’t even listening to it. I was in a zone. It was awesome.

I had about 1000 meters to go when my legs were trying to crap out on me. I had to do some serious gut checking to keep them moving. About 600 meters from the finish there was an incline that toasted my legs even more, but I was banking on the downhill to charge into the chute. Unfortunately there was a headwind on the downhill so while it wasn’t totally negligible I didn’t get to fully reap the benefits of the up hill. The chute was right there and I really wanted to engage my final kick but I couldn’t do it. Until I was passed by female blur of green. That inspired my kick and I sprinted past her into the chute.

3.12/26:09 /8:23 average pace

Post – race:

I took a 10 minute rest. Chatted, hydrated then started the trot back to the truck. It was a good day!

Total for the day: 6.99 miles

Questions and reflections -

• If I had a kick at the end, does that mean I didn’t run hard enough?
• This gives me major confidence going into my next 5k in two weeks. One, I’ll hopefully have no hills and two, I’m reminded of what my body is capable of.
• Next 5k is going to be Sub 26 FOR SURE! All balls to the wall!
• I should have indulged in an ice bath. My legs are hurting today.

 

LiveJournal Tags: 5k race report,St. Patty's Day 5k

Wills and Won'ts

I will be racing a 5k Saturday.

I will forget about the minor meltdown I had earlier this week and concentrate solely on my running goals Saturday.

I will pound water.

I will fuel myself properly in anticipation of a PR.

I will forget about that shitty windy rainy run I just had.

 

I won’t let negativity ruin this race

I won’t let the last couple of months of training go to waste

I won’t forget that I am capable of reaching these goals:

 

 C Goal – Sub 27:07 / 8:43 pace (current racing PR)

B Goal – Sub 26:24 / 8:30 pace (current PR in training last fall)

A Goal – Sub 26 / 8:20 pace

LiveJournal Tags: 5k goals

HELP

Do you wanna hear something really cool?! My husband has been skating – like really skating. A lot and hard. It’s been so cool to see him do workouts that he actually enjoys and happy to do. He even woke up at 4:30 this morning to go to the rink for skate and puck time. Usually he drags himself out for a run, but he doesn’t really enjoy it (at least not like me).

Yesterday he came home from the rink after skating for like an hour and a half (I’ve seen him skate he’s good. He can really skate hard so I equate this to running for a hour and a half with a solid hour of speedwork). I’ve even been making him take ice baths!

The best part is – he actually is reminded again of how tired the body can get after a couple of solid workouts. He’s a hard worker, don’t get me wrong (in fact that’s one of the many reasons why I fell in love with him), but it’s a different kind of tired when you’ve given all you got in a workout, you know. Now when he’s busy working around the house on his projects or tootling around the garage full of energy, probably wondering why my lazy ass has been laying on the couch for an hour with my feet up indulging in some fist pumping – he gets it.

Sunday we actually spent a few hours RELAXING on the couch and watched 2 movies. We would never do that otherwise.

I’m loving it!

 

Ok, so I need a kick in the ass. Sunday I was supposed to go for a bike ride which would have been only my second outdoor ride on my new bike. Yikes! I’ve been riding on the trainer 2x a week, but I need to get outside. The bike is my biggest limiter (BY FAR) and I’m starting to stress out a little.

Please experienced triathletes – put my mind at ease, or kick my ass. Whichever I need. I’m requesting brutal honesty here. I can handle it.

This is the rub – I’m struggling between what’s healthy base training and what’s too much for RIGHT NOW.

My race isn’t until August 15 – Lake Stevens 70.3

That’s SIX MONTHS away.

I have been swimming 2x/week, riding the trainer 2x/ week and doing some weight circuits 2x/week . (These workouts are all based around my running calendar – see below).

I am worried about burnout. That is a lot of workouts to do all week long. Especially since I’m not officially “training”. And especially since my running load is very intense.

I’m really just stressed about the bike. I could do the swim and the run tomorrow if I had to – but the bike is my limiter.

Where should I be in terms of bike fitness right now?

 

This is my running calendar for March:

It’s all focused around short races (for which I have big goals to be posted about later) and then finishing it off with a 10k the first weekend in April.

Then my focus will shift to half marathons with my “A” half marathon being on June 6 – North Olympic Discovery Half Marathon 

Is it OK to take it easy for the month of march (until my last 10k in April)…….Why does that idea stress me out? 

Still no drinking. Can you tell?

Technorati Tags: bike,meltdown,stress,overworked,Lake Stevens