Adjusted Reality

I didn’t die at BSLT, and as proof, I’m writing this post!  I’m actually quite pleased with the day I had, considering the circumstances, and hit almost every one of my goals.  Let’s get to the recapping, shall we?  Settle in, this will be a long one…

Friday:

We had a company fun day at the driving range, which was bad because everyone was getting drunk and we had to be teetotalers (hehe), but great because we got to get on the road much earlier than expected.  For lunch I ate a shit ton of veggies, salad, some mac and cheese, and a few bites of beef and salmon.  After we got in the car, it was calorie infusion time (as I’ve been operating at a debt, I don’t want to go into a race underfed), so I nommed on some pretzels and sesame sticks, we split a small DQ chocolate cherry blizzard (that made me feel a little sick, WAY more sugar than I’m used to), and when we got to our stop in Abilene, I ate a chicken burger and a TON of fries at Red Robin, to the point where I felt overfull.  It could have been healthier calories, but mission accomplished.  We chilled for a bit, hit the hot tub, and I slept well.

Saturday:

We drove the rest of the 2.5 hours to Lubbock (if we knew we would have been able to leave early we would have done the whole drive Friday, but it was fine).  We rolled into packet pickup around 1 (and they delayed opening it until 1 so it worked).

Got our shirts, bought some visors (they weren’t giving them out at finish, rude), Zliten bought the tri top he had been looking for but couldn’t find for 25% off, and then we headed out for some lunch.  We hit up Baker Bros Deli, and I got a santa fe turkey sandwich and a salad.  The same meal, essentially, I had at Play Tri that worked really well.

Then, we set off for adventure – driving the bike course, the run, and swimming at the lake.  We started out, things didn’t look so badly (one killer, but manageable hill), and then we took a turn and HOLY SHIT we got sent off pretty much a rollercoaster chute down (and then up) a horrible, gravel, unstable road.  We both started freaking the fuck out until Zliten took the map from me and looked again.  I sent us in the wrong direction.  Oops.  While one hill actually haunted our nightmares (it was about a mile of steep switchbacks), it was nothing like the gravel monster that we were both looking at and ready to pack up and go home.  We counted the hills – one up/down/up out of transition, one canyon, the canyon coming back, the switchback of doom, the long, steady, kill-your-quads climb, and then the last fuck you hill for the last half mile before transition.  6 hills.

Then we tried to scope the run course and couldn’t find the exact route out of the lake area, but knew it would be a STEEP hill, and then saw the massive down/up getting to energy lab 2, which was a nice, flat stretch near a power plant, with no shade, where we did about 3 miles out and back (then, back to the steep hill, down the killer hill into the lake area, and then back home).  3 killer hills.  I knew it wasn’t going to be a fast half marathon, but I was way more concerned about the bike.  We tried to swim, but there were so many boats out on the lake, we just put our feet in, noted it was a perfect temp, and then took off.

This all took many hours to do, so we didn’t get back to the hotel until way too late.  We made our organic mac and cheese and Zliten lubed up the bikes, and we got all our pre race stuff together and settled, and headed to bed at 9, falling asleep at 10.  Considering parking opened at 4:30am, and we had a wakeup call at 3:30am, this was also way too late.  However, my brain did a good job at turning itself off quickly, I just asked my body to hold it together tomorrow, and zonked pretty well.

Pre Race:

Woke up at 3:30-ish, groggy, and really wishing for many more hours between then and the race start.  I drank my tea, ate my mint oatmega bar, had a good use of the facilities, dithered around, unpacked and repacked my transition bag, did some other stuff and holy crap, it was 4:45.  We got our stuff in the car, I ate my second Rise bar in the car, and got there around 5:20, and sat in line for ~40 mins to park.  Woah.  We are usually at transition at open, and while we expected that we were running later than normal for us, we didn’t expect to be rolling into transition to get body marked 10 minutes before RACE START.

Let’s just say my nerves were running at 110% at that time.  I didn’t have time to do anything but rack my bike, take 2 minutes to lay out my stuff (thank goodness it’s second nature by now), and get out just before they kicked me out.  I kinda wanted to try and use the portas one more time, but there was no time.  We got down to swim start just as the pros were off, and I realized that swim exit was on the other side of the lake – no time to get my flippie floppies over there so I just ditched them on the beach, gave Zliten a kiss and sent him off to his wave, and I just tried to breathe and center myself.  I really, really, really was nervous and rolling into the race so late (no warmup run, swim, potty, second chance to check transition stuff, etc) was not helping but I lined up on the beach (my first running start), they counted down, and then it was go time.

Swim:

I got somewhere in the middle of the pack, high kneed my way in and started swimming as soon as I hit thigh deep water.  There was a little jostling but it wasn’t too bad.  The one thing I had neglected to really analyze was the swim course, so each buoy was a surprise and we were swimming into the sunrise.  Stellar.  Actually, I did a REALLY GREAT job sighting, so great, in fact, that I got swam over EVERY TIME the front pack of a wave decided to make a break for it.  M dot events – much more full contact swimming than I’m used to.  I had some stray thoughts of “I don’t belong here” but when I did get relief from the mob, I really felt like I was swimming strong at minimal effort.

