You didn't really need another reason to tri, but...

There is always the scenery.

(Desiree Ficker, running in the Irongirl Tri in Texas)

(with thanks to www.desireeficker.com)

Now that I have your...ahem....complete attention, I think I did pretty damn good on my run today. Not very fast, mind you, (You don't even want to know how fast my stubby little legs would have to move in order to keep up with the picture above) but still good for me.

After I finished 1-3.25 mi lap, I was feeling pretty good and even better on time, so whats one more lap? Unfortunately, there were some ominous clouds beginning to follow me, so I had to change it up a bit. My total for today was about 5.5 mi (maybe 5.9, google maps isn't accurate enough to tell the difference in where I turned around) and 1:20 for the time. The strange thing is that after an hour of running, I was able to go faster! Miles 4 and 5 went by much quicker than 1-3. OTOH, no stoplights on the "2nd lap." Now I admit I had to walk a bit on some hills, but no more than 30 sec at a time. Like I said, pretty damn good for me.

I've decided to kick my training up one more notch to get ready for this tri. I've opted for a daily run, biking 3 x week and swimming twice a week. I may have to modify the bike portion though, since I liked the outdoor rides so much and those aren't really exercise. I've already warned Becca, asked permission as well, since it will obviously take a couple days of 2 x day workouts to do this. With any real luck I'll get somewhere near my goal of 1:30 for the tri. Fingers crossed.

They call me Captain Klutz!

I admit it. I am not the belle of the ball. I've never been good at walking tightropes or balance beams, and although I always try to toe the line, I usually trip over my own feet getting there. Knowing this you can probably imagine how this next story ends.
A while back, while in one of the local bike shops, I ask the owner if he had any regular group rides coming up. As a matter of fact, he does have a very casual, weekly ride that basically tours La Crosse every Wednesday night after work. It apparently started out as a fixed gear bike ride (for ease of explination call it a one speed road bike), but had progressed into a way for friends to meet up and go for a nice bike ride.
And what a nice bike ride it was. But before we started out, it happened. I had just introduced myself to Ken, a nice local man with a beautiful new fixed gear bike. I hadn't riden anything even remotely similar since I was in my single digits, so I was curious. Without me even asking, he offered to let me take a spin, warning me that there was no freewheel (If you stop pedalling, the back tire stops) on the bike. After a bit of a rough start, I was up and moving, coming to a turn in the road. I ready myself for the turn, thinking I was going to coast through as usual, and stop pedalling. Oops. I immediately lose control and crash onto the asphalt, taking about 1/4" of handlebar and leather seat along with it. ( I sprained my wrist as well, but I didn't find that out until 7 hours later when it actually hurt.)
Ken was completely nonchalant about it. Said that now that the bike had a scratch on it, he wasn't as freaked about laying it down. He did reserve the right to give me hell for the rest of the night though. After another 1/2 hour and 12 or so people we got underway.
We started out at Myrick park and, taking back streets as much as possible to avoid traffic, we wound down along the bluffs right down to the southern edge of town. We were taking trails I hadn't even heard of before, along creeks, through housing developments, trailer parks, you name it. Whoever was leading this pack really knew their back streets. As dusk neared everyone stopped to get their head and tail lights ready, we noticed one of our group riding up with a rather large something in his hand. It was an old 70's-ish kitchen cart that someone had chucked. He just couldn't leave something so valuable go, and decided to give it a good home.
We started off again, enjoying the sunset on the water. Before too long it was just plain dark. I was fine with it, or so I thought, since I had been commuting by bike in the dark. As we headed down yet another backwoods, yet paved, trail I slipped off the edge of the path, down the embankment, hit 4" deep sand and CRASHED AGAIN! Talk about a 1st impression.
After a little while, I broke off from the group, mainly since I had no idea what time it really was. They were going out for beers and I didn't think Becca would really understand. She was upset as it was that I was gone so long. The whole trip for me ended up being around 15-16 miles, but that was probably the easiest ride I've ever done. I'll definately do it again, but maybe I'll use training wheels next time.

Multitasking

I am a multitasking fiend lately. At the moment, I'm writing this blog, recording in my training diary, occasionally talking to family on the phone, all while wishing that I was home in bed. Between my training schedule, trying to buy a house, taking time to play with the family, (oh...and I really need to sleep sometime soon) time hasn't exactly been on my side. The last couple days workouts went well, and yesterday I tried commuting by bike to work. It was still a little chilly, but I made it both ways without major incident. I did pop a tire on the way home, but didn't find out till tonight.

