2014 Races
January 18 - Frosty's Frozen 5 and 10 mile
February 15 - Snowman Stampede 10 mile
May 18 - Colfax Half Marathon
June 7 - Ironman Boise 70.3
July 13 - Boulder Peak Olympic (maybe)
August 3 - Ironman Boulder
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
2013 Race Schedule
2013 Races
January 19 - Frosty's Frozen 5 and 10 mile February 16 - Snowman Stampede 10 mile
May 4 - Ironman St George 70.3
June 2 - Elephant Rock Century Ride
June 23 - Ironman Couer de'Alene
August 17 - Rattlesnake Oly
August 18 - Rattlesnake Sprint(yes, the Crazy Back to Back)
September 6-7 - Ragnar Colorado Relay
November 3 - Oilman Texas 70.3
2013 stats wrap up
2013, by all accounts was a HUGE year. I PR'd in pretty much every race I did and had my largest training numbers ever. More importantly, I had FUN doing it.
(now, if only my job would follow suit and be more fun... ugh)
In 2013, I learned to love hills. Ok, maybe love is a strong word here.... Maybe I love what hills do for me and how they make me stronger. I got an incredible custom TT bike and I still can't believe I spent that much on a BIKE, I do love him. And I think I've figured out what it means to push myself and see what I'm capable of. I've got a great base to build on and I'm looking forward to even more training and racing in 2014.
2013
Swim: 144h 33m 49s - 411,035.22 Yd
Bike: 237h 30m 38s - 3,232.67 Mi
Run: 138h 07m 54s - 717.35 Mi
Strength: 2h
Skiing: 39h 00m
Yoga: 7h 00m
2012
Swim: 82h 53m - 231,174.3 Yd
Bike: 117h 34m 39s - 1,624.36 Mi
Run: 57h 04m 47s - 289.09 Mi
Strength: 3h 20m
Aqua Jogging: 20m
Elliptical Training: 40m
Skiing: 60h 00m
Walking: 2h 15m
Yoga: 6h 00m
Also, its interesting to note that these are annual distance records for me, since I started keeping track of this sort of stuff. What's most impressive is my swim distance. I really didn't think I swam this much in 2013...
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Santa Stampede 2013 Race Report
I did this race series last year. In fact, last year, the 10k was my first race since breaking my heel. I had been running for maybe 2 months, but never fast and never that far. So I was excited but apprehensive. And I was going to be happy with whatever time I finished with.
Fast forward to 2013, which friends have nicknamed "the year of PRs" for me. And honestly, it has been one PR after another this year. Really, freaking cool.
I sat down with my race result spreadsheet (yes, I am a nerd) and went through my paces at that distance. Last year I ran the 10k in 1:04:37 (10:26 pace). I did a trail 12k in October at a 10:09 pace, and that included hills and uneven footing. So... if I did this 10k at the 10:09 pace, that would put me around a 1:01:30 (give or take). Why not round down to sub-60 (9:40 pace) and make it a goal? I'm pretty sure I've never ran that fast in even a 5k before. Sure! No problem!
Temps were in the 20's when we got there at 8:30 AM. I was smart and wore sweat pants AND ski pants over my running outfit (capris and socks) and I also wore a hoodie and jacket/scarf (over my t-shirt). I was toasty warm. Yay! (related funny: no one recognized me with all my layers) I saw Will off for the 5k and went inside the lodge to warm up - I found some friends there, so it was nice to hang out with them during the 5k. After 15 minutes, I went outside to cheer on Will and some other people from my tri club. While I was waiting, some poor girl (HS cross country?) turned the corner and started puking. Couldn't even move out of the way. Her coach or someone finally helped her to the side and to the finish. I felt her pain, it is uphill to the finish and it hurts.
Once Will finished, I needed to strip down to my run clothes and do a 20 minute warmup. I always mis-judge the time and never get my full warm up in (sorry Michelle!). I did get in 15 minutes and included some strides. I got to the race start with minutes to spare and made a last minute decision to ditch my arm sleeves. I was pretty cold at the start of my warmup (I think it was low-30 temps by this point?) but by the end I was pretty warm. I knew that with pushing my pace, I'd only get warmer and I'd end up rolling the sleeves down. Better to just get rid of them. And running cold always gives me more motivation to run faster.
The race plan was to start out semi-conservative for the first mile, keep my pace around 10:00 and HR around 160. Then start pushing and after 2 miles, ignore my watch and just run fast.
And that's pretty much what I did. I ran and found a few people I wanted to chase. I was trying to stay in control for the first mile but I probably did a bad job. I just wanted to RUN.
Miles 2-4 were basically "lets see how fast I can run but still breathe". There were two girls (also in elf socks) with their moms and we kept leapfrogging each other. They eventually got in front of me but were running at my target pace, so I just used them as pacers. It turns out it was their first 10k and they were shooting for a 11:00 pace. Oh, and a podium in their age group. They provided a nice little distraction for me, which was much appreciated it.
This year they changed the course a bit, and had us do an out and back on a side trail. Most of the run was in one direction on the Platte trail, which was great. You had room to move and could (mostly) avoid the patches of packed snow and ice . But on this side trail, traffic was in both directions, AND there was packed snow on both sides of the trail so you had no where to go. To make it even more crowded, they put a water aid station (to service both sides of the trail), which was a terrible decision. You had people walking through the aid station and other people trying to run past, all very crowded with patches of ice/snow and no room to move. I think we had ~1 or 1.5 miles of this crap. Not cool.
Once we finally got to the main trail again, we had 2 miles left and I decided it was really go time. I left my 9-year old pacers and just focused on running and not dying. The not dying part is hard because the last 2 miles are a gradual uphill and as a bonus, we had a headwind. Yay!
I don't remember too much about those last two miles except just trying to run fast enough to hit my goal and not die. With about a mile or so left, I came across one of my friends (who is speedy) and I passed her. I was expecting her to pick it up and hang on, but she never did.
Then more running, trying not to die, running, running faster. Finally I hit the hill up into Hudson Gardens (who was hosting the race) and I knew I only had 0.25 mi left, mostly uphill. I saw Will in about the same spot I saw him, he asked me to smile and I was borederline-pukey and all I could manage was to shake my hand "no". I couldn't even shake my head. ha! Then up to the finish (don't die had been replaced by don't puke) and I was happy to see the race clock was under 1:00, meaning I had hit my goal.
Right after the line, some volunteers were cutting the timing chip off my shoe and I was having a pretty lively internal debate about puking there on the spot or if I should find a bush to puke in or if I should try and walk it off. Lucky for everyone, I really hate puking, so I just walked it off. And used my inhaler about 20 times because I really couldn't breathe. But yay - PR!
Time: 59:25, 9:35/mile pace
Place: 33/56 age group, 298/509 overall
Fast forward to 2013, which friends have nicknamed "the year of PRs" for me. And honestly, it has been one PR after another this year. Really, freaking cool.
I sat down with my race result spreadsheet (yes, I am a nerd) and went through my paces at that distance. Last year I ran the 10k in 1:04:37 (10:26 pace). I did a trail 12k in October at a 10:09 pace, and that included hills and uneven footing. So... if I did this 10k at the 10:09 pace, that would put me around a 1:01:30 (give or take). Why not round down to sub-60 (9:40 pace) and make it a goal? I'm pretty sure I've never ran that fast in even a 5k before. Sure! No problem!
Temps were in the 20's when we got there at 8:30 AM. I was smart and wore sweat pants AND ski pants over my running outfit (capris and socks) and I also wore a hoodie and jacket/scarf (over my t-shirt). I was toasty warm. Yay! (related funny: no one recognized me with all my layers) I saw Will off for the 5k and went inside the lodge to warm up - I found some friends there, so it was nice to hang out with them during the 5k. After 15 minutes, I went outside to cheer on Will and some other people from my tri club. While I was waiting, some poor girl (HS cross country?) turned the corner and started puking. Couldn't even move out of the way. Her coach or someone finally helped her to the side and to the finish. I felt her pain, it is uphill to the finish and it hurts.
Once Will finished, I needed to strip down to my run clothes and do a 20 minute warmup. I always mis-judge the time and never get my full warm up in (sorry Michelle!). I did get in 15 minutes and included some strides. I got to the race start with minutes to spare and made a last minute decision to ditch my arm sleeves. I was pretty cold at the start of my warmup (I think it was low-30 temps by this point?) but by the end I was pretty warm. I knew that with pushing my pace, I'd only get warmer and I'd end up rolling the sleeves down. Better to just get rid of them. And running cold always gives me more motivation to run faster.
 |
| sporting my Colfax Ambassador gear and my festive elf socks |
And that's pretty much what I did. I ran and found a few people I wanted to chase. I was trying to stay in control for the first mile but I probably did a bad job. I just wanted to RUN.
Miles 2-4 were basically "lets see how fast I can run but still breathe". There were two girls (also in elf socks) with their moms and we kept leapfrogging each other. They eventually got in front of me but were running at my target pace, so I just used them as pacers. It turns out it was their first 10k and they were shooting for a 11:00 pace. Oh, and a podium in their age group. They provided a nice little distraction for me, which was much appreciated it.
 |
| after winning 1st and 2nd in their age group |
Once we finally got to the main trail again, we had 2 miles left and I decided it was really go time. I left my 9-year old pacers and just focused on running and not dying. The not dying part is hard because the last 2 miles are a gradual uphill and as a bonus, we had a headwind. Yay!
I don't remember too much about those last two miles except just trying to run fast enough to hit my goal and not die. With about a mile or so left, I came across one of my friends (who is speedy) and I passed her. I was expecting her to pick it up and hang on, but she never did.
 |
| this is apparently what I look like when I'm dying |
 |
| game face |
Time: 59:25, 9:35/mile pace
Place: 33/56 age group, 298/509 overall
Monday, December 16, 2013
Gear Review - Yakety Yak Knee High Running Socks
I got these socks specifically to wear at my local Santa's Stampede 10k. Race organizers give you a santa hat to wear, but I get warm easily and the fit on the hat is always wonky, so I end up holding the hat as I run. Not festive! But now that I had these socks, I was festive and ready to run.
Socks can be a bit risky for me, mainly because my feet hate me. Really, my feet are very picky and its rare when I can pick something off the shelf and have it work for me. (see: my collection of rarely worn but very cute running socks. Honestly, there's only 2 or 3 brands out there that I can wear comfortably). To add to the challenge, my right pinky toe was possibly broken. I refuse to get it xrayed and it usually feels fine when I'm running. Just don't ask me how it feels when I'm not running. *sigh* I haven't been able to wear most shoes (other than some old runners) and I had to be selective on my socks because anything too tight would hurt. And here I was, going for a big PR in a 10k in strange socks. No worries!
