Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Month: May 2014

Wanderlust and Waning Focus

This post goes all over, you have been warned. 🙂

I have had so many different travel-related webpages open on my browser in the last few weeks.  These include…

  • An all inclusive dive resort in Roatan, Honduras
  • A groupon for New Zealand + Fiji
  • A Bahamas diving video
  • Stuff on tours in Peru, Bangkok, Costa Rica, probably other places I’m not thinking of.
  • Trips to Europe – London/Paris, Italy/Greece, etc
  • Stuff for our Portland/Rockaway Beach/Santa Barbara trip in a few months
  • Potential cruises out of Florida in December after the marathon
  • Potential trip to South Padre island instead of one of those exotic places in October.

I’ve got some serrrrrious wanderlust right now for some of this.

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The problem is I’ve been to some stellar places already and want to go back, too.  It is seriously not fair that there are so many cool places around the world to check out and so little vacation time, and some of them take sooooo long to get to (Australia, I’m looking at you :P).

I love my job, I love my house, I love my life, but I think if I had the opportunity to pick up and go travel for a year and could do something productive with my time (write a travel blog/book? take pictures and sell them? host a tv show at remote locations? find something that I could work at remotely?), and could survive monetarily, Zliten and I would just go do it.

I’m sure it is partially that tri season is winding down for the year and it’s close to offseason.  I didn’t feel the need for it until about a week ago, when I realized that I’m pretty tired mentally and my body is taking longer to come back from this race than the others this year.  I definitely have one more quick sharpening of the knife in me to try and bust out some PRs at the Sprint and Olympic distance next month, but I’m really glad I’m taking a month off after to refresh the energy and motivation stores.

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I’ve been able to prolong this season quite a bit because I have been smart about taking time off after each major race, but it’s finally catching up with me in some not so good ways.

I’ve lost motivation in the dietary department, I have definitely given into the junk food lately, and while it’s not majorly manifesting on the scale just yet, it will if I don’t quit this shit.  I’m not tracking calories and I’m not tracking diet quality, and that means I ate things like pizza and breadsticks and cake and not-whole-wheat tortillas and chips and dip this weekend, not to mention a double digit amount of drinks over Saturday and Sunday.  I am finding it easier to eat crap because I’m not accountable.

I’ve found this week that I’m finally, actually curious about my calorie intake again instead of not giving a fuck, so I think after memorial day I’ll be back on the straight and narrow.  I was giving myself through the end of tri season, but I think I’m going to be ready sooner.  I definitely didn’t want this junkfoodarama to overlap with the off season where I’m not doing much, lest I see the scale jump.

However, waning motivation does not mean a lack of training.  I’m still pretty motivated there after a week of slackitude after the race.  Since we have some time in between the last race and the next one, we wanted to try two “feats of strength” in terms of distance.

1. Swim 5k in open water.

I’ve swam just over the iron distance before (2.45 miles) last year but we wanted to do a full 5k/5k (swim then run).  I kept about a 40 min/mile pace pretty solid and felt fine, but I saw Zliten head in before the last short lap I needed to do so I called it at 2.75 in about 1h 54 min.  Personal distance record!  We were short on time so we did not run.  I wasn’t too pooped right after, but I felt a deep tired for the rest of the weekend from it (this was 6 days after racing the x-50, so that was probably part of it).

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2. Bike 100 miles outside.  I’ve done 110+ miles on the trainer twice, but have yet to ride more than 64 miles outside.  We got going, and my legs were just shredded from the get go from the first week back at full volume.  We stopped at 55 miles to take a rest and I ate so much food (a whole orange, half of a sandwich, and so many cheetos – and I had been fueling on the bike with blocks) and got back on the bike – it was hot, we were miserable, and we agreed that a personal distance record was enough, we didn’t have to hit the 100, so we called it at 70.  I was not prepared to hurt that badly to get to triple digits.

So, while we’ve gone further than we have before (yay!), we fell short of both goals (boo!).  It was for the best.  I’ll have to keep chipping away at riding my bike a long time and maybe rest a little more before the next attempt – I’d done about 7 hours last week already and was sort of sore and tired already going in, so that didn’t help.

