Ouch...

Had my first post-Half run yesterday.  Wow - that was hard.  Only three miles, but my legs felt like lead.  I tried to do a few hill repeats just for kicks and they didn't go well AT ALL.  I thought I'd be recovered better by now.  Guess not.  Hopefully, I'll be OK when I join the East Nasty 11-mile training run on Sunday.  Should be interesting.

On a different note, I'm trying to pay more attention to my eating habits.  I'd love to drop about 10 pounds by the Country Music Half Marathon.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm not really "dieting," but trying to be more careful about snacking.  Anyway, this is a yummy recipe Dudley made last night.  Seems pretty lean. Check it out.

http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/chicken-roasted-sweet-potato-salad-00000000008027/index.html

It's Been a While

   So, it's been a while since I've posted.  The good news is that it's been due to laziness in blogging rather than activity.  I've been BUSY.  While full tri training hasn't kicked in yet, I've been steadily training for half-marathons since January.  I even ran one - the Birmingham Half in February.  That will definitely go down as the COLDEST race I've done so far.  It was 20 degrees with a 13 degree wind chill at the start.
   A week later, I had the coldest training day ever.  This time it was around 30, but there was rain, which turned into snow, then turned back into rain.  It was a 12-mile training run, which was fine for the first six.  That's when the chills got to me and I just froze the the remainder of the run.  Not a whole lot of fun.
  But now, it's mid-March and it's warm, and the plants are blooming and it's LIGHT again for our night runs, which is fantastic.  I was getting sick of running in the dark all the time.
  Which brings me to today.  I'm currently sitting in my parent's kitchen in Northern Virginia.  Tomorrow is the Rock&Roll Nation's Capital USA Half Marathon.  This has been the race that I've trained for since January.  I'm physically ready... except for one thing.  My toe.
  I'm not sure what the heck happened because everything was fine for my six-mile run on Sunday.  No pain at all.  No pain on Monday (rest day) either.  Then Tuesday, the top of my foot started to hurt.  I figured it was the heels I was wearing.  We went for a 5.5 miler after work, and while it hurt, I was able to finish.  I figured it was just a one-day thing.
  But it wasn't.  It's now Friday and my foot still hurts.  I haven't been running in hopes that it would heal, and it has a bit.  I can walk, but I still feel "it."  I'm REALLY hoping it's not a stress fracture, though it has the symptoms of one (WebMD is not my friend).  My thought with this is that if it is a stress fracture, I'm out for six-weeks no matter what.  I may as well try to run the race tomorrow.  If it gets too painful, I'll pull out.  But I'm hoping I wake up tomorrow with no pain and ready to kick butt! I'm especially excited because my husband is running this with me tomorrow.  We haven't run a race together in about two years.  I hope I can do it!

What's Next

  I've taken a pretty decent sized break from this blog, and unfortunately from training.  It wasn't really on purpose.  I took about two weeks off after Augusta to recoup and rest.  I was pretty burnt out after 5 months of training.
  But then I caught a cold and I've been fighting that for the past two weeks.  That hasn't been fun AT ALL and I haven't been able to train.  I feel like my 5 months of training have completely gone down the tubes.
   Not that I'm feeling better, it's time for me to get off my ass and training again.  I know I have several goals for next season.  1) PR in the Half-Marathon.  My PR is 2:13 so anything better than that would be fantastic.  I would LOVE to break 2:00.  Would. LOVE. To.  My goal race for that is the Tom King Half in March.  It's completely flat and would be a good course for it.  Kicker is that it's on a greenway so the potential to get caught up in traffic is likely.  But still going for it.  
   Also on the list- the Birmingham Half as a warm-up in February and the Rock&Roll Half in DC as a "fun race."  It's the week after Tom King so I won't be in any shape to run it.  But it's in my hometown so I'm really looking forward to it.
   As far as tris - I'm thinking about the New Orleans 70.3 in April.  Might be too much with all of the Halfs, but we'll see.  Definitely going to hit either REV 3 in Knoxville and/or Memphis in May triathlons.
    I'm doing something really crazy tomorrow and registering for the lottery for the NYC marathon.  I have no desire to run a marathon EVER - but would LOVE to run NYC.  So I figure, what the heck?!  Enter the lottery and see what happens!  :-)
   Training starts tomorrow!!  See you on the roads!

