Lake Placid, a PR & Dirty 30.

I don’t know about you, but it felt like last week just flew by!! And, it definitely didn’t hurt that I took off Thursday and Friday so that I could head up to Lake Placid for a weekend of training with the T2 Team!

My workouts Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all went really well, with my run on Wednesday finally being semi-enjoyable. I’m not sure why, but for the past 3 weeks, running has felt like a complete chore. Biking has been fun due to my new ride and new milestones reached, and my swim workouts during this round of training has been an absolute blast! Essentially, my attitude toward each individual of the three sports has reversed from last year’s experience – it’s interesting to think how things can change, shift, and evolve through each experience with the individual sports!

It has been truly frustrating that running, which has brought me so much joy over the past 5 years, suddenly has felt so awful for the past month. Having a decent run last week felt especially good!

Thursday was a day of travel, running a few last minute errands to prep for Placid, and cooking more recipes from my new cookbook for the weekend! I made rice cakes, oatmeal wraps and peanut butter protein balls. I swear, having real food to grab for snacks and food on the bike helps SO much – to avoid the gut rot that can come with eating gels, chews, and other “food” for hours on end during training and endurance events. Needless to say, a few of my teammates ended up being pretty jealous of my food about half way through our long training day on Saturday!

On Friday, I was up bright and early to make the trek from Saratoga  to Lake Placid. We were all meeting up at Mirror Lake for a swim at 9:30. On the drive up to LP, there were blue skies and sun – about 10 miles out, the cloud cover rolled over and it started to rain. You’ve just got to love the high peaks region – the weather can change in an instant! The overcast skies made it all the worse to get in the water, after putting on our wetsuits, we had to jump in and I swear the temperature stole your breath for a few seconds – which was not a welcome experience for me since I was already nervous about my first open water swim of the season.

I had never had any major issues with open water swims until last year, then suddenly during the Oswego Triathlon (a week before the Syracuse 70.3) I experienced my first panic attack in the water.  It was a mixture of swimming with the masses, dealing with sizable waves, and feeling like the neck of my wetsuit was choking me. I spent the entire following week trying to tell myself the swim the following weekend at 70.3 would be fine, and even went for 3 open water swims to try and settle myself down, but again had panic attacks during the race. Needless to say, after the 70.3, I was ready for a break from triathlon and swimming and didn’t go near the water again last year.  Fast forward to this year, and I’ve really enjoyed the pool swimming but have been dreading gearing up to go back into open water swimming and the washing machine of race day swims.

Friday’s swim in mirror lake with a group of about 15 athletes was a good first experience for open water. I did experience my panic attacks again, but was able to get through the swim. It also didn’t hurt that the buoys/course markers in Mirror Lake are all laid out with a yellow rope under the water which makes staying on course pretty easy! I just had to deal with swimming in a group. I stayed near the back, but that backfired on me since I kept catching up to the group, despite feeling like my wetsuit was choking me and I couldn’t really breathe like I was used to. So on the turn, I went toward the front of the group, but then kept having the same issue with my wetsuit. My takeaway, I need to find a wetsuit with a lower neckline. I’m not letting this thing hold me back for race day.

After the swim, we headed to the coaches house to grab a quick bite to eat and get ready to head out for a shorter ride. We all headed out to bike the back portion of the LP IM bike course which climbs from Wilmington back into LP. It was a lot of fun heading out there since the road was all down hill (despite the fact that the black flies felt like rain hitting your face…), the less fun part was turning around and heading back into Placid (where we then had to be careful not to have your mouth open for fear of unintentionally eating aforementioned black flies). The road along the cascades is beautiful, and almost distracts you from the fact that you are climbing about 800 feet in elevation over 10 miles. However, all in all, I was surprised that the climb really didn’t seem that bad. Some of the climbs in the Syracuse 70.3 course are definitely more intense!

The rest of Friday was fairly uneventful/low-key, checked into the hotel, cleaned up, went to dinner at the coaches house where they surprised myself and M with a birthday cake! (Her birthday was on Thursday, mine on Sunday – yes, I appropriately rang in the next decade of my life swimming, biking and running my heart out this weekend). We then had some race-day strategy sessions and a few of us caught a beverage at the LP Pub and Brewery before crashing for the evening. We had to rest up for Saturday – it was the major training day of the weekend!