I’m not dumb enough to try to go run super long like 20 miles (talk about some serious recovery time, especially since my comfort zone is only around 10-13 miles), though we do have plans to “run long” with a friend who was flirting with the 20 mile distance, I’m also prepared to cut it any time after 10 that I feel like I would be overdoing it to go further. I hope.

I’m spending this one last week of volume  (20 miles running, about 5k swim, ~125 bike miles, and 2 weights sessions), and then next week decrease the volume a bit and up some intensity to prepare for shorter, faster efforts.

The rest of the weekend (besides the epic bike ride) was for relaxing.  Zliten and I spent the day ordering a pizza, watching triathlon videos, hanging on the patio when it cooled off, drinking beers and blendy drinks, watching Rocky Horror around midnight (it had been a while) and then (a little drunkenly) singing unofficial karaoke.

Sunday, we did slept in and did chores and then went to our next door neighbor’s house for a crab boil.

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It was as spectacular as it looks, and it was a great way to wind down the weekend.

In other news – I got to give a talk with some other folks here at work to a group of girls who attend a technology focused school.  It was really bizarre to squish my 13 years of industry experience into a little 5 minute introduction (and, um, most of the other folks took the not telling their life story route, so mine was WAY the longest, what can I say, I like to talk).  It was also really cool being able to impart some of the knowledge I wished I had, like:

1. Go ask for what you want.  Be bold.  If people brush you off, go ask more people.  Be polite, be patient, but keep telling people what you want to do and asking for help getting there.

2. Negotiate your salary.  Don’t take the first offer if it’s lower than you want.  Men tend to negotiate.  Women tend to settle.  There is usually a range of salaries for positions, so it’s rare that it’s their final offer.

And also sharing how it used to be a big bummer for girls in the industry, like when i first got my first job, I got gawked at a lot.  It was really cool to be a part of, and they seemed pretty interested, and not just because we gave them cookies, so it was a great Friday morning.

So, what’s up in the future tense?

The one last feat of strength (speed?) we have left is to go run a standalone 5k sometime between now and before the Lake PF tri.  I KNOW Zliten can PR his (his half marathon pace is speedier than the last 5k he ran), and I’m probably pretty close (26:31 is mine from YEARS ago, the best I’ve done recently is 27:58, and that was in 2012), so we’re going to give this a try (probably just on our own, not a race).  Mcmillian thinks I can at least get close to a PR with my most recent mile time (and that was off the bike), but we’ll see.

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Got some good new food from Costco that is rocking my world.  I know prepared stuff is not as good as cooking myself, but that whole waning motivation thing… yeah.  The fish burgers, the chicken skewers, and the veggie/quinoa bowls are fabulous.  I’m just trying to not eat them too fast.

This week, I’ve taken down about 50 quality trainer miles on the bike, 3 fast running miles (but lots more planned this week), and as of this evening, I’ll have finished my two swims and weights sessions for the week.  Besides some more spinning when I can fit it in, the rest of the week is about my love right now, running.  I’m ready for it to swing that way.  I did such a good ab workout I’ve been playing the “cramps or ab soreness” game where I have to ice my lower abs at night to fall back to sleep.  Bleh.

This will be a busy 3 day weekend.  Saturday, we plan to do said long run with a friend and then go hit up Barton Springs for either a real swim or just an “ice bath” paddling around.  Then, we’re traveling down south to hang out with some friends, and the agenda is smoking pork belly, beer, and wine.

Sunday, we volunteer at packet pickup for the Cap Tex Tri (which we’re NOT doing) and then we’re hosting a BBQ with our friends from out of town and expect to make use of my new blender for margaritas, eat tacos, sing karaoke, and play some cards against humanity.

Monday, I think we’ll try to get some trainer time, but other than that, I expect to do jack and shit.  Looking forward to a lot of fun this weekend!

…and I think that’s all the random I got.  I’ll be back soon with, uh, probably more random.