About 3/4ths of the way through, I smashed my hand into someone and looked up to take a breath and thought, that dude has Zliten’s goggles.  I breathed again to that side, and it WAS Zliten I ran into.  We smiled at each other a few more breaths and swim-waved, and then I took off ahead.  First time actually bumping into him in the water.  That made me happy.

Since I hadn’t studied the swim course, I wasn’t sure after the next turn if we were done – I saw a big round orange buoy ahead that looked different than the other ones, which made me think it was over, but I remember there was some sort of zig zag in the course that I wasn’t sure we hit yet.  I swam towards it and lo and behold, it was swim exit.  I was almost sad to be out of the water, both because I felt pretty good in the water, and because I was not looking forward to that big hill out of transition.

Swim time: 42:30 (1.2 miles – 2:22 for 100m pace).  I’m jazzed.  I knew I’d beat Kerrville’s time of 53:55, but I wasn’t thinking it would be by 11 minutes and 25 seconds.  Also, I know next time I can give it a little more.  I probably had a sub-40 in me, but I knew it would be a long day, I was undertrained, and I just wanted to finish.  Very content with this.

T1:

Not having my sandals sucked.  The concrete was rocky and hurt and transition was BIG, so I had to walk the whole way to my bike.  I was even walking so funny a volunteer asked me if I was ok.  I missed my rack, found it, and then did a nice slow, smooth, methodical transition.  I was walking out and I heard Zliten in transition say he’d see me on the bike, which made me happy.

T1 time: 4:44.  A little slow, maybe, but not offensive.  Pretty much the same as my last 70.3.

Bike:

Got out to the mount line, got on my bike (almost fell over just being dumb next to the railing), got going, and steeled myself for the first hill.  I felt like how that hill went would set the tone for the bike, and it kinda did.  I put my head down, spun through it in an easy gear, and emerged at the top… sorta fine.  Then we went down the rollercoaster, and I rode my brakes a bit and was scared, headed over a bridge and then got to work again on the second part of hill one.  Oddly enough (to me, I’m sure this is old hat to anyone else that’s been riding a bike for more than a day), getting in granny gear and just chugging up hard hills works.  I got to the top feeling a-ok about the day, especially because I knew the flat we had here would last for a while.  It dawned on me then I’d forgotten my ride glide (or any sort of chafing protection anywhere), but nothing I could do about that now.

My goal was to eat something every 2 miles.  This didn’t quite pan out, but I got quite a bit of nutrition down (about 3.5 packs of chomps total).  I also took a little more caffeine than normal, topping out at about 2.5 cups of coffee equivalent on the bike, which for this lady is a LOT (I drink one diet coke or iced tea and I’m wired for the day).  At one point, I took a caff chew and my stomach twinged a bit, so I moved to the half caff and no caff ones.  I got down about 3/4 of a camelback with one lemonade nuun in it.  It was still pretty cool (probably mid to upper-70s on the bike), so I didn’t feel dehydrated through the race at all, which was nice (considering the expectation of the possibility of the bike ride ending in the upper 80s and the run being in the 90s to 100s like last year).

Back to the course, I spun easy and conservative on the front part of the course – I knew I hadn’t trained to push a hilly 56 mile course and I didn’t want to be too cooked on the run, so I kept with my ~3:40 per mile pace.  Oh yeah.  Another thing I forgot to do with the time crunch was set my garmin to bike mode – so it was giving me run pace on my bike.  Oops.  Killed some time trying to figure out what pace = speed though, so there’s that.  I screamed (literally) down the downhill at 10 (hill 2), and got to work on the mile uphill at 11 feeling fine.  This picture did not do it justice.

Right around then I heard Zliten come up behind me, pass me, and work his way up the hill just a little faster than me and I never caught him again, he stayed about 3 minutes, give or take, ahead of me the entire time.  Then, we went back to what I thought was flats and saw my speed keep improving.  Killer!  I might kick the shit out of my Kerrville bike split!

Then, we hit the turnaround and I realized two things – 1) tailwind is nice, expect when you have to head back into it for 10 miles, especially when you didn’t notice it on the way out and just thought you were doing well, and 2) false flats only suck on the way up, which is the way I was heading.  So mile 18-28 or so was just slightly uphill and into the wind (minus the return of the up and down screamer, which sucked worse into the wind – hill 3!)

Around that time, the lack of ride glide and the lack of training, plus a dose of chipseal road into the wind, made me hit a pretty bad low on the bike.  Everything hurt, I was only halfway through, I still had the evil switchback road, and I whined to myself a lot.  After I realized I was down, I stuffed a few chomps in my face, and then hit the really pretty 2.5 mile downhill part of the course through a little canyon and trees!!! (the only shade of the course) and I felt better.

Then, we headed down the road to the switchback, which I neglected to remember was also uphill (grrr), and then got to work on hill #4.  I got in granny gear again (a little too early, oops) and chugged and chugged and read the chalk writing all the way up (I especially liked the “Shut Up Legs”) and passed some people and then holy crap – I was up it.