Saturday brought about a 7 am departure on the bike course. Those of us doing the Syracuse 70.3 were set to complete 1 loop of the course, and those training for a full Ironman were headed out for 2 loops. We were all warned multiple times to take the first part of the course VERY easy since we would be heading out from LP to Keene which involves following Route 73 where you drop over 1200 feet in about 7 miles, oh and the road is in desperate need of repaving/repair. Seriously, your entire bike wheel could fit in some of the potholes, there is little to no shoulder and going over your handlebars would not be out of the question. Several people in our group lost water bottles as they rattled out of their holders, and a number of people said their hands hurt from gripping the handlebars so tight as we decended. It really is time for a little road repair, I had been warned several times prior to my LP trip that the roads were bad up there – and people were not kidding!! In fact, the warnings were almost understated!

After the trip to Keene, we headed up to Jay. Through some rolling hills, the roads improved, and then we followed the road along Ausable River which was gorgeous! We hit the turn around in Ausable Forks, headed back toward Upper Jay, climbed to Wilmington and then headed up the climbs to bring us back to LP. I will admit, the climbs from Wilmington to LP felt much more intense after biking the course than they did the day before! By the time I reached LP, I was definitely happy that I did not have to head out for a second loop! Especially since the sun was shining down, the temps were in the 80s, and the crew that had to continue on would definitely be baking in the afternoon heat! (However, I also realized that next year, there is a 95% likelihood that I will in fact be in the group heading out for loop #2…).

After we finished up the bike, one of my teammates, K and I headed out for a 6 mile run to complete our Brick workout. Originally I was going to hit up the Northwoods Loop, but not knowing the hill profile, and felling a bit tired due to messing up my nutrition on the bike, I stuck with Kristin and opted for 2 loops around Mirror Lake. Loop 1 went fairly well, but loop 2 was more of a just-survive-this-loop-and-you’ll-be-done-with-this-workout type of run. By the start of loop 2, all I could talk and think about was jumping in the lake upon finish of the run. I just wanted to go stand in the cold weather and cool off!!! So we muscled through and did just that! I swear, there is nothing better than wading in cold water after a hot run!! (Makes me wish I lived on a lake!)

After cooling off, it was back to the hotel to shower, and we headed to grab sandwiches in town. There is an amazing sandwich shop that serves 46 different sandwiches – one named after each of the 46 high peaks (plus crepes, breakfast sandwiches, salads, etc.). The sandwiches are AMAZING. If you’re ever in LP, you have to head to Main Street and go to Big Mountain Deli.

Post lunch, it was food coma time – I’m pretty sure we all crashed. Around 4 pm, it was back to the lake for another open water swim. One of the coaches gave me some more mental tips to help me through the swim and I had a much stronger swim (although only a few of us were out there, so no crowds to deal with on this one…). I finished the 1.2 mile swim in 32 minutes despite a few leg cramps. 32 minutes! (Last year it took me 42-45 minutes to cover 1.2 miles, 10 minutes off your time is HUGE for triathlon.) After swimming, we cleaned up again, hit up happy hour at the hotel and I was able to meet up with my friends R and P for a birthday beverage. Then it was off to the coaches house to grab our race packets for the LP Half Marathon the following day!

After grabbing our T2 Shirts and Race Packets, we headed back to the pub for dinner and more beverages. Beer = carb-loading right?! (Unfortunately, due to my poor hydration/nutrition it also led to my own paranoia all night about trying to catch up on electrolytes, and my failure to actually get things corrected… but live and learn…?). After a great dinner with about 10 of the group of T2-ers we all headed back to crash for the race the next day. Errr. I mean “catered long run” as the coaches were telling us to think of it.