Question: if you work remotely, what do you do?  Is it full time regular (aka, with benefits, PTO, like working in an office) or contract/part time?  Where would you most like to work remotely from?

Cool Stuff April, Random Stuff Whenever

Oddly, in my head, I keep coming back to the thought that I had a disappointing race May 4th.  The weird thing is that very little about the race in and of itself was disappointing, but I feel disappointed.  Until I start thinking about the details, in which, most of them I am pretty happy about.

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Unrealistically, I think I was hoping for just a super, amazing, unexpectedly great race.  The ones where you surpass your A goal and rainbows fly out of unicorn’s asses.  I need to remember that those are special, unexpected gifts.  Generally, those happen on races I don’t really care that much about or I’m not especially focused on/training specifically for (read: my half marathon PR, Pflugerville 2012, the last two running races I did, etc).  Triathlons are hard that way, because you have to have unicorns and rainbows in like, five different areas (swim, bike, run, transition, nutrition) and weather plays a way larger factor (wind = chop in the water and slowing on the bike, heat = way more of a factor mid day than at 7am).

I can be disappointed about being dumb on the bike.  I can be disappointed about slow transitions.  Those are fact, those are mistakes, and I see routes to improve that easily (more transition practice before the next race, focus on fast, and also paying the fuck attention at critical points of the race).  I can also be disappointed about getting 4th, when I could feasibly have seen a race that day where I found those 10 minutes I needed and podiumed, but that’s completely and totally who shows up, and definitely never a main goal.

I feel pretty solid about my swimming.  I went to the lake last weekend and swam 2.75 miles in a little less than 2 hours.  My pace was just about 5 mins/mile over my race pace – which probably means I can step my game up a little bit with some work this season.  And since it’s getting hot – swimming becomes a thing I really really like to do so I expect this will improve.

Though I melted on the run, and I had some walk breaks, I’m pretty happy with my run pace, knowing that a slightly cooler day would have made all the difference.  It wasn’t the hills.  It wasn’t the heat.  It was only when those two things intersected I broke.  One of these races, I really want to try to find the edge on the run, but honestly, it wasn’t that day.  I ran a strategic race, conserving some energy on the really bad bits, and ended up with a decent, for me, time.  Run training over the winter really helped, and I’m honestly excited to see what it will do with some shorter course races where the heat doesn’t matter so much.

I think if I have to pinpoint the actual athletic development disappointment to one thing, it’s the bike.  The trainer is great.  It’s helped me be a better cyclist earlier in the year.  The videos I’m doing help me not die so much when I’m outside because they simulate real riding intensities and changes.  However, it’s no substitute to riding up hills outside.  There’s just a feel of movement type of thing that you get good at, and then forget, and have to get good at again.  Year after year.  That’s how those paces get more consistent, and when I get faster going up the hills, I’ll get faster overall because grinding the work on flats is something I’m really good at.

So that’s where I’m at and now I’m moving forward.

I have two more triathlons planned next month: a sprint on June 15 (Pfluger), and an Olympic on June 21 (Gator Bait).  I seemed to do really well racing a half and a 10 mile run back to back, so let’s give the triathlon version a try. We were going to repeat the X-50 (they offered another one on June 22), but we didn’t really want to do the whole weekend trip driving, taking a day off work, and all that, so we’re doing a tri that’s much closer.

Also, while I said podiums and placement is not a huge motivator in process and goals, there is a (unicorns and rainbows) possibility I could place in my new AG at Pfluger (though my much more realistic goal is top 1/3rd/top 10), and the Gator Bait is really small, and AG placement is a distinct possibility.

To prepare for these races:

-More outdoor rides with hills.  More indoor videos.  Less easy pedaling unless I really need it for recovery purposes.

-Maintain at least 20 miles per week running.  Speedwork in terms of short tempo sections of longer runs, double/triple bricks running fast off the bike, and probably a practice 5k standalone around Lake Pf so I can pull on what that feels like when I’m tired.

-Get swimming back up to 2 times a week again.  Continue working structured sets with speed in them.

-Get back on the weights train for a few weeks.