Augusta 70.3 - Race Report

   After five months of training, it was hard to believe the race was finally here!!  The weekend started bright and early Friday morning when we met up with my friend Holland for the drive down to Augusta.  We wanted to check in Friday so we could just relax Saturday and figure out what the heck we were doing on race day Sunday.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen.  Traffic was bad so we didn't make the 6:00 check-in deadline.
  Check-in didn't open on Saturday until 11:00 so we got there about 10:30 hoping to beat the line.  About 300 other people apparently had the same idea because the line wrapped about 3/4 around the Marriott convention center floor.  Fortunately, the line moved fast and we were able to talk to a few athletes who had done the race previously, and we had a lot of our newbie questions answered (like when do we put on our wetsuits?  And what do we do with them when we're done?  Ahh - the innocence of inexperience.)
  Check-in went fine.  We learned that over 3,200 people had registered for the race, making it the largest Half-Ironman ever.  Which made me feel pretty good because I figured with that many people, I wouldn't finish dead last!!
   After check-in was the expo.  Ironman stuff was, obviously, everywhere.  They're brilliant marketers, those IM people.  When you first walked in, you saw a poster with the IM logo on it.  Pretty basic poster. Nothing too special.  But then you looked closer and you could see that all of the competitor's names were in the logo!!  How awesome is that?!!  So, of course I had to get it.  BUT THEN - I saw the T-SHIRT that had all of our names on it.  Of course, this was $15 more than the poster.  But I had to get it anyway.  I did put the poster back though.  :-)

   After that, we went down to the dock to check out the water and then went to go set up our bikes.  Every wonder what 3,200 bikes looks like?

Well - there you go.

   After a good dinner, all that was left to do was to get a good night's rest.  I actually thought that was going to happen until I woke up at 3:00 am FREAKING OUT.  Seriously.  Total freak out.  Didn't ever go back to sleep either.   I wasn't too worried about it though.  I had so much adrenaline going that my lack of sleep wasn't going to hurt my race at all.

   The alarm finally rang and we packed up and headed down to the race.  

Let's go racing!!

   Augusta has a set-up where the transition is a mile away from swim start.  So Dudley dropped us off at transition where we set up all of our stuff.  Most of the women setting up around me were first-time 70.3ers as well.  It was great to talk to them and realize we were all pretty much in the same boat - as in clueless.

   Next thing we knew, we were on the bus heading down to the swim start.   The weather was scheduled to be over 90 that day, but it was in the 70s at that point.  Fortunately, it was swim-suit legal with the water temperature being around 72.  One of the things I'll remember from the start of the race was how the women were acting prior to the race.  The men all went first so for a while there were about 1,500 women waiting to start racing.  The song "I Love Rock & Roll" came on and women just went nuts dancing, cheering and clapping to the music.  For some reason, I don't think the men did that prior to their race.  :-)

All ready to go!!  

  This was my first wave start so I was a little intimidated.  I've heard horror stories of people getting kicked, pushed and dunked underwater at wave starts.  Being one of about 200 women in my group at the start didn't help my anxiety either.  But I had already made a mental plan of my race to just take it easy for the swim and the bike portions of the race, so when it was time, I just eased into the water and treaded water until the start went off.   Then once the airhorn blew, I paused about 30 seconds to let the thrashing of the water subside.  No need for me to get hit and panic right at the beginning.  Then I started to swim.  The wetsuit helped my confidence greatly.  It's so buoyant!  Plus, the swim was down-river so the current was with us.  I just got in my groove and swam.  I didn't push myself, but I noticed I was starting to see swim caps from the groups that went before me, so I was happy about that.  

  I swam off course a little and got covered in what can best be described as seaweed.  But we were in a river so does that make it riverweed?  Anyway, there was a ton of it.  I'm happy to report I didn't suffer from the freakouts like I did in Chattanooga.  I just kept doing my thing until I saw the exit buoys.   I was definitely ready to get out of the water though.

   Next up was the ride.  Again, sticking with my plan, I was just going to cruise this part.  I'd been told by many people who had a lot more experience than me to ignore the instinct to hammer at the beginning of the ride.  Sure, I'd get passed, but I'd catch them at the end.  And that's exactly what happened.  At the beginning, I felt like I was getting passed by everyone!  But I just kept reminding myself that I still had a half-marathon to go after this ride so I needed to chill and enjoy the ride.  And I did.  Fortunately, I didn't have any mechanicals or other mishaps.  I just rode at a pretty even pace for 56 miles.  Other than a mild headache, it felt really good too.  I even remember thinking "I could do this all day!  I don't know why people think Half-Ironmans are so tough!"  Famous last words...

Coming into transition.  Hi Dudley!!  

  

So I come into T2, rack my bike and get ready to run.  I have a plan for the run as well.  Start out at about an 11:30 pace for the first three miles, then bump up my time 30 seconds every three miles after that.  If I did that, I'd end with a 10:00 pace.  Unfortunately, for the first time, my plan had a wrench thrown in it.  I could tell almost immediately that something wasn't going "right" with my run.  It wasn't my legs, though they were tired, they weren't cramping or anything.  But that headache I had in my ride was getting worse and I just didn't feel good.  I immediately changed plans to a nine-minute run / one-minute walk routine to try to get into a groove.  That never happened though.  I went from not feeling "right" to flat-out feeling sick.  I thought maybe I was dehydrated as at this point it was over 90 degrees and about 95 percent humidity.  So the first rest area I hit, I took some Ironman energy drink and poured water over my head.  Didn't help.  I then just felt full and sick.  So my plan then changed to run as far as I can until I feel sick, then walk.  Once that went away, start running again.

Me.  Concentrating on just putting one foot in front of the other.