The next morning, we were told to meet up around 7:15 at the olympic oval. We all stood around and chatted, made a few trips back and forth for last minute items – which in my case included a run to my car 10 minutes before the start to change sneakers since my shoelace conveniently decided to break right before the start… and we were off at 8am! K and I ended up falling in line with each other after the run up the hill on main street, and paced each other for the entire race. Our first three (flat) miles were at 8:15 (too fast considering we were running 13 miles, and had trained so hard the prior day), after this point, K and I finally were able to slow down and settle into a more reasonable pace of 8:45 for the next six miles. At mile eight, K knew she was closing in on a serious PR – not having run 13 miles sun-two hours before. At mile nine, I started to run into trouble – feeling light headed and all that fun stuff. We slowed back to a 9 minute pace, grabbed some food and then prepped for the hills back into LP and the finish line. Three miles and 300 feet of hills later, K and I were entering the olympic speed skating oval to finish the race! We crossed the line in 1 hour 54 minutes for an 8:42 pace, running the entire course together – it’s awesome when you find a training buddy that you can perfectly match pace with! …especially when they help keep you going for the final few miles when you’re feeling pretty tired – thanks K!!!!! I definitely owe you!

It’s going to be fun to see how we line up at the 70.3 – K will enter the water 5 minutes before me on race day, but we bike and run approximately the same pace. If all goes well with my swim, there is a decent chance we may exit the water around the same time and eventually fall in with each other for the remainder of the race!

After crossing the finish line, I saw R and P for a few minutes (they left quickly due to black flies), then headed to meet up with the T2 crew, cheer on our remaining teammates and finish out the weekend. After our goodbyes and good wishes for the next two weeks of training, I was packing up, cleaning up, and heading out of town. It wasn’t until I got back to Saratoga and researching my prior 13.1 time that I realized that I actually PR’ed the race too! ….yes, I am now one of those people who does something crazy like not taper for a race, have an intense training day, not eat or hydrate properly, and yet still PR a race. – Makes me want to actually taper, rest, eat and hydrate properly then run a half marathon to truly find out what my PR pace would be!

All in all, it was a great weekend in LP! I met a ton of great people, swam, biked, and ran my heart out, enjoyed some delicious food, and all-in-all had an awesome time. I decided that even if I wasn’t training for a specific event, I would love to head up to LP with T2 just to enjoy the weekend in the ADK!

Now, I have two weeks to fix the few issues that I did find over the weekend – (1) my wetsuit, (2) my bike seat – swapping back out to my road bike seat, I just won’t have the new seat broken in before the race!, (3) staying on top of electrolytes/food intake during the race.

By adjusting these few things, staying on-top of the food/hydration/electrolytes, and with cooperation of the weather on race day, the Syracuse 70.3 could be an amazing race for me. I feel like all the pieces are falling into place just in time for June 22nd!

Weekly Workouts//

• Monday – 1 Hour Recovery Ride – Yes, after biking 100 the day before…
• Tuesday – 2300 yard swim – Time Trial Pace
• Wednesday – 1 Hour Criss Cross Run – aka Speed Intervals
• Thursday – Rest/Travel/Vacation Day
• Friday – Lake Placid Training Day 1: 1.3 Mile Swim, 26 Mile Bike
• Saturday – Lake Placid Training Day 2: 56 Mile Bike, 6 Mile Run, 1.2 Mile Swim
• Sunday – Lake Placid Training Day 3: Lake Placid Half Marathon

Weekly Totals//

• Swim – 1 hour, 50 minutes – 6664 yards/3.78 Miles
• Bike – 2 hours – 42 Miles
• Run – 2 hours, 56 minutes – 20 miles
• Brick – 4 hours, 15 minutes – 56 mile Bike/6 mile Run
• Total Time – 11 hours, 43 minutes

Weekly Photo Recap//

Wednesday’s Track Workout – Happy National Running Day!

Notes for my criss-cross run. (By the end of the day, I don’t like having to memorize things… or maybe all the working out is turning my brain to mush… 🙂 )

Outfitting the bike so I don’t die in LP. (aka water bottle system and spare tire kit…)

Was pretty excited about this…. but upon further review, there are too many flavors going on here.

Amen.