-I’ve got 4 weeks of work until the final taper (probably 3 weeks at full volume, 1 week at 80% and then taper week at 50%).  It’s time to prioritize what needs the most attention.  Also, I need to watch fatigue – I feel pretty good now after a rest week, but that race did take a lot out of me and a lot can change in a month.

After those races, I plan to give myself a month to do whatever the fuck I feel like, maintaining a small base of physical activity so I don’t get fat and soft, but if I feel like kayaking or going to zumba class instead of running/biking/swimming, so be it.  In fact, I’m going to take a break from anything that could be considered long distance training for the most part, because once I’m back, it’s ON because I have BIG EPIC PLANS this fall.  But more on that later.

Final Thoughts:

1. These paces would have been approximately a 6h30min 70.3.  My goal this year is to break that at Kerrville.  So, that’s encouraging.

2.  I beat Zliten on all 3 legs of the course (if you count my actual riding pace, not my time because I added a mile).  That’s actually pretty rare these days.

Food/Scale/Etc Update:

I still can’t seem to get excited about tracking my calories and diet quality and goals and stuff.  If you’ll notice it’s almost the middle of May and I still just can’t even.  I unceremoniously started tracking again last Wednesday and stopped again on Friday.  At some point, it will become a priority in my life to be more than an eating, pooping, working, training machine with a little bit of social animal sprinkles on top, but right now, I’m about full up on that.  And that’s ok.

I matched my low weight for the year at 175.2 last month, and generally am weighing in around 176-178.  For not really paying attention, I’m ok with this.  At some point, I would like to make some progress, but I’m tired, okay?  It is also frustrating that I am able to maintain like a champ, whether I’m burning like 1000 calories a week or 6000, but it takes pretty much sacrificing my life to lose a few lbs.  I also am considering going to get professional help again, someone that works with athletes, someone that can work around my beer habit. 🙂

While I’m staying about the same weight, I keep noticing that this year’s 17x looks slightly leaner than last year’s 17x, which looked leaner than last year’s 17x.  So there is that.  I’ll play the game of inches here until I’m ready to jump. Like I said, feeling full up and so very tired is not the way to start this endeavor.

Cool Stuff April:

Since I haven’t done this yet, let me share some of the fun stuff we did last month.

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Fairview Half Marathon: 2:08:50

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In n Out after Fairview Half Marathon….

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Mustache and Polka Dot Birthday (not mine) Party.  The party theme was concieved while drunk on MY patio, and I’m pretty happy it was carried to fruition.  Fun times.

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Austin 10/20 – 1:37:08 for a 10 mile PR.

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This is how we party.  Zliten posing for inspiration.

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The boys trimming the bush.

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And we decided it looked more like a teenage mutant ninja pirate so we dressed it up as such.

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Lots of sunset runs.  Looks like we’ll have just a little more of that weather this week and then it will be too hot for months to run after work.  Sadface.

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Pfluger!  The opposite side of the coin – now that it’s warmer, we can go play at the lake all the time!  Multiple trips to the lake to swim, bike, and run this month.  It went from shockingly cold to comfortable over the course of the month!

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My fave seasonal beer is back on the shelves.  I almost knocked people down getting to it the first time I saw it this year (sorrynotsorry).

Basically, it’s time to get back at it, rest week is over, and it’s time to train again.  I am loving up our slightly cooler weather and want to run ALL THE MILES in it before it goes back up to the 90s and 100s and summer is really here.

Texasman X-50 Race Recap

I’ve been rolling this one around in my head for a bit.  I definitely have a lot of conflicting thoughts about the day.  I had a lot of negativity during the race itself, negative thoughts about myself, the course, my progress, who I am as a triathlete, doubts, insecurities, etc.  After the race, I felt a pretty good glow about the day and my performance.  After a few days to marinate, I feel somewhere in the middle, and have much more useful thoughts (so it’s probably time to write my recap).