   That plan worked until Mile 4, when I actually threw up.  I've heard of people throwing up in races, but they usually make it sound like they're bad-asses pushing their bodies to the limit until they hurl.  I'm not that much of a bad-ass.  Nope.  I think mine was a heat-related illness.  It was kind of funny because I kept thinking "surely I'm not going to throw up.  I'm not going fast!"  But sure enough, I did.  

   I was hoping I would feel better afterwards, but I didn't really.  Have you ever tried to run after puking?  It's not easy.  I could walk fine, but every time I tried to run, I would feel nauseous, so I'd have to stop.  I continued with my "run until I feel sick" plan, at some points only running for about 30 seconds before having to walk, until mile 11.5 when I got sick again.  Bad.  To the extent that runners asked me if I needed medial attention.  I just pushed them off.  Are you kidding?  I've been puking for the last 11.5 miles!  You think medics are going to let me to continue?  NO WAY was I not going to finish this race.

   Fortunately, once I puked that last time, I felt a little better.  Not great, but better.  I could actually run a bit longer than 30 seconds at a time.  After what seemed like an eternity, I turned the corner to the finish line.  People were lining the finishing chute clapping and yelling.  It was very cool.  I was a complete dork and threw up my hands like I won the whole damn thing.  I didn't care though.  I was SO happy to be finished.  Not just because I felt like crap, but because this had been a five-month goal achieved.  It felt pretty freakin' cool.

  

   So there you have it.  I was a 1/2 hour past the time I'd hoped for my finish because of my illness, but I still think that's OK.  I'm bummed because had I known I was going to be sick for the run, I would have killed myself in the swim and bike.  Maybe I could have still made my time goal of 6:15.   Who knows?  I'm thrilled I finished and, overall, very happy with the experience.   And the good news is that I wasn't sore AT ALL the next day, which leads me to believe that my conditioning was there - that it was definitely the heat that got to me.  I'm already looking forward to next year to so I can beat my time!!   Good news is that it shouldn't be that hard!!   

Augusta 70.3 times:

Swim: 30.09   71st out of 180 who finished (over 30 dropped out)

TI: 5:25

Bike: 2:59:09  63rd

T2: 2:39

Run:  3:06:02  136th!!  (Oh well - I at least finished!!!)  

Total time: 6:43:34

Thank you to my ever supporting husband Dudley and to Holland for talking me into this craziness!!   Also thanks to my parents and all of my friends for their support and well-wishes!

Six Days Away!

My Half-Ironman is only six days away!!  To say that I'm freaking out is putting it mildly.  It's actually equal parts of excitement and terror.  Looks like I'll be finding out if all of those hours of training actually did anything!!  Here's hoping!!

Inspiration

Just wanted to mention a couple of cool exercise-related things that inspired me over the past weeks:

1. While racing the Franklin Classic 5k, I noticed a man with two prosthetic legs participating.  While this is inspiring in and of itself, there is more to the story.  You see, the day of the race was cold and rainy - which was perfect running weather for me, but this also made the road very slick in parts, especially where the road was painted with road markings.  I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.  After a race a slipping almost the entire way, the gentleman fell about two blocks from the finish line causing one of his prosthetic legs to come off.  Rather than quitting the race right there, the man crossed the finish line while being pushed in a wheelchair by one of his friends.  Everyone standing in the finish line area clapped and cheered for this man as he crossed the line.  I'm sure I was probably crying too.  It was pretty emotional and inspiring.
2. Several of my friends who I coached in the East Nasty Potato-to-Tomato training program have all signed up to run their first Half-Marathon together!  I'm so happy and proud of them.  They're a group of awesome ladies who, if you had told them at this time last year they were going to be all running a Half-Marathon together, would have laughed in your face.  I'm so excited they're taking this journey together.
3. I got to run with my friend Roy last Wednesday.  To put it mildly - Roy's year has sucked.  He's had to deal with the death of his beloved father, as well as coming back from a heart attack.  I'd still be hiding under the covers if I were him, but Roy's out there running again.  He's much tougher than I am.
4. My Dad told me this past week that he's planning ahead to when he's 80, which is in four years, because USA Cycling has an 80+ division for their road races.  He's already thinking about what kind of bike he's going to get.  Here I am just trying to get through the next week, and my Dad is planning four years out.  He's awesome.

What inspires you?

TAPER!

   I can't believe it, but I'm at the point in my training where I'm tapering.  For those who have never trained for an endurance event previously, "taper" is the part of the workout schedule when you recover for 1-2 weeks prior to the race.  In my case, two weeks.  I still have to train, but the hours won't be as long.
   And I have to say, it wasn't a day too soon because I am SPENT.  This past week was very high mileage, ending with a 66-mile bike ride on Saturday and an 11-mile run on Sunday.  For the first time in a very long time - I'm sore.  I'm not sure if that means I haven't been training hard enough or if I just overdid it this weekend.  I'll be fine tomorrow, but I'm SO GLAD I'm tapering and don't have a scheduled workout today.
   Of course, this means that my race is only a mere two weeks away so that has me freaked out.  But that's a post for another day!