These socks are very thin and lightweight. I had plenty of room in my toes (they didn't bother my broken* toe). They are a bit tight in the calf (see how stretched they are in the first photo), but the tightness wasn't uncomfortable. In fact, it probably helped the socks stay up. There isn't any cushion to these, but I normally don't like cushion in my socks. These may look like compression socks, but they really aren't. They're more like a fun lightweight tall sock. So keep that in mind when you're buying and wearing them. They come in a variety of colors and designs. I definitely see myself getting these St Patrick's Day themed socks or these cute pink/green argyle ones in the future. They cost $9.99 - very affordable for something "fun" to wear during races, on festive training runs, or when you need something cute or spunky as extra motivation to get out the door and run.
My race went really well, in fact I had a 5 minute PR and beat my goal by 35 seconds. Along the course (and before and after the race) I got plenty comments about my socks. They were definitely festive and easy to see! As for performance, I didn't even notice them as I was running, which to me, is high praise. My legs and feet felt awesome the entire race. My toes had room to move and I never developed any hot spots or foot discomfort. Hurray!
Buy them at Gone for a Run, an online store for $9.99
Get 10% off through Dec 20, 2013 with the coupon code "GOTRIERIN10"
*disclaimer* Gone for a Run provided these socks to me to wear and review. All opinions remain my own.
 |
| as modeled in my dining room, pre-race |
 |
| ready to run |
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| sprinting to the finish - all my husband had to do was look for the socks |
Get 10% off through Dec 20, 2013 with the coupon code "GOTRIERIN10"
*disclaimer* Gone for a Run provided these socks to me to wear and review. All opinions remain my own.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Paleo Chocolate "Pudding"
Recipe Wednesday! (not that this ever was a thing, or that I plan on doing this regularly, or on Wednesday)
I've been eating paleo/clean for nearly two years now and breakfast is probably one of the things I struggle with most. I saw a few different "pudding" recipes on the interwebs and decided to give it a go. Its a bit weird, but holy cow, it really tastes like pudding. And its crammed full of tasty and good for you things.
But the best part - I ate a half serving on Sunday before my 1 hr long treadmill run. Usually I can't eat anything other than a little fruit snack before a run because my stomach gets crabby. I ate this about an hour before my run and I had zero issues. Like "my stomach didn't even act like there was food in there" kind of zero issues. Sweet.
As with most of my recipes, measurements are dynamic and approximate. I rarely ever make this the same way twice.
Chocolate Coconut Paleo Pudding
Makes ~4 servings
Ingredients:
1 can coconut milk (I use the full fat kind. mmmm, fat)
coffee (I don't always add this, and when I do, its left over stuff from that morning and I don't measure.)
1/4 c cocoa powder
1/4-1/2 flax seeds
1/4 cup honey
pinch salt
1/4 c almond flour (I go back and forth on including this one)
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup chia seeds
Directions:
In a blender, mix up the coconut milk through almond flour until you feel that the flax seeds are broken up. (I've read that you don't get any of the nutritional benefits of flax if they're whole, so I blend them).
Pour into large bowl or storage container. Mix in chia seeds and shredded coconut.
Pour into eating receptacles (ie divide into 4 for servings or you can leave it in a big container and scoop out what you want later on)
Put in the fridge and let it chill overnight. The chia seeds gel up and turn this into a pudding-like consistency.
I've been eating paleo/clean for nearly two years now and breakfast is probably one of the things I struggle with most. I saw a few different "pudding" recipes on the interwebs and decided to give it a go. Its a bit weird, but holy cow, it really tastes like pudding. And its crammed full of tasty and good for you things.
But the best part - I ate a half serving on Sunday before my 1 hr long treadmill run. Usually I can't eat anything other than a little fruit snack before a run because my stomach gets crabby. I ate this about an hour before my run and I had zero issues. Like "my stomach didn't even act like there was food in there" kind of zero issues. Sweet.
As with most of my recipes, measurements are dynamic and approximate. I rarely ever make this the same way twice.
Chocolate Coconut Paleo Pudding
Makes ~4 servings
Ingredients:
1 can coconut milk (I use the full fat kind. mmmm, fat)
coffee (I don't always add this, and when I do, its left over stuff from that morning and I don't measure.)
1/4 c cocoa powder
1/4-1/2 flax seeds
1/4 cup honey
pinch salt
1/4 c almond flour (I go back and forth on including this one)
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup chia seeds
Directions:
In a blender, mix up the coconut milk through almond flour until you feel that the flax seeds are broken up. (I've read that you don't get any of the nutritional benefits of flax if they're whole, so I blend them).
Pour into large bowl or storage container. Mix in chia seeds and shredded coconut.
Pour into eating receptacles (ie divide into 4 for servings or you can leave it in a big container and scoop out what you want later on)
Put in the fridge and let it chill overnight. The chia seeds gel up and turn this into a pudding-like consistency.
Friday, December 06, 2013
Trying to stay inside as much as possible
Winter has finally arrived to Denver. We got hit with a cold spell Tues night and we've been hoovering around 0 degrees (F) ever since. Its beautiful with fresh snow and blue skies, but it is COLD.
To complicate my life, I whacked my right pinky toe on the coffee table Sunday night. I didn't think I hit it that hard - it really didn't hurt that night. But Monday morning when I was getting ready for swim practice, I put on my work shoes (as opposed to old running shoes) and couldn't take 3 steps. Crapola. Probably broken. And I've got a 10k in a week (that I still need to register for) and ski season. Right now, I can't fathom putting this toe in a ski boot.
I ended up swapping my Tues and Thurs workouts around so I could put off my run until Thursday and give my toe a chance to de-swell. I've also been wearing my bright pink Brooks PureFlows to work because they're the only shoes that have a wide enough toe box. Not exactly classy with work clothes - or warm. But it was either that or no shoes.
Yesterday my toe felt good enough to try running. I ended up hitting the gym treadmill because it was maybe 5 degrees out and I didn't want to freeze-burn my lungs. I ran last year in ~10 deg temps, and while it was AWESOME at the time, the next day I was hacking and wheezing like I was a lifetime smoker. So this year, I'm going to try and be a bit smarter and run inside when its cold. I also didn't think it was a good idea to run on slick surfaces with a potentially broken toe. See, I'm trying to get smarter.
I am completely out of my routine for going to the gym for non swim practice type things. I put my clothes on at home, grabbed a water bottle, got my gym ID out of my gym bag and headed out the door. When I got to the gym, I realized I forgot my MP3 player at home and that my headband (to control hair whisps) was in my gym bag, which was also at home. I didn't feel like driving home for these 2 important but non-essential things so I toughed it out and ran without them.
Fortunately, Thursday's run was intervals. Intervals make the treadmill SO MUCH BETTER. 20 min warmup, 10 [ 2 min hard / 2 min easy], 10 min cool down. Having something to do every 2 minutes made things so much better.
Surprisingly, my toe felt fine - like nothing was wrong. This was only when I was running (weird, right?) and when I got off it was sore. I hate icing body parts when its freezing out. Sure, I'm inside on the couch, but mentally, I do not want to put ice of my foot in the winter. Random aside: Zipper really likes bags of ice. She'll lick the bag and I even caught her biting the thing. Not cool because then ice cold water leaks out of the bag and onto me. She's a weird cat.
Today, my toe was more sore than yesterday. I went to swim practice, where my coach tried to drown us (9x100 with 6 underwater dolphin kicks off of each wall. that crap is HARD). I had another 30 min run on my schedule today, so I just put my run stuff (this time with music and headband!) and ran right after swimming. I knew that if I had to go back to the gym for a 30 min run in the afternoon, then I'd just skip the run. So I got some mental toughness bonus points and got it done. And my toe is a bit more sore, so I get to spend more time with an ice packet (and Zipper) today.
Running easy is pretty boring on the treadmill. I try to make it a bit better by increasing the speed by 0.1 mph every 5 minutes. Really, its just a trick to break the run up into 5 min increments instead of 30 life-sucking-minutes on a hamster wheel.
Sunday I've got a 1 hr run and I'm pretty sure it will have to be inside as well. I am not very excited about it.
To complicate my life, I whacked my right pinky toe on the coffee table Sunday night. I didn't think I hit it that hard - it really didn't hurt that night. But Monday morning when I was getting ready for swim practice, I put on my work shoes (as opposed to old running shoes) and couldn't take 3 steps. Crapola. Probably broken. And I've got a 10k in a week (that I still need to register for) and ski season. Right now, I can't fathom putting this toe in a ski boot.
 |
| toes are so ugly. its hard to tell, but I had a DARK purple bruise. Probably worse than my CDA toe. also: you can still see my surgery scars |
Yesterday my toe felt good enough to try running. I ended up hitting the gym treadmill because it was maybe 5 degrees out and I didn't want to freeze-burn my lungs. I ran last year in ~10 deg temps, and while it was AWESOME at the time, the next day I was hacking and wheezing like I was a lifetime smoker. So this year, I'm going to try and be a bit smarter and run inside when its cold. I also didn't think it was a good idea to run on slick surfaces with a potentially broken toe. See, I'm trying to get smarter.
I am completely out of my routine for going to the gym for non swim practice type things. I put my clothes on at home, grabbed a water bottle, got my gym ID out of my gym bag and headed out the door. When I got to the gym, I realized I forgot my MP3 player at home and that my headband (to control hair whisps) was in my gym bag, which was also at home. I didn't feel like driving home for these 2 important but non-essential things so I toughed it out and ran without them.
Fortunately, Thursday's run was intervals. Intervals make the treadmill SO MUCH BETTER. 20 min warmup, 10 [ 2 min hard / 2 min easy], 10 min cool down. Having something to do every 2 minutes made things so much better.
Surprisingly, my toe felt fine - like nothing was wrong. This was only when I was running (weird, right?) and when I got off it was sore. I hate icing body parts when its freezing out. Sure, I'm inside on the couch, but mentally, I do not want to put ice of my foot in the winter. Random aside: Zipper really likes bags of ice. She'll lick the bag and I even caught her biting the thing. Not cool because then ice cold water leaks out of the bag and onto me. She's a weird cat.
Today, my toe was more sore than yesterday. I went to swim practice, where my coach tried to drown us (9x100 with 6 underwater dolphin kicks off of each wall. that crap is HARD). I had another 30 min run on my schedule today, so I just put my run stuff (this time with music and headband!) and ran right after swimming. I knew that if I had to go back to the gym for a 30 min run in the afternoon, then I'd just skip the run. So I got some mental toughness bonus points and got it done. And my toe is a bit more sore, so I get to spend more time with an ice packet (and Zipper) today.
Running easy is pretty boring on the treadmill. I try to make it a bit better by increasing the speed by 0.1 mph every 5 minutes. Really, its just a trick to break the run up into 5 min increments instead of 30 life-sucking-minutes on a hamster wheel.
Sunday I've got a 1 hr run and I'm pretty sure it will have to be inside as well. I am not very excited about it.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
November 2013 Training Totals
Just doing this out of habit, I guess. November was definitely shows off season numbers.
November:
Swim: 9h 34m 25s - 27184.65 YdBike: 7h 17m 54s - 110.41 Mi (most of this was trainer time)
Run: 5h 45m 14s - 32.74 Mi (nearly half of this was from my race - ha!)