The big outdoor ride that I was so looking forward to tonight, was all but cancelled due to high winds. No one really showed up. I suppose its a good thing for me anyway. It forced me to take a day off when I really needed one. My body is pretty beat up from hard training and lack of sleep, and me falling over (twice) because I couldn't get my clips out in time. My coworker suggested taking them off, but I absolutely rejected that plan. I love those things, especially on the hills. On the way home last this morning, I rocked up a hill that normally would have kicked my butt. I had to hammer on the last little bit, but as it turns out the spin classes really helped me more than I thought. Not only did they improve my endurance, but they really improved my pedal stroke on both seated and standing climbs. I'll have to try that 15mi bike course again this weekend to see just how much I've improved. Personally, I think I'll do much better on my hill than before.

Tomorrow, the plan is to try my run in the newly calculated HR range. I'm not sure how its going to go, and I"m a little worried about it, but if I'm right about this, I've been training with too low a HR and need to kick it up a bit. On the plus side, I should very well set a new best for that course. Pretty soon I'm going to have to start training with some "brick" workouts. Maybe next week. I have too much on my plate this week. I really don't know how people training 3 hours a day for ironman do it.

Slacker News

Wow! Have I ever been a slacker the last few days, with regards to recording my training. This isn't to say that I haven't been doing anything, quite the contrary. I've been up to so much that I just haven't had the time to sit and write all the little details and antics of my daily routine.

I do have some news though. With the new baby on the way, Becca and I have decided to get our first house. Obviously, since this is our first, its not going to be anywhere in the mansion range, and with the insane property taxes in the city, we've had to narrow our search even further. I'll let you in on a little something though. For the same price as some of the old homes we were living near in Tacoma, we'd be living pretty damn high and mighty here.

Anyway, back to triathlon. I'm pleased to report that I broke my PR for one of my running routes today by about 3 min over 4.4 mi. This may not seem like much to any non-mortal people out there (ie:Ironmen/women) but to me its a sign of improvement. Yesterday, I started with a 45min spin class, and after some serious self searching about doing the following class, I decided to stick to my 'plan' for the day and finished with about a 1.25km swim. I should note something else. I don't know if its the training or the shorts, but since I got the new swim gear, I've been swimming a little faster than before. Although this could just be me wanting to get out of those embarrassing things as soon as possible too. :)

Last Wednesday, I went back to the spinning class designed fo cyclists and triathletes. After another amazing class, led by Dan again, I started asking around to see if anyone else was training for a tri. Not too suprisingly, of the 7 or so people in the class, most were training for a tri... That would be IM Wisconsin. (I'm going to borrow something I heard from the "Zen and the art of Triathlon" podcast and call it IM MOO for short) I got a little ego boost when someone asked me if I was trying for IM MOO. Maybe in a few years, but for now I'll stick with the sprints. Heck, maybe one of these years I'll be able to sprint a sprint.

As I get closer to June 1st, I'm starting to come up with a race plan, even though what I do wouldn't exactly be called racing. For the swim, well thats easy. I just plan to swim out and around a bouy, and back again. Simple enough. The bike will be a little different, since I need to conserve the bulk of my energy for the run. I'll try to keep my HR low for as much time as I can. The only times I'll have trouble with that are on that hill. I'll probably have to go into a higher anaerobic HR for that one. The run is going to be the trickiest part. I'll walk for a couple min, letting my HR fall back down to a starting rate if possible, then start at a relatively slow jog. I'll do my best to run the first 1.5mi at an aerobic rate, the next mile or so at slightly anaerobic rate, and the last .6 or so at a high anaerobic rate (good thing too, there's a decent sized hill to the finish). Any comments or suggestions

It looks like Monday will be fairly routine, except for the house shopping, but Tuesday promises to be much more fun. Dan, the instructor for the class I like so much, and some of the others from River trail cycles are going on a nice 'easy' outdoor ride after work on Tuesday. I asked what I would need to do to join, and he said just show up. Now I have to admit, these people are a few levels above me, so their easy ride may just be an hour or so anaerobic workout for me, but I'll give it a shot. Wish me luck.

