Polar Bear Triathlon

Yesterday was spent at an all day swim meet with my high school team.  I pretty much stood from 9-4pm. Not a great "rest" day.  Didn't really do anything to warrant it, but my legs felt tired that night.  Luckily though the pool we were at was the exact same place I was going to be doing my triathlon today! So i was able to scout it out.

Saturday night after the meet, Jeremy and I went to Cattleman's Steakhouse.  I opted for smothered chicken and a baked potato.  No fries, no salad, yea me! That was followed with going to a movie (The Dilema) and getting some reese's pieces.  Not the best option. Since the best option would have been to NOT get any candy. But I ate maybe half the box and Jeremy did help some with that half.  We stayed at a hotel that night.  Jeremy was worried about the bike. I told him we would just take it to the room. I wasnt going to leave it in the truck even if it was chained up.  He made me push it in while he carried my purse and pink swim bag.  He was more embarrassed to push in the bike rather than carry that stuff.  Crazy guy. 

I laid out all my clothing the night before. I had that "feeling" since Friday that I was going to forget something!  We went to bed early and got about 8 hours of sleep.  I slept pretty well considering I had a race the next day.  I had previously decided I would run and bike in my swim suit so I could just strip down when I got to the pool.  This tri was in reverse order - run, bike, swim.  I guess bc it's so cold out, it would be stupid to do the swim first then go outside wet to run and bike). 

Wake up call came at 7am. Phone alarms went off at 7:05.  Rolled out of bed about 7:10. Got up dressed and we were out the door.  Jeremy pushed my bike this time after he realizd we didnt get any funny looks walking into the hotel with it.

Looked at last years results and there had been about 40-45 people total.  This year we got to the park and were floored by how many cars and bikes there were.  At least 100, jeremy estimated 200.  But he was a little off on that count. 

I wasn't sure how it would work with the number tattooing.  Usually the number goes on your arm and calf, but everyone was bundled up. It was 28 degrees outside!!  No problem though, I had to pull up my pant leg and pull off my top (I did have my bathing suit on under) to get my number tat.

We went into the pool area, listened to the directions for the swim, bike and run, then went out to the transition areas so we could see what we were supposed to do.  After that we walked to the start and were off. 

Run - The run is not my strength by any means.  I am a swimmer since birth and new found biker since this summer.  Running is ok, but I'm no where near how fast I would like to be.  The run was a 3k or 1.86 miles.  I think it was a little short but I was about 20 min for about 1.75ish. My best 3k from 2 years ago was 25 min.  So definite improvement even if it was a little short.  I gu'd at the end of the run, hoping that would give me some more energy on the bike.  My back was hurting during the run and I kept having to spit.  Felt very sorry for the woman that was speed walking behind me.  And yes, she did end up passing me before we came in to the transition area.  I was dead last going in to the bike.  :(  Although it was easier to get my bike down with no other ones around it.

Bike - The bike was 6 miles.  The first mile and a half to 2 miles were hilly.  The last 4 were flat.  I'm not sure which I liked more or least.  At least with the hilly you get momentum from the downhills.  On the flat, there are no hills to go up but you still have to pedal the whole time bc you dont have the downhills to coast from.  My quads were very tight the first 3 miles.  I kept having to coast for a minute with one leg up and one down to stretch it out.  About mile 3 it started feeling better and I was able to finish strong.  I did pass the speedwalker, who was now biking.  So I wasn't last anymore.  She did stay pretty close behind me though. But I knew if I got in the water I could stay in front of her.