Swim: 13h 03m - 36,581.37 Yd
Bike: 19h 48m 20s - 275.66 Mi
Run: 11h 29m 18s - 63.15 M
Oh and look - OTHER things besides sbr!
Strength: 30 min
Skiing: 8 hr
Yoga: 2 hrs
October:
Swim: 13h 03m - 36,581.37 Yd
Bike: 19h 48m 20s - 275.66 Mi
Run: 11h 29m 18s - 63.15 Mi
So goals for December are:
ski more - although I've got 2 jam-packed social weekends, so we shall see.
yoga - I've been "shopping" for a yoga class at the gym. I went to a hot yoga 2 weeks ago and last week I went to a "slow burn" yoga. What always irritates me in yoga classes is when they whip right through the poses and never hold anything. I'm not there for a cardio workout, I'm there for stretching and strength. What I also like about the Slow Burn class is that the instructor (Karen) has us do a series of poses with our eyes closed. That definitely makes you slow down and focus. I really liked it.
I would really like to hit 700 mi for the year running. I'm 21 miles away from that. I may have broken my pinky toe Sunday night, which could complicate things. We'll see. 21 miles is ONLY 4 miles a week, which is totally doable.
November:
Swim: 9h 34m 25s - 27184.65 YdBike: 7h 17m 54s - 110.41 Mi (most of this was trainer time)
Run: 5h 45m 14s - 32.74 Mi (nearly half of this was from my race - ha!)
Swim: 13h 03m - 36,581.37 Yd
Bike: 19h 48m 20s - 275.66 Mi
Run: 11h 29m 18s - 63.15 M
Oh and look - OTHER things besides sbr!
Strength: 30 min
Skiing: 8 hr
Yoga: 2 hrs
October:
Swim: 13h 03m - 36,581.37 Yd
Bike: 19h 48m 20s - 275.66 Mi
Run: 11h 29m 18s - 63.15 Mi
So goals for December are:
ski more - although I've got 2 jam-packed social weekends, so we shall see.
yoga - I've been "shopping" for a yoga class at the gym. I went to a hot yoga 2 weeks ago and last week I went to a "slow burn" yoga. What always irritates me in yoga classes is when they whip right through the poses and never hold anything. I'm not there for a cardio workout, I'm there for stretching and strength. What I also like about the Slow Burn class is that the instructor (Karen) has us do a series of poses with our eyes closed. That definitely makes you slow down and focus. I really liked it.
I would really like to hit 700 mi for the year running. I'm 21 miles away from that. I may have broken my pinky toe Sunday night, which could complicate things. We'll see. 21 miles is ONLY 4 miles a week, which is totally doable.
Monday, December 02, 2013
Turkey Day Skiing
We were invited to a friend's house in South Fork and spent the day after Thanksgiving skiing at Wolf Creek. This ski area is pretty well known for large amounts of snow - they got 42 inches the week before Thanksgiving. That's a lot.
Window lift tickets are pretty reasonable ($58) and the place has a low-key anti-resort feel, which I like. The main drawback is that this is some of the better skiing within a "reasonable" drive of Texas and Oklahoma and the place was riddled with really, really, really bad skiers. I really wanted to yell "get out of my state" several times.
Pro tip: do not leave your ski boots outside in your car overnight. In the parking lot at the ski area, I could not get the damn things on to save my life. That plastic was so cold that it would not budge. So I hoofed it over to the lodge and found a nice open spot inside by the rental counter. It took a bit of wrestling, but I got them on., but not before an older (and overly helpful) ski instructor decided to give me tips on ski boot wearing. (he started with "those are really nice boots" and me replying "yes, I know they are" and then he gave me tips on getting into the boots and how to buckle them. ugh.) I really think he thought I had no idea what I was doing. It was a bit humiliating. Next time, my boots are sleeping inside.
We didn't study the ski map very well, we just went up and found runs we thought would be ok. We did a green run to warm up and it was a pretty boring wide groomer. Next was a blue that started on a cat-track and ended in bumps. Wha? Based on my very limited exploration of the hill, it seemed that most blues were either crappy cat-tracks or ungroomed and bumpy. The run we did several times ended in pretty big bumps which funneled into a central area with even more bumps and rocks and trees. Every time we went down, there was someone who had crashed at the focal point and was blocking traffic. They either need to warn people or groom the runs. I liked the bumps but when I'm trying to find something easier for Will to navigate, bumps aren't generally what I look for. Although, he did really well on the bumps, so I'm happy.
After lunch, we went and explored another part of the hill. More trees, better snow (really, all the snow was good), some powder. We did two runs over there and Will did pretty good. Until he buried himself quicksand-style in powder and needed help getting out. Our friend was really nice and helped while I stood there laughing. A lot. I just couldn't stop. The snow was so deep and fluffy that every time Will went to push himself up, his arms sunk into the snow, which made him do a faceplant. It was funny (and yes, I feel badly about thinking this is funny). We gave him some poles and he drove the poles in up to their grips. That's some deep snow.
After those 2 post-lunch runs, Will was done and our friend and I headed over to the far side of the area. I was just blindly following him along. He headed towards a double black diamond that was called Waterfall #4 or something. It wasn't bad - not very steep, trees. Then all of a sudden the ground dropped away from us and this is what we saw:
There were some people ahead of us and only one real way to enter the area, so we just hung out until they were through. While we were waiting, some snowboarder crash landed to a stop right above us and wasn't too happy about what was ahead of him. The only way out was to go down.
This was easily the steepest skiing I've done in a very long time. Fortunately the snow was really soft, so it was easy to control my turns and speed. If it was icy, I would have been screwed. I just took my time and actually, it was just fine. Maybe 3-4 turns down, not a whole lot of sliding down sideways. I picked my path really well and was in control the whole time. I actually felt really good my skiing on that.
From that point, it was just really fun, nice powdery bumps and tree skiing. We did two runs in the trees and I was in my happy place. The pine trees smelled great and I was just really happy.
And then it was 3:00 and our legs were done. It was a really good day. I love skiing trees and bumps and wow, I still really love my skis (Volkl Auras).
Window lift tickets are pretty reasonable ($58) and the place has a low-key anti-resort feel, which I like. The main drawback is that this is some of the better skiing within a "reasonable" drive of Texas and Oklahoma and the place was riddled with really, really, really bad skiers. I really wanted to yell "get out of my state" several times.
Pro tip: do not leave your ski boots outside in your car overnight. In the parking lot at the ski area, I could not get the damn things on to save my life. That plastic was so cold that it would not budge. So I hoofed it over to the lodge and found a nice open spot inside by the rental counter. It took a bit of wrestling, but I got them on., but not before an older (and overly helpful) ski instructor decided to give me tips on ski boot wearing. (he started with "those are really nice boots" and me replying "yes, I know they are" and then he gave me tips on getting into the boots and how to buckle them. ugh.) I really think he thought I had no idea what I was doing. It was a bit humiliating. Next time, my boots are sleeping inside.
We didn't study the ski map very well, we just went up and found runs we thought would be ok. We did a green run to warm up and it was a pretty boring wide groomer. Next was a blue that started on a cat-track and ended in bumps. Wha? Based on my very limited exploration of the hill, it seemed that most blues were either crappy cat-tracks or ungroomed and bumpy. The run we did several times ended in pretty big bumps which funneled into a central area with even more bumps and rocks and trees. Every time we went down, there was someone who had crashed at the focal point and was blocking traffic. They either need to warn people or groom the runs. I liked the bumps but when I'm trying to find something easier for Will to navigate, bumps aren't generally what I look for. Although, he did really well on the bumps, so I'm happy.
After lunch, we went and explored another part of the hill. More trees, better snow (really, all the snow was good), some powder. We did two runs over there and Will did pretty good. Until he buried himself quicksand-style in powder and needed help getting out. Our friend was really nice and helped while I stood there laughing. A lot. I just couldn't stop. The snow was so deep and fluffy that every time Will went to push himself up, his arms sunk into the snow, which made him do a faceplant. It was funny (and yes, I feel badly about thinking this is funny). We gave him some poles and he drove the poles in up to their grips. That's some deep snow.
After those 2 post-lunch runs, Will was done and our friend and I headed over to the far side of the area. I was just blindly following him along. He headed towards a double black diamond that was called Waterfall #4 or something. It wasn't bad - not very steep, trees. Then all of a sudden the ground dropped away from us and this is what we saw:
 |
| It didn't occur to me to actually take photos myself - I was focused on getting down. Photos borrowed from http://www.coloradotravelblog.com. |
 |
| yeah, that's steep |
 |
| looking straight up |
From that point, it was just really fun, nice powdery bumps and tree skiing. We did two runs in the trees and I was in my happy place. The pine trees smelled great and I was just really happy.
And then it was 3:00 and our legs were done. It was a really good day. I love skiing trees and bumps and wow, I still really love my skis (Volkl Auras).
Monday, November 25, 2013
A random list of what I've been up to
Still enjoying the off-season but we're building a bit more structure in terms of workouts and things....
1) we saw Book of Mormon on Saturday. When I pitched the idea of going to Will, he got whiny, but hello, South Park - and he grew up in Southern Idaho and would pretty much get every inside joke in the show. I think he enjoyed it more than I did. There were several times where he commented "I was wondering when they'd get to that".
2) people who need to play with their phones during a live performance should be dragged away and tortured. The woman next to me kept busting out her phone and doing stuff on it. Because it can't wait an hour?!?! Really?
3) we have been having a good time drinking beer. Like that's a surprise. After BoM we had dinner at a place that was highly regarded as a beer gastropub. The food was excellent, the beer list was meh. It always shocks me when "beer places" don't have mostly local beer on tap. After food, we went to Epic and it was great. Its a huge warehouse with arched wooden ceilings and exposed steel beams. Light fixtures look like the bottom of cone-tanks. The bar was really nice (we could have done without the 3 huge tvs) and there was a fireplace with couches. The best part: the place was saturated with the scent of wort and hops. It was delicious. I really like how it was designed - lots of beer touches and they found a way to make this huge space warm and cozy. The only unfortunate thing was the initial place we sat (a table right by the door) had the unfortunate bonus of being able to see men standing at the urinal when the men's room door opened. Not exactly my thing. The Brainless series was good. The stouts and porters were disappointing - no depth.
4) skiing! I went a few Saturday's ago. Copper had 5 inches of powder and they had a CO-themed demo day. We rode other people's gear all day and had a good time. The strange part was that the place was empty - I rode American Eagle by myself a few times after lunch. On a Saturday.
5) I've been cooking more, which is fun. We were invited to a brunch a few weeks back and I made pumpkin cinnamon rolls with bourbon cream cheese icing. They were so terrible, I'm making them again for this weekend. I'm also doing crock-pot meals more often - I've done something the past 3 weeks. I like doing a large roast of some sort (pork or beef) but I've had some bad experiences with things coming out too dry. Well, I think I *finally* figured the trick out. The key is to make sure the meat is completely covered with some sort of liquid. For some reason, I had always thought you wanted to use a very small amount of liquid, but the past 2 times I've submerged the thing, its turned out awesome. And that's pretty much how I will be cooking roasts in the crock pot from now on.