I approached the turnaround and saw Zliten and we exchanged the conversation of:

Me: “OW MY CROTCH!”

Zliten: “something something wonder day love something something”

Apparently I gave him the seeds for the “crotch song” which went something like “My crotch, your crotch, all our crotches hurt together”, which he sang for the next 10 miles.  Oddly enough, I didn’t have much of the delirious moments this ride like normal.  After mile 30, every time I caught myself out of aero position and hurting I told myself “everything hurts, get fast and it will be over quicker”.  I spent a lot of the first half on the drops because I felt more stable, but the second half, minus some position changing for relief, I stayed in aero almost exclusively to the point where the muscles holding me in aero hurt.

The nice long downhill on the way up wasn’t even that bad until the end (hill #4 – around mile 40), and then we hit flats and then the chipseal again, which I expected to be miserable… except this time the wind was at my back so I got in aero and just cranked as much as I could.  I kept thinking to myself “I am so ready to be done with the bike” and then for some reason had to clarify to the universe that I meant I wanted to be done with the bike at mile 56, in transition, not on the side of the road wrecked or flatted.  I did this clarification each time.  I know what happens when you are not specific with your wishes.

I still saw people going OUT around mile 28 as I was coming in at mile 48.  It was nice to know I wasn’t dead fucking last.  I got off the chipseal, around the corner, and thought I was back at the park – NOPE.  A couple miles to go.  Everything was hurting, and I was SO FUCKING READY to be off the bike (which I had to keep clarifying with the universe, didn’t want to jinx myself).  As I headed in, the wind hit me head on and miles 52, 53, 54 went SO SLOW (not in terms of pace, but each minute took at least 5, I swear) and I was getting really, really, down, I just wanted to cry.  My body was over it.  Finally, I hit the screamer downhill, the bridge, and the crazy half mile uphill right before transition.  A spectator really helped me and talked me up it, and then all of a sudden, I was riding my brakes into transition.  I dismounted a little before the dismount line, and the lady told me I could go a little further and I said “NOPE, I’m ready to be off the bike, like, about 26 miles ago”, and walked it over the dismount line and into transition.

Bike time: 3:45:46 (14.88 mph).  I would have loved to be closer to the 3:31 I did at Kerrville, but it was a WAY harder course, and I was WAY less trained this time.  I’ll take it.

T2:

I was definitely out of it after that bike.  It took a lot out of me.  I did my thing, and got going (walking) and got halfway to run exit, and then two things happened simultaneously. First, I noticed I still had my damn bike gloves on.  Second, I heard a “QUIX!!!” and there was Zliten next to me.  Well, I wasn’t going back to drop my gloves, so I stashed them in two of my tri suit pockets and did everything I could to make with the quickness and head out of transition with my husband as they announced our names.

T2 time: 4:29.  This was incredibly slow, but I was incredibly out of it.  I sort of wanted to sit down for a bit, maybe take a nap, maybe sit in a corner somewhere and rock back and forth.  I did none of these things, so I’ll call it a win.

Run:

Zliten started jogging slowly out of transition, so I did everything I could do to match pace.  It was SO, SO good to see him, but we kinda tanked our first couple miles running together.  Instead of inspiring each other, we both walked whenever the other one was feeling weak, so the first 5k took us something stupid like 40 mins.  This was before the first giant hill, which we had planned to walk, but we were wussing out on the rollers.  Zliten stopped to use the potty, I walked so he could catch up, and then he caught me and wanted to run, but we were almost at said gigantic hill, so we walked.  At the top of the hill, he wanted to run, I wasn’t ready, so I just sent him off.  I walked about 100 more meters than he did, and we turned onto energy lab 2 (named because it has a power plant, and it’s almost a perfect replica of the stretch of the same name at Kona).

While he was in the restroom, I finally popped my 303s (herbal muscle relaxers).  I had 2 with me on the bike which I resisted, but I.just.hurt.so.bad on the run and I wanted to not suck so bad so at mile 4, in they went.  Around energy lab start, they kicked in, and I decided I was going to run until the hill at 9.  Ambitious, because the most I had run without stopping so far was maybe half a mile, but on I went.  I passed Zliten, and I was cooking down the street at 11-ish minute miles.  And I didn’t stop at mile 6, or 7… I walked .2 before mile 8 because my stomach did a belly flop after taking two chomps, but then it went away and I picked it up.  Zliten was behind me close enough I could hear him talking with other people and saying delirious things, but I needed to just ZONE on the road ahead and play the quiet game, so I stayed ahead.

Mile 8.5 found the epic downhill (which was the epic uphill before), which I ran down in the 9s (wheeeee!), until my shoes started melting and sticking to the pavement.  Seriously.  That’s what I thought.  Actually, it was TAR that heated up and stuck to my shoes, but it made every step feel like I was walking in gum once I hit the flats.  HOLY DEMORALIZATION, BATMAN.  I stopped at the bottom to rinse off my shoes, and then I decided it was walking time even though I wasn’t to the hill yet.  Zliten caught up to me there and we talked and got water and ice and powerade in the hula station at mile 9, and then hiked up the half mile hill.