Swim - Ahhh, the water! :)   I hopped off my bike and headed to the pool.  As soon as I got inside my glasses fogged up, off they went, along with my shoes, pants, shirts.  Cap went on, then goggles, and in I went.  It was an 8 lane pool so we had to go down and back in each lane for a total of 400 yards.  There were still others in the pool so I thought to myself, maybe just maybe I can catch a few others.  I started doing freestyle, but my arms felt very heavy.  Dont have a clue why since my legs had been doing the work for the past 50 minutes!  I decided to do backstroke on the way down to help me catch my breath and free on the way back.  After about 150 yards, I had caught up to 2 people.  Unfortunately one of them must not have liked that and she hit me in the mouth/front teeth.  Of course it wasn't on purpose, we were going opposite directions on the same side.  (for what it's worth, she was not circle swimming on the correct side!) Her had just happened to be in front doing side stroke and I apparently wasn't looking where I was going. So 2 people passed and about 100 more to go.  In the last lane there was one guy in the pool. I caught up to him and was able to pass him. 

I was telling Jeremy about the woman that hit me. The guy that I passed last was getting out and overheard us. It was his wife!  Whoops! 

I finished with a time of 1:03.21. I was 8th in the run, 2nd in T1, 8th on the bike, 5th in T2, and 1st in the swim for my age group.

After the race, we headed to Johnny Carino's in my Polar Bear Triathlon shirt!

Article Frustration

Yesterday, I received an email from active and found the article below very interesting and frustrating.  In it, it talks about how when you are "in training" it is pretty much impossible to lose weight.  Now, I know that we need to fuel our bodies as we train BUT what if we have weight to lose?  Like, a lot of weight? I know in my personal experience last summer when i cut and counted calories and trained for the half the scale did NOT move. people did notice i was slimming down, i had more muscle so therefore "looked" skinnier even if the scale didnt say it. 

I've already started training for my next half. My period for losing weight before training has come and gone, with nothing to show for it.  I really believe I can get faster if I took off the extra 60 pounds I'm carrying.  But according to this article I wont be able to lose any or if i do, not very much.

http://www.active.com/running/Articles/How-to-Lose-Weight-to-Train.htm?cmp=306&memberid=113378067&lyrisid=21386600

Read the article and let me know what you think.... Do you agree or disagree?  Have you seen this happen with your own training?  What do i need to do so i can train AND lose weight?

Dryland

What is dryland some of you might ask? Well, it's what us swimmers call working out on "dry" land.  We run, do crunches, push ups, squats, tricep dips, stretch, plank, etc for an hour.   We have started having these types of practices recently but usually do to my work schedule I cant go.  As of yesterday through the next week I am on days, so that means I can go to the next 2-3 dryland practices. 

Yesterday was start of week 2 half training - 17 minutes of running.  I wore my garmin, hoping it would still pick up satellite service inside the high school.  It did for the most part. I only noticed it once when it beeped that there was no reception. However, when I got home and uploaded it to the computer, it was all a mess. We had run around the outside hallways of the hs, making a oval shape.  Unfortunately,  the watch only picked up reception for one side of the hs and not both. The other side that it didnt pick up was crazy looking.  2 min/mil pace for parts of it. HA!   

I did do some of the ab work, stretching, etc that the kids did and I am feeling it today.  Not too bad but enough to know I did something that I am not used to.  We have dryland again tomorrow and I think I'm just going to stick to running and stretching.  I dont want to be sore for the tri on sunday! 

Pool vs. Nap

I had all intentions of going to the pool yesterday after church. I even had Jeremy talked into going (he tries to get out of it every time) with me. I was going to go yesterday and one day this week.  But I got home after church and just wasn't feeling it. I wasn't feeling the cold pool temps combined with the cold air temps.  It didn't help matters any that Jeremy hadn't slept the night before and he just wanted to come home and take a nap.  I mean really pool vs. nap..... of course the nap won.

But today I planned on going again.  I wanted to go today. I HAD to go today. Usually my work schedule is 4pm-midnight. Which works well bc open/lap swim is 11am-3pm  However, this week bc the college is on winter break, I have to work days starting Tuesday for the rest of the week. Which means if I didnt swim today I wouldnt be swimming at all before the tri on Sunday.

Jeremy was going to the park to run, so he dropped me off at the pool on his way to the park and was going to pick me up on his way home.  That worked perfectly.  I am much more motivated to go knowing he was going to be gone also, might as well get my workout done too.