6) the brewery we invested in finally has their state and federal brewing licence. Awesome. I'm pretty sure we'll be hanging out there a ton in December.
7) I finished up Orange is the New Black on Netflix and randomly picked Hemlock Grove as my new pain-cave viewing experience. I had no idea it was about a werewolf (and other things). Funny how I just gravitate to those shows for no good reason.
8) I'm still recovering from Oilman, or really, from my 2013 season. I trained pretty regularly from March - November, which makes for a pretty long season. My runs and rides have gone pretty well. My swims are pretty weak. I try to go fast but I just can't find that fast gear. I know its there somewhere, I just need to be patient.
9) my big goal for the off season is to try and attend one yoga session per week. I went to a hot yoga class last Wednesday and it was ok. I was surprised to see that I could do the strength moves pretty well (even ones I usually have problems with) and it was no surprise that my hamstrings are ridiculously tight. This instructor didn't hold the poses as long as I prefer, so tonight I'm going to a (non-heated) slow yoga class to see if I like it better.
1) we saw Book of Mormon on Saturday. When I pitched the idea of going to Will, he got whiny, but hello, South Park - and he grew up in Southern Idaho and would pretty much get every inside joke in the show. I think he enjoyed it more than I did. There were several times where he commented "I was wondering when they'd get to that".
2) people who need to play with their phones during a live performance should be dragged away and tortured. The woman next to me kept busting out her phone and doing stuff on it. Because it can't wait an hour?!?! Really?
3) we have been having a good time drinking beer. Like that's a surprise. After BoM we had dinner at a place that was highly regarded as a beer gastropub. The food was excellent, the beer list was meh. It always shocks me when "beer places" don't have mostly local beer on tap. After food, we went to Epic and it was great. Its a huge warehouse with arched wooden ceilings and exposed steel beams. Light fixtures look like the bottom of cone-tanks. The bar was really nice (we could have done without the 3 huge tvs) and there was a fireplace with couches. The best part: the place was saturated with the scent of wort and hops. It was delicious. I really like how it was designed - lots of beer touches and they found a way to make this huge space warm and cozy. The only unfortunate thing was the initial place we sat (a table right by the door) had the unfortunate bonus of being able to see men standing at the urinal when the men's room door opened. Not exactly my thing. The Brainless series was good. The stouts and porters were disappointing - no depth.
4) skiing! I went a few Saturday's ago. Copper had 5 inches of powder and they had a CO-themed demo day. We rode other people's gear all day and had a good time. The strange part was that the place was empty - I rode American Eagle by myself a few times after lunch. On a Saturday.
5) I've been cooking more, which is fun. We were invited to a brunch a few weeks back and I made pumpkin cinnamon rolls with bourbon cream cheese icing. They were so terrible, I'm making them again for this weekend. I'm also doing crock-pot meals more often - I've done something the past 3 weeks. I like doing a large roast of some sort (pork or beef) but I've had some bad experiences with things coming out too dry. Well, I think I *finally* figured the trick out. The key is to make sure the meat is completely covered with some sort of liquid. For some reason, I had always thought you wanted to use a very small amount of liquid, but the past 2 times I've submerged the thing, its turned out awesome. And that's pretty much how I will be cooking roasts in the crock pot from now on.
6) the brewery we invested in finally has their state and federal brewing licence. Awesome. I'm pretty sure we'll be hanging out there a ton in December.
7) I finished up Orange is the New Black on Netflix and randomly picked Hemlock Grove as my new pain-cave viewing experience. I had no idea it was about a werewolf (and other things). Funny how I just gravitate to those shows for no good reason.
8) I'm still recovering from Oilman, or really, from my 2013 season. I trained pretty regularly from March - November, which makes for a pretty long season. My runs and rides have gone pretty well. My swims are pretty weak. I try to go fast but I just can't find that fast gear. I know its there somewhere, I just need to be patient.
9) my big goal for the off season is to try and attend one yoga session per week. I went to a hot yoga class last Wednesday and it was ok. I was surprised to see that I could do the strength moves pretty well (even ones I usually have problems with) and it was no surprise that my hamstrings are ridiculously tight. This instructor didn't hold the poses as long as I prefer, so tonight I'm going to a (non-heated) slow yoga class to see if I like it better.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Off Season!
Wahoo!
Seriously, I am soooo happy to have survived Tri Season 2013. Seeing where I was a year ago and where I am now is amazing. A year ago, I was rebuilding and relearning how to run after breaking my heel, hoping that everything I had planned in 2013 would go well. This year's tri season exceeded my expectations with the main highlight being IMCDA. I still can't get over how well that day went - it really was a fantastic day.
I spent Sunday putting Merlin back together (so easy now that I know what I'm doing) and putting away all of my triathlon race stuff. Its a bit sad, but also nice. Hopefully I'll remember where I put everything in June.
I'm still a bit tired after Oilman. My muscles are fine but there's still some underlying fatigue. I've swam 3x and its gone just ok. One of those times was a 3k yard postal challenge. It sounded like a good idea a week before Oilman and then it sounded like a not-very-good idea after. But I had committed. And I got a free (really nice) silicone swim cap. But I was a good 1-2 min slower than in previous years and probably a good 3-4 min slower than I should have been, given how I've been swimming this year.
I went for an easy run Tuesday (or "joggy-jog" as my coach put it). I did 30 min in beautiful Colorado 50-degree sunshine. I ran too fast but my legs felt good and I just wanted to RUN. I wanted to do hot yoga last night but the instructor was a no-show. So I went home and watched tv. Same thing, right?
We're easing into the off-season. I'm not quite sure what my training will look like but I'm pretty sure it will resemble last year pretty closely, with maybe more speed/strength added in since I'm not coming off of a fracture. I'm also going to really try and do yoga once a week because I think its good for me. I'm just going to put it on my calendar and let Michelle deal with it.
And I'm going to ski. This year is looking pretty good so far. Copper opened up Nov 1 - with a powder day! I'm hitting the slopes Saturday, which may be a early-season record for me. And its looking like a powder day. Now to figure out which skis to bring...... And to find my ski gear.
2014 is shaping up to look like a fun tri year. I'm doing the Winter Distance Series again. Its really well done and it does keep you running over the winter. May will be the Colfax half marathon. June is Boise 70.3. Yes, I'm signed up for Boulder 70.3 but I have a very important wedding to attend that same weekend in Idaho, which means Boulder is out. So Boise it is. (and I say this making a bit of a squinty/scared face, that race and I do not have a fabulous history). July will be spent riding my bike lots. And August 3, 2014 is the Big Show - Ironman Boulder. And then I'll spend the rest of August sleeping or camping or fishing.
Also in 2014, I have some pretty fun tri-related opportunities. I've been accepted as an ambassador for 2 groups and accepted on a local tri team.
Colfax Marathon Ambassador: they wrote up this super cool bio for me and I get some pretty nice gear, including a light weight running jacket with a ton of reflective stuff on it. In return, I promote the race, which is a pretty easy deal. I'm really looking forward to running through the Denver Zoo during the half marathon.
Gone for a Run: I follow their feed on facebook, and it turns out that they have an internet store focused on running stuff. They'll send me products every couple of months and I'll review them here on my blog. I've got two things so far (Yakety Yak Knee Socks and PR Soles sandals). Both are pretty awesome.
And finally, I managed to get myself on a local triathlon team. I admit, I have a thing for cool looking kits that you can't just purchase (ie you have to earn it). Its definitely elitist tri-cool-kid envy. The envy was alleviated a bit with my two Active Ambassador teams (Sony and SunRype) but this year, it takes more than a free team kit and a bunch of free samples to make me happy. The Active groups don't have much sense of local community and I've decided that community and friendships are something that I want in my team. There are two main "you have to apply and be accepted" teams in town and I think the competition is pretty fierce. I've really focused on building my local resume this year with the goal of being accepted. And yay, I was accepted to Kompetitve Edge today! Hurray!
Seriously, I am soooo happy to have survived Tri Season 2013. Seeing where I was a year ago and where I am now is amazing. A year ago, I was rebuilding and relearning how to run after breaking my heel, hoping that everything I had planned in 2013 would go well. This year's tri season exceeded my expectations with the main highlight being IMCDA. I still can't get over how well that day went - it really was a fantastic day.
I spent Sunday putting Merlin back together (so easy now that I know what I'm doing) and putting away all of my triathlon race stuff. Its a bit sad, but also nice. Hopefully I'll remember where I put everything in June.
I'm still a bit tired after Oilman. My muscles are fine but there's still some underlying fatigue. I've swam 3x and its gone just ok. One of those times was a 3k yard postal challenge. It sounded like a good idea a week before Oilman and then it sounded like a not-very-good idea after. But I had committed. And I got a free (really nice) silicone swim cap. But I was a good 1-2 min slower than in previous years and probably a good 3-4 min slower than I should have been, given how I've been swimming this year.
I went for an easy run Tuesday (or "joggy-jog" as my coach put it). I did 30 min in beautiful Colorado 50-degree sunshine. I ran too fast but my legs felt good and I just wanted to RUN. I wanted to do hot yoga last night but the instructor was a no-show. So I went home and watched tv. Same thing, right?
We're easing into the off-season. I'm not quite sure what my training will look like but I'm pretty sure it will resemble last year pretty closely, with maybe more speed/strength added in since I'm not coming off of a fracture. I'm also going to really try and do yoga once a week because I think its good for me. I'm just going to put it on my calendar and let Michelle deal with it.
And I'm going to ski. This year is looking pretty good so far. Copper opened up Nov 1 - with a powder day! I'm hitting the slopes Saturday, which may be a early-season record for me. And its looking like a powder day. Now to figure out which skis to bring...... And to find my ski gear.
2014 is shaping up to look like a fun tri year. I'm doing the Winter Distance Series again. Its really well done and it does keep you running over the winter. May will be the Colfax half marathon. June is Boise 70.3. Yes, I'm signed up for Boulder 70.3 but I have a very important wedding to attend that same weekend in Idaho, which means Boulder is out. So Boise it is. (and I say this making a bit of a squinty/scared face, that race and I do not have a fabulous history). July will be spent riding my bike lots. And August 3, 2014 is the Big Show - Ironman Boulder. And then I'll spend the rest of August sleeping or camping or fishing.
Also in 2014, I have some pretty fun tri-related opportunities. I've been accepted as an ambassador for 2 groups and accepted on a local tri team.
Colfax Marathon Ambassador: they wrote up this super cool bio for me and I get some pretty nice gear, including a light weight running jacket with a ton of reflective stuff on it. In return, I promote the race, which is a pretty easy deal. I'm really looking forward to running through the Denver Zoo during the half marathon.
Gone for a Run: I follow their feed on facebook, and it turns out that they have an internet store focused on running stuff. They'll send me products every couple of months and I'll review them here on my blog. I've got two things so far (Yakety Yak Knee Socks and PR Soles sandals). Both are pretty awesome.