We then did our own thing.  Zliten was running pretty steady at 13-14 min/miles, I was run/walking – 11 min miles when I could muster it, and better on downhills, but anytime I hit an incline, my legs shut down and I had to walk, so we kept ping ponging.  Finally, he got a bit ahead of me the last 2 miles (always in my sights, but I could never catch him), and then I ran into the finish and tried to do a silly little jump, but my legs weren’t working, so I’m sure that didn’t turn out.

Run: …no official time (they’re missing official run times for the back of the packers).  My guess is about 2:59.  Yeah, that bad.  This was easily one of, if not the most challenging half marathon I’ve ever run (even standalone), coupled with the fact that I’m so under-trained and I haven’t run a half marathon since my marathon in November, and I’ve had only 3 double digit runs this year.

Total time: …. no official time.  With the magic of the time calculator, I’ve estimated my official unofficial finish time at 7:36:29.  This would be 12 minutes longer than Kerrville, but holy shit guys, I’m stoked to finish and not die.  Six weeks ago, I couldn’t even run and barely bike, and Sunday, I did a half ironman that was SO much harder than my first, and only missed my time by 12 minutes.  My HR wasn’t the limiting factor either – it was average low 150s on both the bike and the run.

EDIT: One site still says no time, the other says the run was 3:04:15, and the official time is 7:41:44.  Seems odd since I stopped my garmin quite a bit after the end and it said 3:01.  I’ll update later.

Post race – I went with Zliten to the med tent, he needed ice for his knee that seized up, I took some cold towels to cool off and some electrolyte water, but I was remarkably… fine.  The rest of the day involved hiking our damn bikes up that stupid hill out of transition to the car (one last leg of the tri…), a stop at sonic for a burger and some tots and a diet cherry limeade (I wanted nothing sugary after all those blox), and then climbed into bed and drank beer and ate mac and cheese and tried to nap unsuccessfully (too much caffiene during the race) and watched cartoons.  It was lovely.  The next morning we packed up all our stuff, ate BBQ, drove 6.5 hours home, ate tacos, drank a margarita and some beer, and relaxed.

I have a lot more post-race thoughts, but let me sum up a few things:

• No post race sickies.  I felt awesome.  I ate, I drank beer, I felt lovely. Total win.
• Soooooo sunburnt.  Time crunch = no sunscreen application before, and I tried in both transitions to sunscreen but it was a big fail.  I caught a bit of my arms but that was it.  I look like a dumb triathloning lobster.  It’s hilarious.  My age is sunburnt into my leg due to bodymarking.
• It is pretty clear to me what I need to work on before Kerrville, in which I actually care about the time, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog in and of itself.
• I gained SEVEN lbs of water weight between Friday AM and Tuesday AM’s weight.  Crazy.  I am peeing like every 5 minutes and everything feels swollen.  I can’t wait for that part to be over, though I did enjoy the diet of crappy carbs, including mac and cheese and beer two nights in a row.
• So happy for a week off.  My body can use it.  However, I’m really fired up for the second half of the season and to put together the July/Aug/Sept training plan!!

More later, but for now, signing off, acknowledging my continued survival.

Apologies for the combining of weeks here, but it’s been incredibly busy and I did a long race report, so there.

It’s really sinking in that a less week from now, I’ll be in Lubbock.  I’ve gotten less TERRIFIED of it.  The hay is absolutely now all in the barn.  I had hoped to squeeze in a little more early last week, but my body and the weather both said NOPE, so that was my sign from the universe that it’s all good.  Shut down those compulsive urges to get JUST ONE MORE double digit run/brick and work on sleep, recovery, and maintaining.  I have not trained as much as I wanted, but I think I’ve trained as much as I NEED to get through this race.

A metaphor that popped into my head this week (maybe I read it somewhere?) is triathlon is a long conversation with yourself.  I expect BSLT will be a REALLY long conversation with myself, and I hope I am kind enough to be a good companion.  To that end, for the first time in a race, I have zero time goals beyond finishing before the cut off.  I may make some on the course, but as long as they give me a finisher medal and I come through the arch in one piece, it’s all good.  And I mean really, for real.  No time goals.  Would it be nice to beat my Kerrville time on a stupid hard course?  Totally.  But I don’t expect it and it would be the cherry on top of my already super yummy and totally complete hot fudge sundae.

My goals are:

Swim strong.  Don’t hold back too much, but certainly don’t redline.  Enjoy this part of your day without too much thought about the rest of it.

Bike CONSERVATIVELY.  Anytime I think I feel awesome on the bike, eat more.  Bike strong on the flats, ride the uphills like a granny, try not to get too terrified on the downhills, and anytime you feel fatigued SLOW THE FUCK DOWN and recover a bit.

Run smart.  Take some time to get going and settle into a comfortable pace.  Walk the big hill at mile 3.  Remember you’ll be happier with a nice, slow 12 min/mile jog the whole way than a 10 min/mile the first 6 miles and then blowing up.  Eat.  Chompy blocks are your friends.  Powerade is also your friend if chompy blocks don’t set well.  If you feel awesome, pick it up at the ~mile 10 downhill.  Do something awesome at the finish for a picture!