My food adventures continue. Good news, I can eat oatmeal – and when prepared burrito style with blueberries and yogurt, it’s amazing.)

This goof.

Happy Birthday to ME!

Saw this online while waiting to meet up with the T2 Team Friday.  Didn’t realize how true this would be for my weekend in LP. The black flies were outrageous!

Mirror Lake – Day 1. Was not excited about cold water on an overcast day…

View from the coaches house/weekend HQ.

View from my hotel room. Mirror Lake and Main Street – not too shabby!

Birthday Celebrations! (The rest of the evening conversation then circled around how you might carry pieces of said cake/frosting to eat on the bike during our ride the next day…)

Lake Placid Pub & Brewery Deck… and our hotel.

Quite convenient. (…Too convenient?)

Bike, bikes and more bikes.

Mirror Lake Day 2 – Much more inviting (and even more so after a long bike and run!)

Saturday morning – pre-7 am departure!

Out on the bike course. Beautiful Day. Amazing views. (Wish I had a few more to share with you all…)

Part of the T2 Crew – about 30 Miles into our ride.

If you ever find yourself in Lake Placid, hit up the Big Mountain Deli & Creperie (aka 46 Sandwiches) – you can thank me later.

(Also, don’t judge by my poor photographing skills of my sandwich below, I was too hungry to do this any justice.)

Sunday  we ran the Lake Placid Half Marathon – per the coaches “this is a catered run, not a race” – due to the fact we were all running on tired legs… they gave us our packets the night before and told us to take it easy.

A shot from the LP Half – generally, I’m not a fan of race photos, but knowing what was going on in this one, I love it!

Post race catered run, it was discovered that our group had 4 people PR the race… (including me!)

An appropriate quote for my weekend and my training thus far for the season. Couldn’t be happier with how things are panning out. Two weeks until race day, let’s hope for the best!

Post Lake Placid, reunited with the pups at my parent’s house, and someone wants to go for a walk… (note leash on the table).

The cutest birthday wish I received by far on Sunday. Too cute not to share!

I hope you all had a fantastic week and weekend!

Cheers!

P.S. – I hope you all saw my post about the Ragnar Fun Run! I’d love to run with anyone that is in the Syracuse area on Thursday! We’re going to have 3, 4 and 5 mile run options AND I’ll be handing out some sweet Ragnar and Nuun swag!

A few updates… long overdue.

Happy New Year! I hope that you have had a fantastic holiday season and are looking forward to a great 2014!

So if you’re a reader of this blog, you would know that my posting fell off here at the end of the summer and has essentially been nonexistent  this fall. And along with the non-blogging came a bunch of non-training. I was still running once or twice a week, but that was about it. I won’t lie, the 2013 racing season along with some other things that were going on, I came out of the summer completely burnt out and in need of some down time. My need for down time turned into a bit of traveling to Alaska in September and Texas in October. Meanwhile, I started a leadership class that is offered through Cornell (which I absolutely love!).

On the running front, Ragnar ADK was at the end of September, and a few of us received our double medals for running both Ragnar Cape Cod and Ragnar Adirondacks in the same year!

After Ragnar, I had one final race on the calendar – the Great Pumpkin Challenge 10K with my mom and sister in mid-October.  This race is in Saratoga State Park, and this year had both trail and road sections to the course – I loved it!  Also, I managed to surprise myself with a PR despite my lack of training (bonus!). I’m still really excited about all the progress I saw during the year with my paces and looking forward to what 2014 might have in store for my running!

The same weekend of the Pumpkin Challenge, I also added to my family by adopting a new dog!! Bronco joined Roxie and I and is Roxie’s (big) little brother, weighing in at a mere 90 lbs! He is a rescue dog which was found wandering the streets of a suburb of Syracuse.  He’s about a year and a half old, and a ball full of energy! And I am happy to report that he loves to run with me!