And finally, I managed to get myself on a local triathlon team. I admit, I have a thing for cool looking kits that you can't just purchase (ie you have to earn it). Its definitely elitist tri-cool-kid envy. The envy was alleviated a bit with my two Active Ambassador teams (Sony and SunRype) but this year, it takes more than a free team kit and a bunch of free samples to make me happy. The Active groups don't have much sense of local community and I've decided that community and friendships are something that I want in my team. There are two main "you have to apply and be accepted" teams in town and I think the competition is pretty fierce. I've really focused on building my local resume this year with the goal of being accepted. And yay, I was accepted to Kompetitve Edge today! Hurray!
Thursday, November 07, 2013
October 2013 Training Totals
Probably the last post of this type for a while. November is officially the start of the off season for me. Hurray!
October:
Swim: 13h 03m - 36,581.37 Yd
Bike: 19h 48m 20s - 275.66 Mi
Run: 11h 29m 18s - 63.15 M
September:
Swim: 9h 20m - 25,535.04 Yd
Bike: 15h 18m - 212.96 Mi
Run: 13h 20m 18s - 71.31 M
I'm doing the Winter Distance Series again this year, so I expect my run mileage will be consistent to what it has been this fall. Swim and bike... who knows? Hopefully its just swim twice a week and ride once or twice. And I'd like to do hot yoga weekly this winter. And ski lots. And sleep in.
Did I mention it was off season?
October:
Swim: 13h 03m - 36,581.37 Yd
Bike: 19h 48m 20s - 275.66 Mi
Run: 11h 29m 18s - 63.15 M
September:
Swim: 9h 20m - 25,535.04 Yd
Bike: 15h 18m - 212.96 Mi
Run: 13h 20m 18s - 71.31 M
I'm doing the Winter Distance Series again this year, so I expect my run mileage will be consistent to what it has been this fall. Swim and bike... who knows? Hopefully its just swim twice a week and ride once or twice. And I'd like to do hot yoga weekly this winter. And ski lots. And sleep in.
Did I mention it was off season?
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
Oilman 70.3 Race Report
This was a seriously great race. I had a pre-race talk with my coach and she encouraged me to take risks. The whole concept is if you don't take a risk, you won't grow and learn. I was given permission to burn a whole bunch of matches and see what happens. She also thought my running a 2:22 half marathon was not out of the question. I had a mission to hit 6:30 and I was excited to see what I could do.
Pre-Race
I really didn't leave much time for error on this one. Will's birthday was Friday, which meant flying out Saturday early, the day before the race. I felt bad for Will b/c I had to be in bed early for my flight and couldn't stay up and do anything fun. Poor guy, always a good sport and going along with my craziness.
I was really worried about TSA crunching Merlin during their inspection. I packed him uber-carefully. Nothing was left exposed - it was all covered in foam pipe wrap or bubble wrap. I even left a note asking TSA to pay attention when unpacking and repacking it and labeled the box "this end up to open". Seems to have worked - Merlin was pretty darn close to the way I left him when I cracked the box open in Houston.
My friend Melissa (who is doing IM Boulder with me) picked me up and we went up to Conroe to eat lunch, build my bike, and do packet pickup. Merlin re-assembled super easy - yay! Packet pickup was low key as well. I bought some CO2 cartridges and some tinted sunglasses for the race and we were good to go.
We did a quick 15 min test ride and 10 min run and called it a day. The rest of the night was spent getting ready and eating/drinking. I tried some Osmo pre-race. It was salty. I'm not sure what to make of the stuff.
Sunday had a wake up call of 4:35 with a goal to leave the house by 5:30. I braided my hair, applied my tri-tattoo race numbers (so cool!), lathered on sunscreen and probably poked around too much. I drank ~200 cal of Skratch and 1.5 small Honey Stinger peanut butter energy bars before we left the house. Our housemate was supposed to race, but he got sick. He was nice enough to drive us around which was super sweet of him.
Transition was the usual, except it was 41 degrees and people were cold. I had my hoodie and flannel pj pants and was perfectly warm. I had terrible time management. We got there with maybe 45 min before transition closed and I dinked around too much, chatting with people I haven't seen in forever. This meant no bathroom pit-stop (which actually was ok - fortunately) and no warm up. I also had no brain cells for pretty much the entire weekend as I kept forgetting things and Melissa was remembering for me and helping me out.
At 6:45 they closed transition (we were among the last ones out). I only had the bottom part of my 2-piece wetsuit on by that time and got to spend the walk to the swim start wrestling with my swim top. I decided that counted as my warm up (sorry Coach).
Then it was over to the swim start to basically dunk my head in the water and swim a few strokes. The water was just right, probably 70, not too hot or too cold. It was crazy murky, which was a Houston feature I'd forgotten about. I could literally only see 3 inches in front of my face. Thankfully the water didn't taste as bad as it looked. We then went back to the beach, chatted with friends, and waited for our waves.
Swim
This was a beach start, which is something I'm never a fan of. I was dumb and hung back a few rows of people. I was keeping another friend company and wasn't really thinking strategically for myself. This was a really dumb mistake and I completely missed my chance to draft off of people. I knew this right when I got into the water. I couldn't find anyone and I was swimming HARD to find people. In all honesty though, with the visibility being crap, I'm not sure I could have drafted off of anyone even if I did start at the front. The swim (as usual) seemed to take forever. I was determined to swim pretty hard and channel Dory. We swam from the beach, through a lagoon, then out to Lake Conroe where we did a rectangle. The winds were pretty decent and they were kicking up some good chop in the water. Not enough to make white caps, but it was enough where you couldn't see a buoy once in a while and you occasionally rolled with the the wave.
Overall: it was a sucky swim. I kept my effort up but I knew it wasn't a fast time for me.
Time: 39:25.9
Age Group Ranking: 5/22
Overall Ranking: 184/532
I also checked my wave and I came in with the 16th fastest swim out of 88 people. Not fantastic but not awful either.
T1
I popped out of the water, got my cap/goggles off, and also my wetsuit top off (except the right arm) all in the 100 ft before the strippers. I had to stand there for a few seconds (nicely) yelling for help - things were a bit chaotic. She did her job quickly and I was up and running along to transition. There was a bit of a jog from the wetsuit strippers to transition (maybe 1/4 of a mile?) and a baby, 10 ft tall hill that people were walking over. Thanks to my extra red-blood cells, I could breathe just fine and sprinted off to transition. Seriously, I passed everyone. Apparently I dropped my goggles somewhere along the way and a guy was nice enough to grab them and catch me. When he did catch me, he made a funny comment about how he had a hard time b/c I was running too fast. Sweet!
Actual transition was no biggie. I did buy some knee socks the day before, in case it was cold and I needed arm warmers, but when I got to my bike, I didn't want to bother. I knew the sun was out and I'd be fine, thanks to my Colorado cold-weather bike riding. All I had to do was put my stuff on and hit the road.
Time: 3:25.9
Age Group Ranking: 3/22
Overall Ranking: 80/532
Apparently nearly everyone else decided to put on warmer clothing because I didn't think I was moving all that fast.
Bike
Now it was go time. I had a date with the bike course and I was going to do my best to kill it out there. I was riding strong. The steeper hills were a bit harder than I was expecting. I stayed big ring the entire time but I did have to shift into my easiest gear on nearly all of the hills. That was a bit of a bummer as I was hoping I was stronger than that. I just focused on keeping my cadence up and my effort solid. My heart rate was really high for the first 40 minutes, around 155+ for an effort that was no where near that high. I think that was residual effects from the harder effort on the swim. I just kept plugging away, hoping it would eventually go down. It did and then my heart rate stayed around 145/150 for the rest of the ride.
I love the first part of this course because you are on rolling hills going through the forest. I just really tried to stay in my element and enjoy riding here. I also went a bit down memory lane - the last time I'd been here was during IMTX. I recognized some of the turn-offs and smiled. And then I just kept on pedaling.
Nutrition-wise I was doing ok. I really tried to get in calories from the start, knowing I'd need them for the run. Every 15 minutes I'd eat some chews or swig some Liquid Shot. My drinking wasn't all that great, but it wasn't hot and I pretty much needed to pee starting at the first aid station. Its hard to keep drinking when you have a full bladder. They only had one port-o-potty per aid station and there was always a line, so I just kept moving on. Probably not the best idea but I really didn't want to waste time.
Around mile 20 we crossed into Grimes County and into the land of chip seal. Ugh. And then around mile 25 we turned onto FM 2819 and encountered some of the worst chip seal I've been on. It was so bad my vision was acting like there was a strobe light in front of me. By the time I hit the turn around (and the next aid station) my adductors were acting up (again - ugh) and I decided to stop and stretch for 2 minutes. It was at that point I saw Melissa on the other side of the road heading into the turn-around. I shouted that I was fine and she went on her way. I hopped back on my bike and was happy the stretching worked - I was back to riding well. Melissa ended up catching me and we chatted for a while. We both didn't like the swim but we were both riding well. I had clocked a time of 1:33 at the halfway point and was really hoping for a faster than predicted bike time. I was worried about the wind though, since I knew it would be a headwind the whole way back. I joked about needing some long climbs to be happy and Melissa rode on ahead. I think I caught her 5 minutes later (on a long flat climb) and laughed. At that point I started counting how many people I was passing (16 the whole way back). I was just trying to stay small and do my hill climbing thing.
The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. I pushed where I could. My heart rate stayed pretty low and I'd evaluate: can I ride harder and still be ok for the run? My upper hamstrings were talking to me and I really didn't think I could push much more, so I just kept doing what I was doing.
As I rode the last stretch of road into the resort area and transition, I smiled as I remembered the first race I did out here in 2009, the Aquabike that nearly killed me. I was seriously dying on that stretch of road. This time it was easy and I was looking forward to running. Have I mentioned how much I love my new bike lately? Its true, I do.
Time: 3:20:54.8
Pace: 16.7 mph
Age Group Ranking: 8/22
Overall Ranking: 334/532
I was targeting 3:24 as my realistic goal (3:15 for a stretch goal) so I'm really happy to come in under my goal. I think if it wasn't so windy out I would have done even better.
Funny random racer sighting: some guy was wearing a jacket, cycling tights, and shoe covers. I can't even imagine how long it took for him to wrestle those tights on in transition......
I was perfectly fine in my tri kit.
T2
Really nothing much to report, although I did nearly leave my gloves on for the run.
Time: 1:56.1
Age Group Ranking: 4/22
Overall Ranking: 174/532
Run
aka Go Time. To hit my goal of 6:30, with a 3:24 bike time, I would need to average a run pace of 10:50, which is something I'd never done in a 70.3. Or really, even in an olympic distance race. I didn't know what my swim time was so I was still aiming for a pace of 10:50 or faster.