Also, feel good enough after the race to enjoy some champagne and not feel sick for 2 days.

After this race, I’m taking a full week off training (either completely or certainly MOSTLY), and resting up for the second half of the season.

Training:

Again, been a challenge to balance what I know I *should* be doing with what I can do.  My body just needs so much more recovery time right now than it did pre-injury.  I know I should just be happy that it’s allowing me to swim/bike/run, but I’ve only been doing 4 days of training per week when I know I should be doing AT LEAST 5.   The long sessions are taking a lot out of me, but I think I would be even more ill prepared if I wasn’t riding my bike 30, 40, 50 miles or running 7,8,10 instead of splitting up the hours more days per week.

I’m definitely ready for that week of recovery since I haven’t been following the 3 weeks on, 1 week recovery plan since the injury, and then to get back to normal training hours/sessions/life after that.

Week 23:

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode III 10.75 mi 00:30 Run: 10 Mile Brick Run 10 mi 02:01
Wednesday: Swim: Lake Pflugerville Test 70.3 Swim 2000 m 00:44
Thursday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode III 18.13 mi 01:00 Swim: Lake Pf Wave Pool! 1600 m 00:40 Bike: Since I had to… 6.25 mi 00:20
Friday: off
Saturday: off
Sunday: Swim: Lake Pf Tri Swim 500 m 00:11:45 Bike: Lake Pf Tri Bike 14 mi 00:46 Run: Lake Pf Tri Run 3 mi 00:30

About 7 hours  total time.

Week 24:

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Star Wars Episode IV 27 mi 01:30
Wednesday: Swim: Pool 900 m 00:19
Thursday: Run: 2 Neighborhood Loops 6.7 mi 01:20
Friday: off
Saturday: Veloway 10 Loops 30.5 mi 01:51
Sunday: off

About 5.5 hours total time.

Food/Scale:

Progress again!  Not as much as I was hoping, but forward momentum is good.  This week saw a few days in the 176s, and even a 174.8 on Saturday!  New low weight by 1 lb.  I’m back to last year’s ‘race weight” (which I attained for approximately 1 week before going on vacation and fucking it all up) and I have a whole half the season to go.  Patience, diligence, and careful attention is working, albiet sloooooowly.  I’ll take it over the alternative.

I don’t have all that much to say about these weeks.  It’s the proverbial 90% good, 10% whatever (refined grains, fried food, sweets, booze, etc).  Solid, steady nutrition work.

Week 23:

Monday: 29 DQ, 1586 calories
Tuesday: 30 DQ, 1893 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1494 calories
Thursday: 31 DQ, 1835 calories
Friday: 24 DQ, 1480 calories
Saturday: 18 DQ, 1682 calories
Sunday: 0 DQ, 2595 calories

Avg calories per day: 1795

Avg DQ per day: 22.7

Weight range: low – 178.0, high 180.8

Week 24:

Monday: 23 DQ, 1512 calories
Tuesday: 29 DQ, 1538 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1607 calories
Thursday: 25 DQ, 1879 calories
Friday: 19 DQ, 1674 calories
Saturday: DQ 3, 2154 calories
Sunday: 21 DQ, 1593 calories

Avg calories per day: 1708

Avg DQ per day: 21

Weight range: low – 174.8, high 179.2

Life:

I’m having thoughts about life feeling stagnant.  Not boring (actually the opposite), it’s not that I’m not enjoying what I do and my life, it’s just… feeling like something’s missing, some new challenge is out there.  Totally abstract and probably just mid-season psychopathy as normal, and most likely either completely caused by or at least incredibly amplified by hormones, but I did have a bit of a meltdown on Friday.  Work stress at 11 this week + BSLT nerves + more = Quix shrieking repeatedly at the top of my lungs on the way home from work to release stress (I’m not a crier).  Sorry Austin.  After work I spent about two hours playing Rockband facemeltingly loud and felt much, much better.  I guess I just wanted to yell at somebody and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault.

I’ve had a nice relaxing weekend and think I may be able to get through this week without killing anyone but my associate is out so anything’s possible.  The good news is my resting heart rate was doing ok Saturday morning, I figured it would be flipping out, but it was solid at around 52 while in the car, which explains the ~5 bpm higher than complete relaxation.  This is probably one of the reasons I haven’t been piling on the training – quite a bit of the stress on my body right now is not coming from swim/bike/run.  It’s a huge scary risk to be resting so much to me but I think it’s the right option right now.  Ask me again in a week.

Fun stuff – We got to start our Savage Worlds campaign (nerdy, tabletop role playing game stuff).  I joined the most interesting man in the world, a Russian scientist, and a extreme survivalist as a sexy, loudmouth, greedy thief in a strange tropical world where we saved a village and stopped at the point where we boarded boats to try to steal a big ship for transport.