My work out looked like this:
200 - 100 free/100 back
8 x 50's w/ fins on :50 sec. 4 free/4 back
100 - 50 breast/50 back
8 x 50's swim 4 free on 1:00, 4 back on 1:10
100 ez free.
1200 total yards

Not bad for the first time back in the water in several months, also considering I made it up in my head.  you would think being a swim coach i would have made it up prior to going, but thats not my style. :)

There were several people at the pool swimming and 2 were water running.  One guy (a local dr) that was swimming has qualified for age group world championships spring triathlon in Beijing this September. Pretty cool!  

week 1 is in the bag

Tonight I did my last training for week 1 of my half.  All three runs were on the treadmill.  It's the easiest thing to do when my short runs are only 15 min.  It takes that long just to drive to the park.  So they will be on the good ole t'mill for awhile til I build up a little more.

My long run was delayed. I planned on going to run with my hubby and bro-in-law yesterday, but there was no one to watch my niece. So i hopped on the exercise bike before they got to the house and rode for 7 miles.  Then watched my niece. She is a cutey patootie. See pic below for proof. :) She is not happy that I kept taking pictures of her playing.  Love love love the hands on the hips!

Today we were out of school for snow, tomorrow I have an away swim meet, and Sunday is church and work.  That meant today was the day for my "long" run.  I told myself I would do it at 7. It was only 3 miles, but bc our treadmill doesnt do distance correctly I planned on running for 45 minutes just to be on the safe side.  I know I have gotten slower since the summer, so this would give me some cushion. 

Come 10pm, I finally got on.  I ran 4 minutes, walked 1 minute for the entire 45. According to the t'mill I went 2.81 miles.  I'm not going to say it was easy bc it wasn't. After the first 20 minutes I was talking myself into only doing 35 or 40 minutes NOT 45.  When I got through the first 30, I started feeling better and decided to do all 45 minutes.  I'm glad I did bc I felt really good for doing it.  I know that if I hadn't I would have been upset with myself later.  As it is I wonder why I didn't just go on and do the extra .2 to make it 3 miles on the t'mill.....maybe next time!

Confession time: I did not go to the pool this week at all! :( Bad me. I plan on going Sunday though for sure and hopefully one other day next week.  It's just so hard to go when it's SO COLD outside.  Good thing about having a swimming background, that's the one thing I dont need much training in. Obviously I would do better if I went more, but I know I can hop in a pool and do a 400 with no problem.  Luckily these tri's are one a month for 4 months, so I will have time to practice more in the upcoming months.

Have a great long run this weekend everyone!

So Quiet

The new belt for the treadmill came in on Friday, so Jeremy spent most of yesterday putting it on.  It was a bigger task than anticipated. He had to basically tear up the treadmill to get the belt on.  Now we need a staple gun to staple the side rail back down.

We both ran today on it and it is SO much quieter!  I can't believe how loud it was before compared to now.  Unfortunately it didnt help with the speed/distance issue but at least we didnt waste money on the garmin footpod now.  Next step to get that sync'd  up so we can use it! :)

Today was also Day 1 of my half training. It was only 15minutes.  I know, huge, right?  But it's a start.  I did the run 4, walk 1 interval.  I was pushing myself a little harder on the run than I probably should have for being off a month. But I figured it was only for 15 minutes I could deal with it. 

Tomorrow is swimming and maybe biking. Got to start preparing for that tri in two weeks - EEEEK!

Thinking Thursday

1.  I contacted the treadmilldoctor and found out that to replace the belt on the treadmill would be $90.  J and I decided we would rather fix it than pay for a brand spanking new one.  We could have borrowed my parents but my dad is planning on using it soon and I dont want to keep him from doing that.  Maybe he'll do a 5k this summer.... (good idea isn't it dad?)

2.  I have been thinking about how I want to train for my next half.  I start next week so I really need to figure it out.  I am still going to do the Jeff Galloway run/walk method. Instead of doing 2 min run/1 min walk like I did for the last one, I am thinking about bumping it up to 4 min. run/1 min walk. I think this would greatly improve my time if I could maintain the same pace running for 4 minutes that I did for 2 minutes.