Each loop of the run course went like this:
Melissa was right behind me off the bike and we came out of transition together. I really had to pee still so I stopped at the 2 port-o-potties right after the timing mat. They were disgusting. Yuck. I wasn't that far behind Melissa after my pit-stop. She stopped to fix her shoe and I had a sock that was bunched up so I stopped with her. We ran the entire first loop together and maybe a bit more. It was really nice to have a run buddy again :) I was supposed to keep my heart rate down below 155 for the first part of the race. I kept looking at my Garmin and seeing 157 and a pace that was sub-10. She was running a bit too fast as well and we'd try to slow down. And then we'd speed back up, probably because we were chatting and not focusing on running. I finally gave up on trying to slow down because my effort felt easy and I was feeling really good.
Around mile 6 or so (I think this was after the 1st aid station on the 2nd loop) I lost Melissa. I was feeling good and wanting to push. I don't think she was feeling good. She knew I was pushing for a good time and I'm sure she was ok with me leaving her. I focused on a steady, controlled effort for loop #2 with a heart rate around 160, hoping to bank some time and to see how long I could hold on during the final loop.
The final loop was basically just trying to hold onto my pace. My heart rate was at 165. I was uncomfortable but not terribly so. I was running to the aid stations and only walking about 0.05 mi, just enough to eat some chews, drink some Skratch or water, and dump some water on my shoulders and head. Then it was back to running. This was going really well until the 2:00 mark and I just needed a bit of a breather (literally). I was short of breath and needed an inhaler break and a pep talk. By this point I had ~2 miles and I KNEW I was going to hit my run target of 2:22. I just told myself to suck it up (literally) and go. Nothing felt distinctly bad - no pains or anything - I was just getting tired and it was harder to keep going fast. I walked the final neighborhood aid station and I knew that I had a little over a mile left, including that 1/3 of a mile hill - and then a downhill to the finish. There was a bit of an internal struggle regarding walking that hill or not and I was very happy to find that running up that hill was no big deal. It wasn't that steep and there was shade. And there were men walking up it. So I ran and it really wasn't that bad. Then came the downhill and I knew I only had a 1/2 mile to the finish, so I just ran hard. I have no idea how fast I was going because I flipped my garmin display to only show time, HR and distance a few miles back. I didn't want to focus on pace and get freaked out about going too fast or too slow. I just wanted to run by effort and not be distracted by numbers.
I hit the chute and the announcer said my name followed by a "from Parker..... Colorado.... (?). I saw the clock say 6:39. I thought I started 14 min behind the first wave, did a bit of math, and was really happy to find I came in way under my goal of 6:30.
I then also had a world class asthma attack. Our sick house-mate greeted me at the finish and I did a good job freaking him out by not being able to link 2 words together and struggling to get my inhaler out of my tri top. Thank goodness I put it in my top before the swim instead of keeping it on my bike like I normally do. I don't think I could have made it to my bike.
Once that passed, I checked out the post-race refreshments. They sucked. I got a gatorade, figuring that I was dehyrated. I drank over half and hung out at the finish waiting for Melissa. I then got goosebumps and started shivering while standing in full 68-degree sunlight. Not good. Melissa finished and we then headed over to transition, where I got a hoodie and all was well with the world. I checked the results on my phone and was ecstatic to see my times.
Time: 2:17:36.8
Pace: 10:30
Age Group Ranking: 7/22
Overall Ranking: 316/532
Several things are notable about this run:
Pre-Race
I really didn't leave much time for error on this one. Will's birthday was Friday, which meant flying out Saturday early, the day before the race. I felt bad for Will b/c I had to be in bed early for my flight and couldn't stay up and do anything fun. Poor guy, always a good sport and going along with my craziness.
I was really worried about TSA crunching Merlin during their inspection. I packed him uber-carefully. Nothing was left exposed - it was all covered in foam pipe wrap or bubble wrap. I even left a note asking TSA to pay attention when unpacking and repacking it and labeled the box "this end up to open". Seems to have worked - Merlin was pretty darn close to the way I left him when I cracked the box open in Houston.
My friend Melissa (who is doing IM Boulder with me) picked me up and we went up to Conroe to eat lunch, build my bike, and do packet pickup. Merlin re-assembled super easy - yay! Packet pickup was low key as well. I bought some CO2 cartridges and some tinted sunglasses for the race and we were good to go.
We did a quick 15 min test ride and 10 min run and called it a day. The rest of the night was spent getting ready and eating/drinking. I tried some Osmo pre-race. It was salty. I'm not sure what to make of the stuff.
Sunday had a wake up call of 4:35 with a goal to leave the house by 5:30. I braided my hair, applied my tri-tattoo race numbers (so cool!), lathered on sunscreen and probably poked around too much. I drank ~200 cal of Skratch and 1.5 small Honey Stinger peanut butter energy bars before we left the house. Our housemate was supposed to race, but he got sick. He was nice enough to drive us around which was super sweet of him.
Transition was the usual, except it was 41 degrees and people were cold. I had my hoodie and flannel pj pants and was perfectly warm. I had terrible time management. We got there with maybe 45 min before transition closed and I dinked around too much, chatting with people I haven't seen in forever. This meant no bathroom pit-stop (which actually was ok - fortunately) and no warm up. I also had no brain cells for pretty much the entire weekend as I kept forgetting things and Melissa was remembering for me and helping me out.
 |
| flannel pj pants are the new craze in triathlon apparel |
Then it was over to the swim start to basically dunk my head in the water and swim a few strokes. The water was just right, probably 70, not too hot or too cold. It was crazy murky, which was a Houston feature I'd forgotten about. I could literally only see 3 inches in front of my face. Thankfully the water didn't taste as bad as it looked. We then went back to the beach, chatted with friends, and waited for our waves.
Swim
This was a beach start, which is something I'm never a fan of. I was dumb and hung back a few rows of people. I was keeping another friend company and wasn't really thinking strategically for myself. This was a really dumb mistake and I completely missed my chance to draft off of people. I knew this right when I got into the water. I couldn't find anyone and I was swimming HARD to find people. In all honesty though, with the visibility being crap, I'm not sure I could have drafted off of anyone even if I did start at the front. The swim (as usual) seemed to take forever. I was determined to swim pretty hard and channel Dory. We swam from the beach, through a lagoon, then out to Lake Conroe where we did a rectangle. The winds were pretty decent and they were kicking up some good chop in the water. Not enough to make white caps, but it was enough where you couldn't see a buoy once in a while and you occasionally rolled with the the wave.
Overall: it was a sucky swim. I kept my effort up but I knew it wasn't a fast time for me.
Time: 39:25.9
Age Group Ranking: 5/22
Overall Ranking: 184/532
I also checked my wave and I came in with the 16th fastest swim out of 88 people. Not fantastic but not awful either.
T1
I popped out of the water, got my cap/goggles off, and also my wetsuit top off (except the right arm) all in the 100 ft before the strippers. I had to stand there for a few seconds (nicely) yelling for help - things were a bit chaotic. She did her job quickly and I was up and running along to transition. There was a bit of a jog from the wetsuit strippers to transition (maybe 1/4 of a mile?) and a baby, 10 ft tall hill that people were walking over. Thanks to my extra red-blood cells, I could breathe just fine and sprinted off to transition. Seriously, I passed everyone. Apparently I dropped my goggles somewhere along the way and a guy was nice enough to grab them and catch me. When he did catch me, he made a funny comment about how he had a hard time b/c I was running too fast. Sweet!
 |
| this is a pretty kick-ass photo series. Look at me with my wetsuit top off as I hit the timing mat, just feet after the water. Go me! |
Time: 3:25.9
Age Group Ranking: 3/22
Overall Ranking: 80/532
Apparently nearly everyone else decided to put on warmer clothing because I didn't think I was moving all that fast.
Bike
Now it was go time. I had a date with the bike course and I was going to do my best to kill it out there. I was riding strong. The steeper hills were a bit harder than I was expecting. I stayed big ring the entire time but I did have to shift into my easiest gear on nearly all of the hills. That was a bit of a bummer as I was hoping I was stronger than that. I just focused on keeping my cadence up and my effort solid. My heart rate was really high for the first 40 minutes, around 155+ for an effort that was no where near that high. I think that was residual effects from the harder effort on the swim. I just kept plugging away, hoping it would eventually go down. It did and then my heart rate stayed around 145/150 for the rest of the ride.
I love the first part of this course because you are on rolling hills going through the forest. I just really tried to stay in my element and enjoy riding here. I also went a bit down memory lane - the last time I'd been here was during IMTX. I recognized some of the turn-offs and smiled. And then I just kept on pedaling.
Nutrition-wise I was doing ok. I really tried to get in calories from the start, knowing I'd need them for the run. Every 15 minutes I'd eat some chews or swig some Liquid Shot. My drinking wasn't all that great, but it wasn't hot and I pretty much needed to pee starting at the first aid station. Its hard to keep drinking when you have a full bladder. They only had one port-o-potty per aid station and there was always a line, so I just kept moving on. Probably not the best idea but I really didn't want to waste time.
Around mile 20 we crossed into Grimes County and into the land of chip seal. Ugh. And then around mile 25 we turned onto FM 2819 and encountered some of the worst chip seal I've been on. It was so bad my vision was acting like there was a strobe light in front of me. By the time I hit the turn around (and the next aid station) my adductors were acting up (again - ugh) and I decided to stop and stretch for 2 minutes. It was at that point I saw Melissa on the other side of the road heading into the turn-around. I shouted that I was fine and she went on her way. I hopped back on my bike and was happy the stretching worked - I was back to riding well. Melissa ended up catching me and we chatted for a while. We both didn't like the swim but we were both riding well. I had clocked a time of 1:33 at the halfway point and was really hoping for a faster than predicted bike time. I was worried about the wind though, since I knew it would be a headwind the whole way back. I joked about needing some long climbs to be happy and Melissa rode on ahead. I think I caught her 5 minutes later (on a long flat climb) and laughed. At that point I started counting how many people I was passing (16 the whole way back). I was just trying to stay small and do my hill climbing thing.
The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. I pushed where I could. My heart rate stayed pretty low and I'd evaluate: can I ride harder and still be ok for the run? My upper hamstrings were talking to me and I really didn't think I could push much more, so I just kept doing what I was doing.
Time: 3:20:54.8
Pace: 16.7 mph
Age Group Ranking: 8/22
Overall Ranking: 334/532
I was targeting 3:24 as my realistic goal (3:15 for a stretch goal) so I'm really happy to come in under my goal. I think if it wasn't so windy out I would have done even better.
Funny random racer sighting: some guy was wearing a jacket, cycling tights, and shoe covers. I can't even imagine how long it took for him to wrestle those tights on in transition......
I was perfectly fine in my tri kit.
T2
Really nothing much to report, although I did nearly leave my gloves on for the run.
Time: 1:56.1
Age Group Ranking: 4/22
Overall Ranking: 174/532
Run
aka Go Time. To hit my goal of 6:30, with a 3:24 bike time, I would need to average a run pace of 10:50, which is something I'd never done in a 70.3. Or really, even in an olympic distance race. I didn't know what my swim time was so I was still aiming for a pace of 10:50 or faster.