Bronco has definitely brought a whole new element to life! It’s fantastic, and I love having him around. The rest of the year had a lot of focus on the holidays and spending time with family which is always good for the soul. Now with the passing of the holidays and the beginning of the new year, I have decided to take the plunge in 2014 and give the Syracuse 70.3 another go. I left the race last year happy to have finished but disappointed in how the bike and the run had ended due to the breakdowns and the extreme heat/humidity. So shortly before Thanksgiving I signed up for the race, and I started looking at various coaching programs for the upcoming season. I loved working with Coach K last year, but I’ve decided that I need more of a team and group for training and support, so this year I am excited to share with you that I have joined the T2 Multisport family for the 2014 race season and will be working with a new coach!

I officially start my training for the 70.3 tomorrow (about 8 weeks earlier than last year) and I can’t wait! I can’t even describe how happy I was today when I opened up training peaks and saw workouts loaded and waiting for me – I was like a kid in a candy store… well except  no candy, or apparently cookies since there was a friendly note from my coach to throw out any leftover Christmas cookies and to focus on eating healthy…. so here we go – hours of training and my pending complaints about my longer swim workouts will be coming soon, but honestly I am so excited to be on a set schedule again!

Also, as a slightly random note, I went running outside yesterday – in the snow and wind with the dogs and it was glorious! I forgot how awesome running in 20 degree weather can be. I bundled up and quickly realized I had managed to overdress despite what many would consider terrible running weather (it was GREAT running weather)!

And to wrap up this slightly random post, I’m starting off 2014 with the following reminder to myself and others….

Whether it is reading, running, relaxing, writing, praying, spending time with family and friends, taking a hike, a swim, or cursing around on a bike.

As long as it’s good for the soul, pursue it.

Leave the negative behind.

That’s my wish for myself and for you this year.

XO

A Mega Post: Travel, Training, & the Halfminds!

Alright, I know I just fell off the face of my blog for the past week.  I did start a post last Thursday but never finished it due to travel issues that gave me an unplanned overnight in Detroit and left me running on 2 hours of sleep last Friday (not great).  Then over the weekend I spent Saturday catching up with friends and ran a relay on Sunday.  The craziness of my schedule continued Monday when I joined in the Boston Strong Syracuse event and last night officially started our kickball season!!  So, my life is a little crazy right now, and I haven’t had the time or inspiration to catch up with writing this past week.  However, I am going to change that right now and use my lunch break to catch you up on the happenings of the past week!  (Warning: long blog post to ensue.)

So first, the travel schedule – I had a board meeting to attend in Kansas City last week.  Nothing too exciting here, but it did make for some interesting scheduling of my workouts in the hotel.  Also, it gave me a chance to look pretty crazy to the other people in the workout room as I kept jumping between the stationary bike and the treadmill for my brick workout.   

Hotel gyms are not my favorite.

As I mentioned, on my way back from KC I was stranded in Detroit due to weather.  I’m not going to get into details since I was pretty frustrated with the entire situation, but I will share the one bright point which was the ability to have some Caribou Coffee the next morning when I returned to the airport at 4:30 am for my second attempt to return home.

The time in the airport also gave me some time to think about my upcoming races… I checked out my countdown app and realized that the racing season is truly upon me! The next three up:

When I finally returned home Friday around noon, I was exhausted and most of Friday was spent just trying to catch some rest and fit in my swim workout.  Which I will say, swimming when your body is exhausted is not fun.  I really think that workout was one of the longest swim workouts that I have ever endured.

Saturday brought sunny skies to Syracuse, however when you got outside, the wind and temperatures reminded you that yes, we do still live in Upstate NY and no it’s not quite spring yet.  Regardless of what the calendar might say.   I was supposed to have a 3 hour outdoor bike ride for my training, so my friend and I decided to attempt an outdoor ride even though it was only about 45-50 degrees out.  We lasted 1 hour 20 minutes before we called it a day.  My toes were SO cold.  I guess I now understand why some bikers have covers for their shoes for colder days.  I’m definitely ready for spring to actually arrive since I have another 3 hour ride scheduled for this coming weekend. 