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Day(s) before:

We ended up making this one a bit of a tri-cation – that is, we left work Friday after work, and drove up to Denton right away, and had the hotel for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  The drive up was ridiculously low-stress for a Dallas drive, and we got there quick.  We slept until we woke up and did the norm – brunch (waffle power!), packet pickup (got a tri top and socks this race – that was different), grocery store, hunting for the chamois cream Zliten forgot, etc. Mostly driving around, not much walking, so it was good.

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I ended up with something a little more fatty than normal for early dinner – half a blt with like 10 strips of bacon, avocado and cheese on wheat bread and some rice, but felt pretty good and fueled and a little less carb-bloated than normal which I was hoping would serve me well.  We decided to skip a shakeout run for the hot tub, and then curled into bed and got some pretty darn decent pre-race sleep.

Pre-race:

We woke to the hottest day of the year (or really close) thus far.  I specifically picked this one to race as my A race because the weather *should* have been temperate.  While I realized this would probably result in a slower overall time, I was more concerned about the effort, so I wasn’t changing my strategy of a steady swim, pushing myself to see where I was at on the bike, and then hammering the run.  How hot could the mid-to-upper 80s be, really? 😛

We ate our cliff bars, drank purple stuff, got the stuff in the car, mapped out the directions from the address on the Texasman website and drove through some beautiful areas watching the sun start to peek out, happy that we left early enough to get to transition just after opening.  Then we got to said address, and found NOTHING (except a few other confused triathletes).  After some deduction by looking at the course maps, we found we were supposed to be on the other side of the lake, which by my trusty phone, was 30 mins away.  Fuck fuck fuck.

We were really nervous – we would just barely make it into transition and that was IF we were going to the right place.  Luckily, we were and I’m not writing a pissed off post about how I DNS’d my A race because I’m an idiot.  Got bodymarked, got transition set up hastily, just barely had enough time to potty and squeeze into the wetsuit and it was pre-race briefing time.  They quoted this as the “thinking man’s course” as there were a lot of different distances going on at the same time.  Then, we held for a bit to let them get the timing folks in place, and shortly, wave 1 and 2 were off and I was lined up along the shore in wave 3.

Calorie tracking: 1 cliff bar (250 calories)

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Swim:

I was missing the butterflies this morning, and I think it’s just because of the attitude and tactic I was taking with the swim.  I know I haven’t done much OWS this year (this would be my 4th) and I’ve only been doing 1-2 swims per week (minus the week I did 4 because I was injured and couldn’t do anything else), so I expected just to do about as well as I did last year.

I ran into the water until I had enough space to stroke (up to about my knees) and then dove in and got to it.  There were very few ladies doing the x-50 so there wasn’t that much jostling.  Since I didn’t get a warmup swim and it was a little chilly I was definitely doing the breathe every two strokes thing at first but oddly enough I felt less awkward than normal at the beginning of a swim.  Good good.

It was hard to sight into the sun so I probably tacked on some extra yardage, and as we got out further from shore it got SUPER CHOPPY.  It was side chop, which I prefer to front/back chop, I know how to swim in it.  Only hiccup was I got pushed underwater (unintentionally) and choked on some water for a while, but otherwise, I felt pretty decent, like a long, lean, buoyant fish.

The small amount of swimming directly into the chop was miserable, but it was over quick, and then all I had to worry about was asphixiating to death on the fumes from a nearby police boat.  I swam pretty strong back into the shore, and realized my watch was still on, and it looked like I was on pace for about 35 mins for a mile, which I’m very happy with.  This is my average pool time, and I was able to pull it out in super choppy open water.  I overheard that the course was a little long too from someone with a garmin, so I’ll totally take it.

I swam until my fingers touched dirt and then ran up and onto the beach.

Swim time: 35:41 for 1 mile

Performance vs expectations: I’m super happy with this, and I’m really looking forward to just getting better in the water as the year goes on, because all I want to do when it’s hot is go swim in the lake.

T1:

I ran out, and got my top half of my wetsuit off before the strippers, which is an improvement over my first wetsuit race, where I was just shellshocked and pretty much wandered up and said “halp?”.  He made off with it in short order and I ran up the beach, onto the path, and finally to transition.  I had set my sandals out but couldn’t find them so I just left them and ran barefoot (again, which was fine, I need to remember I’m less of a priss than I think I am).