Each loop of the run course went like this:
- sidewalk for a bit
- gravel for a bit
- grass for a bit
- paved streets with a baby steep hill
- packed dirt with tree roots
- grass with holes filled in by loosely packed dirt
- more sidewalk
- then finally a road with out and backs through neighborhoods - including a 1/3 of a mile shallow hill towards the end and then a downhill 1/2 mile kick to the finish
Melissa was right behind me off the bike and we came out of transition together. I really had to pee still so I stopped at the 2 port-o-potties right after the timing mat. They were disgusting. Yuck. I wasn't that far behind Melissa after my pit-stop. She stopped to fix her shoe and I had a sock that was bunched up so I stopped with her. We ran the entire first loop together and maybe a bit more. It was really nice to have a run buddy again :) I was supposed to keep my heart rate down below 155 for the first part of the race. I kept looking at my Garmin and seeing 157 and a pace that was sub-10. She was running a bit too fast as well and we'd try to slow down. And then we'd speed back up, probably because we were chatting and not focusing on running. I finally gave up on trying to slow down because my effort felt easy and I was feeling really good.
Around mile 6 or so (I think this was after the 1st aid station on the 2nd loop) I lost Melissa. I was feeling good and wanting to push. I don't think she was feeling good. She knew I was pushing for a good time and I'm sure she was ok with me leaving her. I focused on a steady, controlled effort for loop #2 with a heart rate around 160, hoping to bank some time and to see how long I could hold on during the final loop.
The final loop was basically just trying to hold onto my pace. My heart rate was at 165. I was uncomfortable but not terribly so. I was running to the aid stations and only walking about 0.05 mi, just enough to eat some chews, drink some Skratch or water, and dump some water on my shoulders and head. Then it was back to running. This was going really well until the 2:00 mark and I just needed a bit of a breather (literally). I was short of breath and needed an inhaler break and a pep talk. By this point I had ~2 miles and I KNEW I was going to hit my run target of 2:22. I just told myself to suck it up (literally) and go. Nothing felt distinctly bad - no pains or anything - I was just getting tired and it was harder to keep going fast. I walked the final neighborhood aid station and I knew that I had a little over a mile left, including that 1/3 of a mile hill - and then a downhill to the finish. There was a bit of an internal struggle regarding walking that hill or not and I was very happy to find that running up that hill was no big deal. It wasn't that steep and there was shade. And there were men walking up it. So I ran and it really wasn't that bad. Then came the downhill and I knew I only had a 1/2 mile to the finish, so I just ran hard. I have no idea how fast I was going because I flipped my garmin display to only show time, HR and distance a few miles back. I didn't want to focus on pace and get freaked out about going too fast or too slow. I just wanted to run by effort and not be distracted by numbers.
I hit the chute and the announcer said my name followed by a "from Parker..... Colorado.... (?). I saw the clock say 6:39. I thought I started 14 min behind the first wave, did a bit of math, and was really happy to find I came in way under my goal of 6:30.
I then also had a world class asthma attack. Our sick house-mate greeted me at the finish and I did a good job freaking him out by not being able to link 2 words together and struggling to get my inhaler out of my tri top. Thank goodness I put it in my top before the swim instead of keeping it on my bike like I normally do. I don't think I could have made it to my bike.
Once that passed, I checked out the post-race refreshments. They sucked. I got a gatorade, figuring that I was dehyrated. I drank over half and hung out at the finish waiting for Melissa. I then got goosebumps and started shivering while standing in full 68-degree sunlight. Not good. Melissa finished and we then headed over to transition, where I got a hoodie and all was well with the world. I checked the results on my phone and was ecstatic to see my times.
Time: 2:17:36.8
Pace: 10:30
Age Group Ranking: 7/22
Overall Ranking: 316/532
Several things are notable about this run:
- This is now my half marathon PR. This run beats my previous stand-alone 13.1 time by 1:15 Amazing. And this was with a 1 minute bathroom break thrown in there.
- This is the first time I my run ranked higher (age group and overall) than my bike. Meaning: I gained places on the run. This never happens to me.
- I ran faster than my olympic-distance run PR. Wow.
- My pacing was pretty much spot-on. I ran hard but within limits and had enough to really push and leave it all out there for the last loop.
- I didn't over think things and I didn't get defeated when it got hard. I just went for it.
Overall Results:
Time: 6:23:19
Age Group: 7 / 22
Overall: 286/532
And now its time for a well deserved off-season and skiing. Yahoo!
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Oilman Race Week!
Hurray - its here!
Full disclosure: I'm not sure if its the race I'm excited about or the fact that once this sucker is done, I'm officially in the off season. Woot! Off season! Skiing! Sleeping in! No feeling of "if I don't get this workout done I will DNF"!
So, yeah. I'm going to do my best to kill this race.
My targets:
Swim: 36 min
Bike: 3: 24 (or 16.5 mph)
Run: 2:22 (or 10:50 min/mile)
For the record, my best long-distance triathlon run pace is 12:00 during IMCDA. Yeah, that run is going to hurt. But I have to believe I can do it. I've been running fast lately, holding 3 min repeat intervals at well below a 9 min/mile pace. Also: flat course and sea level.
I've been given the green light by my coach to take risks and if I feel good, to push. I have nothing serious planned this winter, I have nothing I need to recovery quickly for, so I can burn up my entire book of matches on Sunday. I signed up for this race as a challenge to see how fast I can go, so I owe it to myself to push beyond my comfort zone and really see what I can do.
Cross your fingers and make sacrifices to the travel gods that my flight goes as scheduled and Merlin does ok in transit. I fly in Saturday morning. We head straight to race check-in. And the race is Sunday. I will be in Texas less than 24 hrs by the time I'm racing. Way to maximize the extra red blood cells :)
Full disclosure: I'm not sure if its the race I'm excited about or the fact that once this sucker is done, I'm officially in the off season. Woot! Off season! Skiing! Sleeping in! No feeling of "if I don't get this workout done I will DNF"!
So, yeah. I'm going to do my best to kill this race.
My targets:
Swim: 36 min
Bike: 3: 24 (or 16.5 mph)
Run: 2:22 (or 10:50 min/mile)
For the record, my best long-distance triathlon run pace is 12:00 during IMCDA. Yeah, that run is going to hurt. But I have to believe I can do it. I've been running fast lately, holding 3 min repeat intervals at well below a 9 min/mile pace. Also: flat course and sea level.
I've been given the green light by my coach to take risks and if I feel good, to push. I have nothing serious planned this winter, I have nothing I need to recovery quickly for, so I can burn up my entire book of matches on Sunday. I signed up for this race as a challenge to see how fast I can go, so I owe it to myself to push beyond my comfort zone and really see what I can do.
Cross your fingers and make sacrifices to the travel gods that my flight goes as scheduled and Merlin does ok in transit. I fly in Saturday morning. We head straight to race check-in. And the race is Sunday. I will be in Texas less than 24 hrs by the time I'm racing. Way to maximize the extra red blood cells :)
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
30 minutes
I still owe a post about my fun trail runs in Montana from a few weeks back (lots of pretty photos) and maybe a post about how I was the fastest person on a group ride a a week ago (the boys just "wanted to hang on"). But instead, I am having a mini freakout over this little race I have in 3.5 weeks.
It didn't exactly click that I had a race coming up until Saturday night, I was getting my clothes ready for Sunday's ride and I realized that I have never worn the tri shorts I was planning on wearing during a long ride. And I've been terrible at practicing "race nutrition". For the past few months I've just been doing "whatever". Its mentally challenging, because my long rides now are the same duration as my taper rides back in June. So I don't take it all that seriously. I mean, I do, sorta (in case my coach is reading this...hi!). I'm riding well and not picking easy rides. And I'm picking challenging runs. I'm just lax on the "practice race day stuff" because apparently a 3.5 hr ride isn't long enough to make me worry about this sort of stuff. And don't even get me started on the eating and drinking. I have been soooooo not good about that. Thank goodness I'm at my St George weight. I'd like to be lighter, but mmmm wings. And beer. And pizza. And chocolate. I think I burned myself out with my 6 weeks of sacrifice leading up to IMCDA and I just can't motivate myself to eat that clean right now. Especially when everyone around me is in off season mode.
So yeah, I finally "practiced" Sunday and everything was fine. Cool.
The whole point behind signing up for Oilman was because I haven't race-raced a 70.3 since, oh, 2010. Texas and Boise. And those were my first 70.3's, and "the hardest thing I've ever done". I was going to race-race Boise in 2012, but my heel had other ideas. I've done 2 other 70.3s since 2010, but they were "practice your IM pacing" races. No pushing, no going too fast, just practice, and don't get too far in a hole where you don't have time to really recover for your last 140.6 build. So, coming off a really great race at IMCDA, I decided to do a fall 70.3 and see how fast I can go. I'm actually happy I set a late-season goal, because I still have my IMCDA fitness. I rode with my IMCDA buddy Ryan 2 weeks ago and I killed him on the climbs. I was shocked. It took him 5 min longer to climb the 2.5 mile stretch of Tomah Road. It got to the point where I was wondering if he was having issues and I went back to find him, only to have him pop up at the top of the hill. I was really bummed in 2011 about how I let my hard-earned bike fitness go and I'm pleased to see that I didn't let it happen this year.
So I had some time today to sit and think about goal times. I'd really like to get 6:30 at Oilman. My PR is 6:58, at Galveston in 2011 during my IMTX build. St G is a PR*, mainly because it had a crazy amount of elevation gain, with a time of 7:06. So..... how exactly does one cut 30 minutes off. It sounded reasonable until I looked at the numbers. And then I started freaking out a bit.
Swim and transitions, no problemo. Not worried about that.
Bike is where I start to get twitchy. The fastest I've ever done the Oilman course was at 15.9 mph / 3:31. Waaay back in 2009, when I did it as an Aquabike, and the bike segment nearly killed me. (going back and reading my race reports is entertaining... I've come a long way). The fastest I've done the local Harvest Moon course is 16.3 mph, and that was with double the elevation gain. And probably more wind. So assuming I do 16.3, that's only coming in at 3:26. 5 min faster. That's it?!? Lame. I was hoping for more like 3:15 but that gets into uncharted/fast territory, with 17+ mph paces. BUT, hill climbing (I did 3x the elevation gain on Sunday) and 4 YEARS more experience and hello, IMCDA strength. And I will have sea level on my side. I should be able to go faster than 3:26. But how much faster?
The run is also big question mark. I did a trail 12k on Saturday, which was 7.3 mi and ~700 ft of climbing. My average pace was 10:16. Pretty fast for me. I've been running up hills (even tried to run up a freaking mountain in Helena a few weeks back. 1300 ft climbing in 2 miles. Yeah, what was I thinking?). I've also been running pretty fast lately. But how fast? I haven't "raced" a half marathon in over a year. My 70.3 run PR is 2:39 or a 12:08 pace. Hilariously enough, my IMCDA pace was 12:03, for DOUBLE the distance. Jeebus, I sucked as a runner back then. My stand alone half marathon PR is 2:18 (10:36 pace). Soooooo. Maybe a 2:30 run split is possible?