Sunday brought about The Seneca 7 Relay Race. Myself and a few friends from my running group signed up for this relay back around Christmas.   This race starts in Geneva, NY and runs the entire length (77.7 miles) around Seneca Lake (one of the Finger Lakes in Upstate NY).   Our team decided to run under the name “The Halfminds” and we also decided to dress up for the event with the guys sporting kilts and the girls in tutus.  One of girls made blue and yellow ribbons for us to wear in honor of the events in Boston last week and we also decided to sport the blue and yellow in our tutus.  I was surprised that not very many people dressed up in any crazy outfits for this relay.  Definitely a different experience than Ragnar… but it did mean that our team was pretty popular.  I feel we had our picture taken a LOT by other runners and the event staff.

The race started at 7:30 am and we were to report at the start line around 6:30 – along with travel time, this meant a 4:30 am departure from my house Sunday morning.  I have to admit these early mornings are one of the things that I both love and hate about racing.  I really hate getting up that early, but once I’m up and going I love the fact that I am up before the sun and ready to take on the day! 

The Halfminds at the Start Line…

CBW & I in our tutus!

I have to admit, I was pretty hesitant about the whole running in a tutu bit, I’ve seen other people run in them and just thought it would be annoying and slow you down.  However, it turns out that running in a tutu is really fun and didn’t bother me a bit (must be my inner 7 year old shining though)!

In fact, I actually hit a new PR this week with my first leg of the relay.  I ran 4.6 miles in 33 minutes, leaving me a 7:15 pace!  (Seriously, when did I learn how to run?)

My running stats for this race were as follows:

Leg 1: 4.6 miles, roadkills 22-4

 

Leg 2: 4.9 miles, roadkills 16-1 

 

Leg 3: 2.6 mile, roadkills 7-1

In short, I think I’ll just always run in a tutu. Why?  For 3 simple reasons:
      1) I’m sure people are just thrilled to be passed by a chick in a tutu.
      2) It made me run faster [just kidding, I know my training is paying off]
      3) It’s fun.

Note: Reason 3 is definitely the most important reason.

Hanging out with the team, trying to stay warm before my second leg!

Our team at the finish line – ready to do this again next year!

After the race on Sunday, I definitely woke up a little sore Monday.  (My legs are not used to running that fast, for that many miles…) The good thing is that my schedule was calling for a planned rest day… the bad news was that I found out about the Boston Strong Syracuse event and wanted to participate.  Luckily CBW and RB who also ran Seneca 7 had the same reaction.  We all decided to grab some yellow and blue (of course I grabbed the tutu) and head to the parkway to walk in the event to show support.   Also, I think Rox was excited that I decided to walk since that meant I could bring her along.  She sported the blue and yellow ribbon that Nurse had made me. 

Rox is ready for the Boston Strong event.

Overall, Syracuse had a fantastic turnout for the event and got some great local news coverage.  Our friend even got on the 9WSYR news clip (see the guy with headband toward the end – you can see Roxie in the background to the left…).

Yesterday, I headed down to Ithaca to be a guest lecturer for the Cornell Vet students for work, then I had a chance to stop by one of the local wine stores that I used to go to when I was at undergrad.  I was SO excited because they carried Zuccardi wine!  I met the Zuccardi family last May when I traveled to Argentina with my grad school class, so it was very cool to be able to buy a bottle of their wine in the US!  Now if only I could just travel back to South America again for another week…

Zuccardi!!

So if you’re still reading, I’m impressed.  But seriously, thanks, hopefully you’re finding some of this interesting.  I thought I would leave off this post with a three random tidbits and teasers for this week.

First: My current song obsession.  I’ve been listening to this for about 2 weeks, and I haven’t managed to kill it yet, but I’m sure I will shortly. 

Obsessed.

Second: I’m 9 weeks from Syracuse 70.3.  Training is going well, and I’m excited to see what lies ahead as I continue to work with Coach K!

Training Plans Continue!

Last:  Remember Chickin Wing Wednesday?  Well, we’re following up with Mac and Cheese Monday.  Stay tuned for updates on the delicious (this time homemade) goodness of the next food tasting expedition!

Coming up: Mac and Cheese Monday!

I hope you’re all having a great week & hopefully I’ll post a little more often to avoid the need for another mega-post like this!

A Wedding & Biking to Nowhere.