Once I got to transition, gravity hit me hard.  I’m not quite sure what took so long, but it did.  I put on sleeves which I probably didn’t need considering the heat.  I took the time to put on my gloves instead of doing it on the bike.  I didn’t rush.  I saw Zliten as he was leaving and said hi and chatted a little.  I’m cutting myself a little slack because it was a long run in, and it’s the first tri of the year, but over 5 mins to get on the bike is pretty ridiculous.

T1 time: 5:06

Performance vs Expectation: I figured I’d be slow, but this is sloooow.  Ah well, onward and upward.

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Bike:

I clomped out to the mount line, got going quickly and without incident, and was off.  The first few miles were pretty uneventful. I decided to go with the athletic tape on my garmin, so I just concentrated on effort and not my speed. I ended up playing (legal) leapfrog with a few girls and chatting, and then I finally saw Zliten and caught up with him, and leapfrogged with him a bit. I did a successful bottle grab, and came in for the second lap.

All was going well… until I just flat out MISSED the turn around for the x-50 distance. All my riding friends were apparently doing the Sprint and I followed them about half a mile in until I started doubting myself, and I flipped a u-turn, hoping I wasn’t cutting the course, and asked everyone I saw on the way back until I confirmed that the turn around was where it was and I had gone long. D’oh!

The second lap, I was a little bit in a funk, feeling stupid for missing the turn, and there was literally NO ONE riding with me that I could see. I almost convinced myself that I had gone the wrong way somehow. Then, I realized that was stupid, it was the same road, still had police blocking it off, etc.  This was just a small race.  I saw Zliten a couple more times but I never caught him again.

This was not really my course. It was always going up and down. Only one or two real big hills, but nowhere to dig in and really fly in high cadence and aero like I’ve been practicing. My splits were all over. One mile, 13.7, next mile, 21.2. Hilarious. It also was windy, and the second lap was definitely windier than the first.  My garmin clocked 41.09 miles, and 16.6 mph – so this probably added about 4 mins to my time. Lame.

Bike Time: 2:28:03 (16.2 mph)

Performance vs Expectation: Overall, I’m feel dumb for doing extra credit, but I can forgive that.  I was focused.  I’ll pay more attention next time.  16.6 mph (let’s not even talk about that 16.2) isn’t as good as I was hoping for – it’s exactly what I rode at Kerrville last year.  Even though I wasn’t discussing times, I really wanted to see at least 17mph. This feels like the absence of gain in skill.  I expected it in swimming, but I actually have been working the bike.

I still have a lot of questions.  Like, if I would have turned around in the right place and stayed with people, maybe I would have pushed harder?  Maybe I needed the garmin reinforcement?  However, the way I answer them is ride my bike in more races, and push myself harder/do more volume on it this spring/summer, so that’s what I aim to do.

Intake: 2 bottles gatorade (200 calories), 1 bottle water.  180 calories strawberry chews, ~100 calories of pink lemonade chews

T2:

I was still feeling down and told the volunteer at the dismount line that I was definitely ready to get rid of evilbike.  I racked it and did my thing and saw Zliten again as he was taking off.  I shoe’d off, shoe’d on, got my number and handheld and visor and got on the run.

T2 Time: 3:01

Performance vs Expectation: I don’t know what the crap I was doing for over 3 minutes besides moping about my bike, but since there was no reason for it (I should have been in and out in half that time, easily), I need to cut that shit out next tri.

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Run:

Set out on the run and it had gotten HOOOOOT. All that wind whipping around on the bike? Gone. The only salvation is the run course had some shade, but the sunny parts were just miserable. I’m thinking it was in the upper 80s by that point. Ughhhhh.

The good news was I had some decent legs left, and they stabilized pretty quickly.  I knew I wasn’t running super fast, but definitely in the zone so I kept trotting away as everything would allow.  I tried eating some chews, and got them down ok (no tummy issues!) but then i couldn’t get the bag closed and i couldn’t get it back in my handheld so I just stuck them in my boobs and promptly forgot about them.