That gets me to a 15-20 min PR, not 30, from looking at past results and crunching numbers.
Where will that other 10 min come from? We'll just have to race and find out.
It didn't exactly click that I had a race coming up until Saturday night, I was getting my clothes ready for Sunday's ride and I realized that I have never worn the tri shorts I was planning on wearing during a long ride. And I've been terrible at practicing "race nutrition". For the past few months I've just been doing "whatever". Its mentally challenging, because my long rides now are the same duration as my taper rides back in June. So I don't take it all that seriously. I mean, I do, sorta (in case my coach is reading this...hi!). I'm riding well and not picking easy rides. And I'm picking challenging runs. I'm just lax on the "practice race day stuff" because apparently a 3.5 hr ride isn't long enough to make me worry about this sort of stuff. And don't even get me started on the eating and drinking. I have been soooooo not good about that. Thank goodness I'm at my St George weight. I'd like to be lighter, but mmmm wings. And beer. And pizza. And chocolate. I think I burned myself out with my 6 weeks of sacrifice leading up to IMCDA and I just can't motivate myself to eat that clean right now. Especially when everyone around me is in off season mode.
So yeah, I finally "practiced" Sunday and everything was fine. Cool.
The whole point behind signing up for Oilman was because I haven't race-raced a 70.3 since, oh, 2010. Texas and Boise. And those were my first 70.3's, and "the hardest thing I've ever done". I was going to race-race Boise in 2012, but my heel had other ideas. I've done 2 other 70.3s since 2010, but they were "practice your IM pacing" races. No pushing, no going too fast, just practice, and don't get too far in a hole where you don't have time to really recover for your last 140.6 build. So, coming off a really great race at IMCDA, I decided to do a fall 70.3 and see how fast I can go. I'm actually happy I set a late-season goal, because I still have my IMCDA fitness. I rode with my IMCDA buddy Ryan 2 weeks ago and I killed him on the climbs. I was shocked. It took him 5 min longer to climb the 2.5 mile stretch of Tomah Road. It got to the point where I was wondering if he was having issues and I went back to find him, only to have him pop up at the top of the hill. I was really bummed in 2011 about how I let my hard-earned bike fitness go and I'm pleased to see that I didn't let it happen this year.
So I had some time today to sit and think about goal times. I'd really like to get 6:30 at Oilman. My PR is 6:58, at Galveston in 2011 during my IMTX build. St G is a PR*, mainly because it had a crazy amount of elevation gain, with a time of 7:06. So..... how exactly does one cut 30 minutes off. It sounded reasonable until I looked at the numbers. And then I started freaking out a bit.
Swim and transitions, no problemo. Not worried about that.
Bike is where I start to get twitchy. The fastest I've ever done the Oilman course was at 15.9 mph / 3:31. Waaay back in 2009, when I did it as an Aquabike, and the bike segment nearly killed me. (going back and reading my race reports is entertaining... I've come a long way). The fastest I've done the local Harvest Moon course is 16.3 mph, and that was with double the elevation gain. And probably more wind. So assuming I do 16.3, that's only coming in at 3:26. 5 min faster. That's it?!? Lame. I was hoping for more like 3:15 but that gets into uncharted/fast territory, with 17+ mph paces. BUT, hill climbing (I did 3x the elevation gain on Sunday) and 4 YEARS more experience and hello, IMCDA strength. And I will have sea level on my side. I should be able to go faster than 3:26. But how much faster?
The run is also big question mark. I did a trail 12k on Saturday, which was 7.3 mi and ~700 ft of climbing. My average pace was 10:16. Pretty fast for me. I've been running up hills (even tried to run up a freaking mountain in Helena a few weeks back. 1300 ft climbing in 2 miles. Yeah, what was I thinking?). I've also been running pretty fast lately. But how fast? I haven't "raced" a half marathon in over a year. My 70.3 run PR is 2:39 or a 12:08 pace. Hilariously enough, my IMCDA pace was 12:03, for DOUBLE the distance. Jeebus, I sucked as a runner back then. My stand alone half marathon PR is 2:18 (10:36 pace). Soooooo. Maybe a 2:30 run split is possible?
That gets me to a 15-20 min PR, not 30, from looking at past results and crunching numbers.
Where will that other 10 min come from? We'll just have to race and find out.
Monday, October 07, 2013
Wildlander 12k Trail Run Race Report
Our friend from the Color Run was looking to do another 5k this fall and one of my tri-club friends found this race. I was hoping to avoid the big races (Race for the Cure, Hot Chocolate - $40 for a 5, and $64 for a 15k is ridiculous, even if you get a hoodie) due to cost and crazy-huge crowds. This was a small race, benefitting local wildland fire and EMS efforts, and - the best part - was on a private ranch off of one of my favorite cycling routes (Palmer Lake / 105). Every time I ride my bike through here, I'd see the pretty sandstone formations and would want a better look. Wildlander was my opportunity for that better look.
This race was just about perfect for us. There was a 5k for Will and Kambria and I could go long with the 12k, which fits in nicely with my 70.3 training. It had a 10 AM start and you could park literally steps from the start. (as opposed to the Hot Chocolate race, where they were asking you to show up at 5:45 for a 7 AM start. Ick!)
There were about 40 people doing the 5k and 30 people doing the 12k. Very chill and PERFECT. It was also really cold out. Maybe 30 degrees, but sunny. I decided to run in my capris and my tank top at the very last minute (ditching my long sleeve shirt and gloves) and this was a smart decision.
My instructions were to a) not twist an ankle and b) cruise the first part of the run and then if I felt good, go hard for the back part. There was about 800 ft climbing for the 12k (7.3 mi) so I really didn't know what to expect.
It wasn't a true trail run - it was more like a "run on dirt ranch roads". Although spur 1 had some washouts and you did have to watch your step. Running didn't feel all that easy, those little steep hills sucked and I had to walk a few times. But apparently when I ran, I ran quickly. The 12k crew definitely got the more scenic run - we ran through the forest and popped out in meadows with really cool sandstone formations that looked like castles. I wanted to bring my phone with me so I could snap photos, but my damn Galaxy S4 is so ginormous, it won't fit in any of my running pockets. So here's what I found on the interwebs:
The run was a series of 3 out and backs, which was actually pretty cool. You could tell the turn around was coming up soon when you started to see familiar faces running opposite you, and I could high five my CDA buddy Adrian at each loop.
I tried to keep my pace/effort reasonable and just was running and enjoying the beautiful October day. Leg 2 had a SUPER COOL suspension bridge. I really wish I could find a picture of that, it was out of control. The bridge went up at probably a 30% angle and topped out on a cliff formation above a stream. I really wish the run went over the bridge, it looked badass.
The final leg was the 5k course, which was more open, a bit less scenic (but still pretty) and more windy. The hills weren't as steep, though, and I made myself run up the last mile to the top of the hill. After all the hills I've been running, I didn't want to let this one defeat me. I got to the top (it was windy and cold) but made sure to take a minute and look around at the panoramic view of the ranch and the sandstone formations. Beautiful. Then it was time to book it downhill - it was go time. At 6.2 mi, I hit lap on my garmin so I could get my 10k split. I knew from the top of the hill I had about ~1.5 mi to the finish, most of it was down or flat and I wanted to really push that last bit. So that's what I did, with a lot of focus. Afterwards, Will said something about chicken coops and I had no idea what he was talking about. *shrug*
With about a 1/2 mile left, you made a turn and ran toward the barn that was the start/finish line. And there was a guy that I thought I could catch, so I ran HARD. Probably the fastest I've ever ran (I saw 7:XX on my garmin). I worked so hard to catch him, and not puke or blackout. Seriously, I was working hard. And it worked - I passed him! Yay! And then I finished and nearly did pass out. Ooof.
10k split: 1:03:54, 10:19 pace (a PR by ~30 seconds, but with 700 ft of climbing)
12k: 1:13: 36, 10:06 pace.
The last 1.1 mi were on a 8:54 pace. Damn. 1:03:54.3
This race was just about perfect for us. There was a 5k for Will and Kambria and I could go long with the 12k, which fits in nicely with my 70.3 training. It had a 10 AM start and you could park literally steps from the start. (as opposed to the Hot Chocolate race, where they were asking you to show up at 5:45 for a 7 AM start. Ick!)
There were about 40 people doing the 5k and 30 people doing the 12k. Very chill and PERFECT. It was also really cold out. Maybe 30 degrees, but sunny. I decided to run in my capris and my tank top at the very last minute (ditching my long sleeve shirt and gloves) and this was a smart decision.
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| Adrian, Will, me, and Kambria |
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| The race start. Colorado is so ugly. |
It wasn't a true trail run - it was more like a "run on dirt ranch roads". Although spur 1 had some washouts and you did have to watch your step. Running didn't feel all that easy, those little steep hills sucked and I had to walk a few times. But apparently when I ran, I ran quickly. The 12k crew definitely got the more scenic run - we ran through the forest and popped out in meadows with really cool sandstone formations that looked like castles. I wanted to bring my phone with me so I could snap photos, but my damn Galaxy S4 is so ginormous, it won't fit in any of my running pockets. So here's what I found on the interwebs:
I tried to keep my pace/effort reasonable and just was running and enjoying the beautiful October day. Leg 2 had a SUPER COOL suspension bridge. I really wish I could find a picture of that, it was out of control. The bridge went up at probably a 30% angle and topped out on a cliff formation above a stream. I really wish the run went over the bridge, it looked badass.
The final leg was the 5k course, which was more open, a bit less scenic (but still pretty) and more windy. The hills weren't as steep, though, and I made myself run up the last mile to the top of the hill. After all the hills I've been running, I didn't want to let this one defeat me. I got to the top (it was windy and cold) but made sure to take a minute and look around at the panoramic view of the ranch and the sandstone formations. Beautiful. Then it was time to book it downhill - it was go time. At 6.2 mi, I hit lap on my garmin so I could get my 10k split. I knew from the top of the hill I had about ~1.5 mi to the finish, most of it was down or flat and I wanted to really push that last bit. So that's what I did, with a lot of focus. Afterwards, Will said something about chicken coops and I had no idea what he was talking about. *shrug*
With about a 1/2 mile left, you made a turn and ran toward the barn that was the start/finish line. And there was a guy that I thought I could catch, so I ran HARD. Probably the fastest I've ever ran (I saw 7:XX on my garmin). I worked so hard to catch him, and not puke or blackout. Seriously, I was working hard. And it worked - I passed him! Yay! And then I finished and nearly did pass out. Ooof.
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| isn't this a great shot of Will? |
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| Kambria running to the finish |
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| Santa Claus is impressed |
12k: 1:13: 36, 10:06 pace.
The last 1.1 mi were on a 8:54 pace. Damn. 1:03:54.3
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