I made some killer lasagna – a mix between the traditional beef/italian sausage and veggie, and I went with whole wheat noodles and about half of what I was supposed to use, if not less.  I don’t really miss them.  Also, I have some pretty yummy beef and barley soup in the crockpot I’m looking forward to putting in my face.

And, that’s about all I have.  Watching John Dies at the End, soaking up some couch time, trying to get as much recharge in my bones as possible before tackling this week, and then the trip to Lubbock, and the race itself.  I’ll see y’all on the other side.  Wish me luck!

Last year, the Lake Pflugerville Triathlon was all rainbows and unicorns.

This took my nerves and expectations to a new level because what should have been a fun little local triathlon to sharpen my speed skills 2 weeks out of my first 70.3 of the year grew to this behemoth of “this is what I’m going to measure myself against” somehow by Saturday.

I realize this is stupid.  I’m glad I was able to let go of that before I heard the airhorn go off. I sliced those unicorns that taunted me to chase them into steaks. and grilled em up for breakfast.  This is not an A race for me, there is no magical self worth by PRing this specific course, and it certainly isn’t going to do anything for me going into BSLT.

Last year I was doing tons of speedwork, sprint/olympic distance workouts, and at that point was completely healthy.  This year, I’m at the tail end of cramming a last-minute base build coming from almost zero real training for a month of being injured, with a knee that is sketchy at higher speeds and a newcomer to the party, an angry lower back/butt muscle on that side.  So, totally, the same, right?

How did I fare?  I’m making you read the whole report this time.  So settle in.

Day before:

We did the normal steak/veggies/salad/bread food for lunch and played cards with my parents in the afternoon.  We did the not so normal thing and bickered the whole way home (seriously, we never fight).  Zliten was annoyed at some things and incredibly hungry, and I was in MAJOR pain in my glute/back and also incredibly hungry, so I finally told him we needed to just shut up and stop it and resume after we ate.  Dinner was mac n cheese and pb toast, and I snacked on some watermelon, and then we got over ourselves and were fine.

Then, we got back to normal and practiced our transitions, packed everything into the Beast, drank sleepy juice, and headed to bed and I slept pretty well (though I only got about 6 hours).

Pre Race:

I woke up around 3:50 (10 mins before alarm) and iced my back and knee and rolled and massaged to get everything in as solid shape as possible.  I ate my normal oatmega bar and sipped tea and could not poo minus a little consolation poo right before leaving.  Consolation poo is the worst!

We got there a little past transition open at 5, but still got a good spot on the rack near the front near bike out.  I love this tri because it’s open racking, so you don’t get stuck somewhere weird that you hate because you’re in a certain age group, and that Zliten and I can rack together. I also love that it’s the tri where we usually see the most of our tri friends.  R and his wife run the transition here, and it’s always awesome to see them all morning.

I forget what happened where, but there was real, non-consolation poo that made me so happy I almost tweeted about it but decided against it, a warmup run, setting up transition for real instead of just claiming a spot, almost forgetting my cap and goggles in transition as it was closing, and then a warmup swim.  This was the longest swim warmup I’ve done, probably about 400m, which I believe would ultimately be a good decision.

We hung out with our buddy B and his mom for a while, and then sent Zliten off to get in his wave and cheered loudly for his start.  Once B lined up, I went to swim out and waited for Zliten.  It was hard to judge his time since I couldn’t see a race clock and the later waves got delayed due to a buoy malfunction (which apparently he was just crossing as it floated away so he was even involved), but he got out looking pretty winded like he swam his ass off and I guessed and told him about 13 mins.

Since B was starting right about the time Zliten got out, I waited around and cheered him in too.  I also saw JB, so I stuck around and cheered in her husband J.  After that, I realized I just had a little longer to wait, so I sat down for a bit.  The nice thing about cheering people in is I didn’t have a whole 40-ish minutes to get into my head, so I felt relatively calm.  Between all that as well, I ate one cliff caffeinated chomp and a whole package of sport beans.  Eating right before the tri last time worked out well for me, and this time things were even settling better today.  Good deal.

So, FYI, there is a lot of pre-race here because I WAS IN THE FUCKING SECOND TO LAST WAVE of five million waves.  I actually can’t wait to get older next year to move up to 3rd to last.   I’m just putting that out there.  It’s an extra degree of difficulty on this tri for younger women.

Finally, finally, my wave was up, I lucked out with a spot on the inside about 2 back, the horn went off, and the swim was on.

Swim:

I really suck at sprint swims.  I really, really don’t feel like I can even get going for the first 300-500m of a swim and guess what?  That’s a sprint.  I took a two pronged approach to fix it this year – a) longer warmup, though it being an HOUR before my wave kinda sucked, and b) just planning to HURT.  I went out fast and hit 100m gasping for air.  The goal was to hurt, not to drown, so I dialed it back just a little bit and my breathing got better.  I couldn’t tell exactly, but I thought I was in a decent position for my wave.  I passed my first pink cap (the wave in front) just a bit before halfway, and kept passing them so I figured I was doing pretty well.