I still had the tape over my garmin, and my goal was just to dig and stay in as much manageable pain as I could the whole time. I definitely forgot about staying in the moment though, I just kept thinking how I wanted to be done that first lap and I didn’t know how I was going to deal with two laps. I didn’t walk though. I found Zliten and passed him around mile 3.  I was loving up the aide stations and took all the ice and water I could to stay cool and keep up my speed.  I was starting to come out of my funk though.  I didn’t love running in the heat, but at least I felt semi-competent at it, especially as the majority of the folks around me were just melting, walking, and looking dejected.  Pass, pass, pass, pass, I did a lot of it.

The second lap, I broke a bit too. I got grumpy at one turn around going up a hill and I walked there a little. Once I got to the aide station, I filled my bottle with ice and dumped a bunch of water on me and more ice in my tri top and got going again. I had a few more walk breaks, but in the same vein as Kerrville, or the marathon – controlled powerwalking (14-15 min miles) to recharge some energy for a short time, and then off I went, back into the frey of 9s, 10s, maybe some 11s on the uphills.  I could tell my run speed was actually decent, but I felt like I needed those quick little breaks to keep it up.

I ripped off my tape at about 7.5 miles. Even with the walking and the heat and all the other b.s. – I was still holding just under 11 minute miles average and I did my best to keep it there. I finally gave it some gas right around mile 8.5 and found some 8-9 min mile pace left and then there was the finish and I almost tripped going from path to uneven grass but I crossed the line and it was glorious to stop and collect my medal and get water and then go cheer Zliten in.

Run time: 1:38:05 (10:54 mins/mile avg)

Performance vs expectation: on paper, I’d say this is 8 mins longer than expected.  I really wanted to meet or exceed 10 minute mile pace.  However, that plan was put into place when I expected the temps to be high 60s/low 70s, not scorching the earth.  I ran 1:19 min/mile slower than my standalone 10 mile run pace 3 weeks ago, on a hillier course in hotter conditions.  I cannot hate that.  Last year, this run would have been at least a minute/mile slower, even if I had the run of my life.

There’s definitely some improvement to be had here – I could have taken off some time in the later miles by toughening up a bit and not walking if I could have kept pace – but that’s the question.  Would I have fizzled?  I wanted to try and find the edge, but the combination of heat + hill just wilted me and I played it a little more defensive than I expected/wanted.

Intake: 3 chews (~40 calories + maybe a tiny bit of caffiene), 1 bottle gatorade (100 calories), so much water and ice and probably some cytomax.

Overall time: 4:50:23.

Performance vs Expectation: I missed my goal of 4:30 by 20 minutes, which I think may have been a little ambitious on that course (I really underestimated the hills on that bike course) with my current fitness. On a perfect (both me and the weather) day, I think I had a few extra minutes on the swim, a few extra minutes in transition, I wasted probably four mins on the bike with the extra mile/riding slow to find someone to tell me if I was on the course, and some extra bike speed lost vs wind gusts, and certainly time on the run if I wasn’t melting.  It would have been close, and it would have taken a perfectly executed race.

I missed placing in my division by 10 mins (I got 4th – 3rd had a time of 4:40 and change).  I think THAT’S what I’m most bummed about.  If I wouldn’t have fucked around in transition, if I wouldn’t have lost that time on the bike, if I would have pushed a little harder on the run… I could have gotten my first triathlon podium besides when I got 3/3 place in the Athena division at my first Olympic Tri.

On the bright side, I beat Zliten by 11 minutes.  I got him by 5 mins on the swim + transition, he made up a little time on the bike (but only because I screwed up), and I ran 7 mins faster on the run.  Take that, Mr. I-Run-Up-Hills-Like-A-Mountain-Goat-Lately. 🙂

And hey, at least they still let you have margaritas when you get 4th place.  So, really, that makes it all better.

may7-7

Since this is already novel-length, I’ll save the afters and the what’s next for my next post.

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