After my run on Friday, scooted home, packed, and then jumped in the car with my friend to head to my little sister’s wedding!  I had convinced my friend that it would be a great idea to be my date for this wedding a little while back… after the chaos of the pre-wedding activities (rehearsal dinner, bridal party prep, etc) – I’m not sure he agreed but luckily the reception was a lot of fun and I’m pretty sure he didn’t walk away from the experience completely scared of my family…

The bridal party.

My sister and her husband have been dating since they were in high school, and were engaged shortly after they both finished college.  The wedding was a great time, and everything seemed to be planned perfectly.  My family teased her a bit during the planning process because we were pretty sure she had the entire thing planned out before she was engaged since she was able to secure all the primary preparations within 2 weeks of the engagement, and nailed just about every last detail.  But seriously, it was a great wedding with nothing left out or missed, both my sister and husband were beaming with happiness on Saturday and it was so awesome to see them finally get married!

My lil sister and my new brother!

While I was at home this weekend, it gave me the opportunity to finally pick up our Ragnar t-shirts!  The shirts came out perfectly!  I always use customink.com to design and order t-shirts for our various team events and they seem to nail them every time.  I would highly recommend this company if you need to make up shirts for anything, they seem to have pretty competitive pricing and allow for very small lots of shirts to be made up!  We’re 1 month away from Ragnar Cape Cod and I can’t wait! 

…. now to just finalize my superhero costumes…. have I ever mentioned how much I love Ragnar and the craziness & fun that you have while covering 200 miles with a team??  (Oh wait I have… here, and here, oh and here too…and there were a few more, but you can just search my blog for them if you’re really interested!)  

Ragnar Team Shirts!

When I returned home on Sunday I had a brick workout on the docket from my coach which consisted of a 2.5 hour bike ride with hill intervals on the trainer followed by a short run.  Needless to say, I was not excited about the prospect of getting on my bike trainer for 2.5 hours.  I had completed a 1:45 session a couple weeks ago which about killed me.  Biking to nowhere is no fun.  Especially when you try to do it for extended periods of time. 

After dragging my bike to the trainer and reluctantly changing into my workout gear I started the workout.  Now, I should also disclose that I gathered up a movie to watch, my ipad, magazines and my headphones so that I would have a multitude of distractions for my 2.5 hour sentence on the trainer.  As I got into the workout and the hill intervals, I was astonished.  The time started to just melt away.  I did catch up on some reading on the ipad and I listened to a few of my newer playlists that I downloaded from rockmyrun.com, but overall this workout really wasn’t bad, and I was SO happy at how fast the time did pass. 

After the bike ride, I grabbed a long sleeve shirt, threw some shorts over my spandex, tossed on my sneakers and hit the road.  Amazing.  I was really only supposed to run about 10 minutes, but I felt great.  The transition from biking to running can be painful sometimes, especially if you have not done it in a while, but I had zero pain and felt great so I pushed my run a bit to finish up 2 miles before I stopped.  I was amazed to see that I was hitting an 8:30 pace after the bike session – I guess this coaching thing might be working out for me!

How I made it through a 2.5 hr bike trainer session…

Yesterday, it was back to the grind of work, but the day was made better by the fact that it was sunny and finally felt like Spring in Syracuse!  After I got home from work, I went out to hang with Roxie in the backyard for a few minutes and was so happy to discover that the flowers around my house have started to appear.  The previous owner of my house really had a thing for landscaping and flowers, it’s awesome because every year there are different flowers that appear throughout the spring, summer and fall and there always seems to be something in bloom!

Hello Spring!

Roxie was pumped too about the flowers too… she also just loves to have her picture taken.  Seriously, do you know of any other dog that will just constantly pose for pictures?  I love it, but find it strange as well.  I know I am biased but I really do believe that she is the most photogenic dog ever.

Rox is super pumped about spring flowers too.