The second half, I settled into a good pace and just tried to keep it in the uncomfortable zone.  I didn’t get passed by my first white cap (the last wave) until about 450m in and only a few got by me.  I swam until I touched bottom, got up, high kneed my way out of the water, and headed out to transition.  The timing mat was further away than I remembered last year (it’s about a tenth of a mile from shore to the stairs down to transition and it was almost at the stairs this year).

My biggest victory?  I didn’t break my stroke if anyone jostled me, I swam continuously and pushed the pace hard, and I sighted incredibly well.

Time: 11:45 (2:21/100m).  Shows as 9 seconds longer than last year but considering how much Zliten and I both have improved in swimming and we were both longer than last year, I’m going to entertain the thought that the buoy malfunction caused the swim to be a little long.

T1:

All went as expected.  I felt a lot of that transition gravity but I fought it pretty well.  Having JB cheering me on helped.  I’m beginning to think I might want to go without some of my creature comforts on a sprint (camelback, gloves, put garmin on bike not on wrist, etc) but the miraculous thing?  Exact same T1 to the second from last year.  Apparently I have my system down.

Time: 2:53 (same as last year)

Bike:

I got going as expected and had no problems clipping in.  I had even remembered to set my bike in middle middle gear like you’re supposed to on a sprint with a pretty nice flat start, and put a chew in my mouth as I checked time of day.  I was exactly on pace to hit my 1:30. Then, I said “on your left” for the first time.  I would continue to say “on your left” at least 300 times.  You see, starting second to last wave, behind all the older gents and ladies, means you have the majority of the race to pass.  Morale boosting?  Sure.  Aiding in motivation to push and go fast and giving you time to just crank and zone out?  Not so much.  When you are dodging and weaving around so many people, it’s hard to keep pushing, to not tuck in and take a rest.  Sometimes you HAVE to tuck in just when you got your mojo going because it’s either slam on the brakes, hit the lady on a huffy bike riding in the middle of the lane, or get hit by a car.

A few miles in, I realized something was REALLY wrong.  The wind was fairly brutal, but I was pushing hard, and passing the crap out of people, and I looked down and my garmin an it had me at an average of 15 mph.  What what whaaaaaaat?  How am I sucking so bad?  I checked my gearing and I was where I normally ride, I forced myself to get extremely comfy with riding around obstacle in aero to cut wind resistance, but the number wouldn’t budge.  I mean, Zliten and I ride 15mph easy rides on the hillier parts in worse wind.  I decided then it was time to ride by feeling, and that feeling had better be pain.

Just in time, my knee started hurting when I pushed real hard.  Brilliant.  Not the pain I was looking for, not at all.  So, I just resolved myself to have the worst bike split of my sprint tri career (ignoring the first one on my old Schwinn), and figured I was just going to push myself just to the line my knee tolerated, pass people, and practice aero.  I rode one stretch of approximately 1.5 miles completely in aero, jammin out, passing at least 20 people, finally feeling like good things were happening.  Then I looked at my garmin.  14.7 mph average.   What. the. fuck.

I finally noticed a few things: a) we were a lot closer to bike in than I expected b) the mile markers seemed way off, I saw mile 12 and my garmin said 10 and c) time of day agreed with me – I wasn’t nearly as far off the mark as I thought.  I rode the last 2 miles in as hard as I could saving my knee and dismounted (another slow flying dismount) without incident.

Time: 46:27.  18.1 MPH.  Oddly enough, instead of my worst bike split ever, it was my second best (and my best was on a super flat, zero wind, perfect temperature course and only .3mph better).  Would I have ridden so fast with a working garmin?  Or faster? Good question.  However, I’m sure my head may have been a little more positive with one.  To do better next time: more eating.  I ate 4 chews total because of all that shit that was going on.  I finally just sort of put the honeystinger chew bag in my mouth around mile 10 while I rode in aero and got a few out and had to say twice with my mouth full “on your left” so I just gave up.  Who needs food in a sprint anyway? 😛

T2:

Just wanted to get out to the run as fast as possible.  At this point, I still had a shot at a PR, even a sub-1:30 depending on which legs showed up, and I was going to give ’em the best chance possible by not dilly dallying.  Again as T1, exactly the same as last year.  I’m not sure how I could do much better, I have this one down to the bare minimum.  True flying dismount leaving my shoes on the bike?  Running faster?  That’s about it…

Time: 1:19

Run:

The legs I wanted did NOT show up (I kinda got the hint when the knee started hurting on the bike but I hoped for the best).  I got up the hill and started going and wow, everything hurt.  My back, my glute, my knee… so I immediately made the call to switch from pace to my FUCK IT screen (time of day, current and average heart rate) and run that way.  I didn’t want to spend the whole run looking at my limits, I wanted to push them as far as I could without injury.  Slowly, things started to feel better.  My back loosened up.  My knee just felt tight not hurty.  It got tolerable around the mile 1 marker, so it was time to see what I had.