Insanity must be contagious

Lately I've been listening to podcasts from all over the map. Bike podcasts from the UK, Running podcasts recorded while the guy was actually running (Good way to keep in the zone I guess), and of course Triathlon podcasts. Well, I downloaded one from Zen and the art of Triathlon yesterday and found out it was about his 1st Ultra-Marathon event. 50 mile run in just under 13 hours for him.
Hilarious! The strangest thing about it was that he had never even run a regular marathon outside of Ironman competitions. During his retelling of how much pain he was in from mistakes made on his nutrition and choice of shoes, I realized that I would love to do that someday. Is that strange? Nothing would make me happier then to be able to wake up in the morning and say, "I'm going to take a 50 mile nature run today." I think I'll have to wait a little while for that to happen though.
Speaking of which, the weather has been hampering my training plans a bit. Like today, I was planning a bike day with maybe a run in the afternoon. In a perfect world, sure, it could happen, but not today for me my friends. The dismally cold and wet morning cancelled my bike plans, and the pouring rain did in my run in the afternoon. I ended up going to the Y and swimming. On the plus side, I did set a personal best for 500m in the pool, with my new crime fighter swimsuit.
Okay, I was debating on saying this, but I have to let you know just in case you run into the same problem. Apparently, the jammer style of speedos doesn't take in a bunch of water. It saturates and then its about done. The problem, as I found out, is that once its saturated it is relatively impermeable. How did I find this out? Well...I had some gas and didn't think too much about letting it out into the world. It didn't go out into the world. It stayed in the speedos turning me into a human level. I had a bubble riding back and forth across my buttocks with each stroke. Oh! If you're cringing now, just think of how hard it was for me to keep swimming with the Gluteal racetrack following me everywhere I went. I actually had to stop, one to let the racers out, and two because I was laughing too hard to breathe right.
I did find a couple more good ideas at the pool today. The swimmers in the lane next to me had whiteboards to mark their progress through their workout. Its so simple that I had to smack my forehead not to think of it. I can barely count my laps, let alone figure out what set I'm on. Speaking of laps, they also had one of those lap counter rings. Those are nifty and I think I may have to look into one when I start swimming harder.
I should go. Prayers to my brother for his back pain. Hopefully the rain will clear up soon and let me get back to training where I need to.

A while back I started a blog, long since deleted, for just my own rants and ramblings. After going back on my last couple posts, I've started to think that I've been using this as the same thing and thats not what I meant it to be. So I'm going to make an effort at a much more positive attitude and see if I can make it infectious.

First things first. I'm happy to finally say that I've started to make it through the spinning classes. So even though the instructor tried her best to make it a totally anaerobic class on Friday, I managed to keep up. I was sweatily overjoyed that try as Miss Smiling-skinny-britches did to knock me out of the race, I stuck in there.

I've also found that, although I'm not able to run any longer than before, my recovery and overall times for the run are coming down. I should explain some. Last year during training I would go all out for 4-5 miles not much caring about my heart rate or at least not keeping it in the aerobic zone. Lately I've been doing some research and listening to podcasts basically saying that training more in the aerobic zone gives you a better engine for running in the anaerobic zone. With that in mind I've been a HR zone control freak; walking whenever my HR goes above 148. When I started it took about 45 seconds for my HR to get back down to the start of my aerobic zone, and now it takes about 15 - 30. I'm hoping that will very soon translate back to me running longer in zone. Its frustrating taking 70 min for 4.5 mi when I know I can go faster. Of course this is what all the experts say to watch out for, and not to let my ego get in the way of good base training.

Well, I'm going to try to keep this one short. I have a couple comfort items on the way from Bike Nashbar, and hopefully that will help me with hand/wrist numbness on long rides. Looking forward to that.

Pardon me Brutus, would you mind removing the knife from my back?

Ever since we learned of the pregnancy, we've pretty much assumed that Becca wouldn't be running the tri with me. Since we've already registered and paid for her, the race coordinator said he would allow us to transfer the entry to another person. After a exhaustive search, I finally found someone. However, just last night he tells me that his doctor doesn't recommend it for a while, and in the interests of not dying, he dropped out. This makes twice, both with valid reasons, but frustrating none the less. I'm going to try to find someone once more, and if not, I'll just have to suck it up and go it alone.

I tried a new spinning class today designed specifically for triathletes and cyclists. The instructor is the main bike mechanic for one of the local bike shops, and certainly knew his stuff. So, while we pretended to climb with the leaders of the 2006 Tour of Italy (Playing on the screen), he gave out info on climbing and pedalling form. I was pretty well impressed and decided that I may just have to make the late evening class a regular. Plus, it may have been the extra 1/2 day of rest, maybe it was me dialing back on the tension a bit, or maybe I was just distracted trying to get my cadence and form down, but this class, though longer than all the others, seemed much easier. Most likely, I was just being a wus.

I have a slight confession. I've been thinking vengeful thoughts against those I've asked to compete and have turned me down for one reason or another. Some had excuses coming very close to "My fat cells don't want to," but I let them all slide. In a desperate attempt to helo them regain some respect, I issued a challenge to ride the Mind in Motion bike tour a month later. A far cry from what I hope to achieve, but hopefully not too much for them.