Because I want to take Wednesday night as a rest day to hang out with some friends and eat chicken wings, I moved my Wednesday workout to last night.  This meant I was back on the bike trainer for another 75 minute session. It’s strange, this 75 minutes felt waaaaayyyy longer than the 2.5 hours the night prior.  Not sure why, but it was painful.  Part of it was probably the fact I had back to back nights on the trainer, but oh well…

Roxie also expressed her displeasure by throwing various items into my back wheel while I was spinning.  This was the first time she’s ever done this and I think it scared us both.  Her first item was a rawhide chew and I thought my bike or the trainer had busted until I realized that she had thrown something at the bike.  Then she followed it with a couple of balls before resorting to trying to convince me that she is super cute and that we should be playing with her dinosaur.  She kills me, she definitely has the whole “feel bad for me and come play” look down pat.

Hey, don’t you want to play with me and my dino…?

Alright, well this week coming up marks 11 weeks to go until the Syracuse Half Ironman and my training continues.  I must admit I do love having a coach that sets up my plan and is available for consult.  I am doing workouts that I would have never come up with on my own and it is definitely helping me push myself further.  I don’t think I would have ever completed a 13 mile run this far in advance of the race or have planned these longer brick sessions at this point in the season, but my coach is really helping me show myself what I am capable of and showing me better and smarter ways to train for these mid to long distance endurance events.  Also, I’m still feeling great and my old nagging injuries have remained at bay so far (I’m knocking on wood night now to avoid jinxing this.). 

I guess I’m just having one of those moment where you realize that you don’t really know what you’re truly capable of until you try it.  I hope you all experience these milestone moments in your life – I’ve had a number through the years… the first time I ran a 5K without stopping, my first 10K, the first time I ran a full hour without stopping, and so on… it’s just amazing to think about where I have come from when I used to complain loudly about running a single mile and now where I might head as I train for this 70.3.

On that reminiscent note, I’m going to wrap up another long post (sorry).  Sometimes I think I should write more often with shorter posts, but this is what I can swing right now with my schedule… I hope you all had a stellar weekend (I know I did) and an even better week!

Training Plan – 11 weeks to go!

Weekend Recap: Running, Technology, & Other Fun Stuff.

Since I didn’t have a chance to post yesterday since I was traveling for work, I’ve decided to recap my Friday & the weekend with a few pictures.

First up: the gym… Treadmill running. As you know, I was struggling with the treadmill workouts last week. My legs were dead tired for both Wednesday’s and Friday’s run. When I threw down my clothes to change on Friday to hit the treadmill, I wanted to just pack up and go home. But I didn’t. (Enter the benefit of having a coach which makes you feel guilty if you skip a workout… )

I finally figured out how to sync my Garmin to my computer. I was totally geeking out about this. Lots of fun to see the splits, HR, elevation, etc from my long run last week. Made me excited to see how this Sunday’s 9 miler would compare to last Sunday!

I had the most amazing sandwich Friday from the Brooklyn Pickle. CBW and I were out grabbing outfits for a St. Patty’s Day themed run and decided that lunch from the Pickle would be a fantastic idea. It did not disappoint – we found they were offering corned beef sandwiches! Look at this messiness… It was amazing. Looking at this picture makes me want another one. Who wants to go this Friday?

Speaking of our St. Patty’s Day running outfits….. Pretty amazing, right? I know you’re going to want to hire us to be your stylists.

This weekend the training ramped up again. Saturday morning I went to R.I.P.P.E.D. with CBW, then hit up my bike trainer for 90 minutes before our St. Patty’s run. On Sunday, I had another 9 miler on the schedule. I was tasked with running a negative split with my last 4 miles being 10-15″ faster than the first 5 miles. I have never successfully run a negative split since I’m typically pretty poor at pacing myself, but I am so happy to report that I actually achieved the negative split on Sunday! I ran the first 2 miles at a 9 min pace, the next 3 at 8:45 and the final 4 were between 8:25-8:35!! I was pretty proud of myself… the small things in training make me pretty happy!

After the 9 miles, I definitely needed to relax a bit, so I busted out some tea and looked through the training plan for the upcoming week. I’m traveling again this week for work, so I again have the fun of trying to squeeze in my workouts in the morning before meetings or late at night after the conference dinners wrap.