3. Tax time is coming up and that makes me wonder, can we count race fees that go toward a charity?  The reason I ask is bc a race that we did in November mailed us a slip to turn in with our taxes that we had donated to that charity by paying for the race.  So that got me thinking...  What does everyone else do? do you count it all, some of it, or none of it?

All Signed Up and Ready to TRI

I've officially signed up for my first triathlon this year!

I've also signed up to be a member of USAT. Since I plan on doing more than 3 tri's this year it's more economical to sign up for the year membership!

back on the saddle again

Our treadmill is technically my husbands, although i'm the one that gets more use from it. He bought it right out of high school, so it's about 15 years old. Which probably explains why the speed and distance aren't accurate. 

Due to time and cold weather, we both decided we would run on it yesterday.  Jeremy went first, while I played Zelda (yeah, the original nintendo one. we got it for the wii and have been playing nonstop all weekend) and made lunch.  When he got off, he said that the belt was tearing again and in one section it was almost all the way torn across.  :(  oh great!

After we ate, I went to do my run.  I hopped on and started off.  It was making a horrible racket.  You couldn't hear anything over it.  I got off and got some scissors, thinking if i could cut the flap that was torn, it would be better.  Eh, not so much.  Granted it didnt make a horrible noise but there is a big space where there is no belt.  If you take a misstep and hit that part, down you go!  Luckily i was able to catch myself before i flew off the back.  The wall is about 1 1/2 feet behind the treadmill.  Boy that would have been a site. 

So i ended up getting on the exercise bike instead for 20 minutes. At least I did something! :)


We hope to get the treadmill fixed. Jeremy wants to see if we can get a belt for it.  If we can't, my parents have a treadmill we can borrow.  But then there is the issue of the garmin footpod that Jeremy got me for Christmas that works inside with the Garmin watch.  Jeremy got the footpod for me since our treadmill doesnt do speed or distance correctly.  I'm thinking we will return the footpod and use that money to buy another Garmin watch so both of us will have one.

3 weeks of nothingness

That sums up the amount of exercise I have done the past three weeks....nothing, nada, zip, and zilch.  Now, for 2 of those weeks i was sick, so I am going to let myself slide on that. However this past week, there was no excuse other than me being lazy.  Now i could say it took me a few days to get back in to the routine of going back to work, but that wouldn't be truthful.  I just didnt feel like running or biking or anything of the sort. 

I did however look at my calendar and mark off the time line for me to train for my half marathon at the end of April.  Jeremy and I have pretty much decided on doing the Ky Derby Mini Marathon.  There are 3 fulls/ halfs that weekend all within a 3 hour drive but we have chosen this one as of now.  Which means that training offically starts next week.  So this week i need to get my butt in gear and do something to get ready for NEXT week's training. 

I am also wanting to do a very short sprint triathlon at the end of January. Have I trained for that, you might ask?  Ha, of course not.  Thankfully its only a 3k run, 6 mile bike and 400 swim. Yes, this one is in reverse order. I do need to get back in the pool and make more of an effort to go swim on my nonrunning days.

Let the fun begin!

Things to Accomplish in 2011

Just want to start this post off by saying that my husband and I are trying to expand our family this year, so depending on if and when that happens, some of these items and the training for them would become obsolete until later in the year or even next year.

Goals
*run a 5K in under 30 minutes
*run a half marathon in under 2:45, preferably under 2:30
*do 2 or more triathlons
*lose weight (which will help a lot with the first two goals)
*stop drinking soft drinks (had quit, but during my sickness started again)
*get at least 1-2 more states marked off my list
*cook more

Possible Halfs
Lexington Run for the Bluegrass - April 3rd
OR
Derby MiniMarathon - April 30th

AND

Estes Park Half- June 12
OR
Mount Desert Marathon 2 person relay - Oct. 16 - Jeremy and I would do this full together as a team
OR
RnR Las Vegas Half - Dec. 4th