What I had was not as much as last year.  I still haven’t looked at the splits, but I know what my HR was 178 average over that run.  Once it got over 180, I’d pull back just a bit.  Once it got to 175, I’d speed up.  I got to that really uncomfortable place where I just had to turn my head off as much as possible and keep going.  It helped that I’ve run this trail like 100 times, so I know exactly what’s next and how close I am to the finish.  I didn’t save anything, I just kept running steady, trying to do math with time of day, and in the home stretch just accepting it was what it was and ran into the finish strong.

Time: 30:18 (10:06/mile).  It was a little disappointing to be 2 minutes slower than last year, but considering last year’s run was almost an out of body experience and this year my injury was definitely a limiter, plus no running speedwork to speak of since 10/20 – I’ll take it.

Total Time: 1:32:44.  Last year was 1:32:12.

At first, I was a little miffed that I missed last year’s time by so little.  Could I have found 33 extra seconds on that course Sunday?  Maybe.  If I ignored my knee twinges, but who knows how badly that would have ended?  If I had a working garmin on the bike?  If I started in the earlier waves (it was less windy on the bike and less passing people)?  If I pared down my T1?

However, let’s think about it this way.  Last year, this was the race of my life – my best put together race all year, the one of which I was most proud.  My head clicked.  I executed.  Many other ones, I completely fell apart at some point, so this was a huge victory.  This year, I’m less than a month back from being cleared to run 1 mile, and in 2 weeks, I’ll tackle the beast which is BSLT, which has kinda been the focus of my training, not PRing a sprint.  I’ve put together some solid mental game for each and every race so far this year.  The sole reason I did not smash this PR is that while my knee is just fine with long activities, it’s just not ok with speed.  Give me that 2 minutes back on the run I had last year, and I’d be talking about how I just missed breaking into the 1:29s.

My placement (besides that run) was much higher as well.  I was in the top 1/3 of my gender, top 1/2 of my age group, and just missed top 1/2 total.  That “terrible” bike split got me 8/33, or top 1/4 in my age group.  If I could have done that 1:30, I could have moved up to about 8th overall out of 33, and 1:23 (out of my reach right now, but give me a year or two…) would have got me on the podium.

All in all, a solid race.  Again, same as last year, I put together efforts I was proud of on all 3 legs, plus you can’t get any better than the same transition times to the second.  I would have been overjoyed to have this 2013 race in 2012.  This year, I’ll nod and smile a pleased smile instead of jumping up and down about it, because all energy from now on is being conserved to expend in Lubbock in… ulp… eleven days…

Mentionable note: Zliten crushed his 1:33 from last year and did a 1:31.  Yep, he beat me.  While it’s arguable whether starting 34 minutes before me and not having to dodge and weave half the bikes in Austin, plus the less wind on the course might have given him an advantage (hey, just mentioning it) – he beat me by a minute.  I’ll give it to him.   There he is above looking all badass running (on the right).

Training…

In case you were wondering what trainering in the dark while it’s raining out looks like, this is it.  Quix is not impressed.

It was an interesting week.  In deciding that we needed more endurance, we ditched all the quick n easy workouts this week in attempts to cram some long runs, bikes, and bricks in the hopes of furthering the #dontdieBSLT703 cause.  So instead of 3 swims, 3 bikes, 3 runs, and weights, we did 4 runs and 2 bikes totaling about 8.5 hours.  All runs outside, all bikes inside (oops, stupid rain).  We had intended to also do a 1 hour open water swim but haven’t gotten around to that one yet either.  Bah.

We’ll skip swim and weights since I skipped them this week.  I’d be more concerned about the swim, but I swam 4 times a week for most of May, so I’ll give myself a break.

Bike:

I did two long bikes on the trainer.  On Wednesday, my goal was two-fold – to hit 40 miles and to ride in a manner that was not just easy-peasy.  Sunday, we were slated to ride for 2 hours outside but thunderstorms kept us inside.  Both did the same workout, which I feel like leveled up my trainer riding this week – descending pyramid intervals.  5 miles warmup, 5 miles “on” (riding as hard as sustainable, getting the HR up as high as possible), 5 miles “off” (easy), 4 on, 4 off, 3 on, 3 off, 2 on, 2 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, 2 cooldown.

Wednesday, I completed this in about 1:45 on resistance 2/5, with a HR AVG about 115.  Sunday, I upped the resistance to 3/5, and did this for the first 40 miles + a steady ride for 15 more at the end ending about 2:27 for a half iron minus 1 trainer ride, HR AVG about 130 (which is a HUGE victory for me, it’s really hard for me to get my heart going on the trainer).  While I’m a little peeved that I wasn’t about to ride outside (stupid thunderstorms), I’m pretty happy with my ride and can’t complain about ~95 bike miles this week, and running off the bike both times.

Run:

It was very, very clear that the #1 thing I need to work on for BSLT is run endurance.  This was my kryptonite this week (but I think I’m well on my way to conquering it).  So, on the docket this week was more mile rampage, plus a run off the bike.  Tuesday, I went out for 7 excruciatingly slow miles (I think it took me almost 1.5 hours :P).  Trying to keep my HR in zone 2 was a HUGE challenge after about mile 3 and in the heat.  Heat acclimation + missing my run fitness + impeding race = not fun.  However, I know that zone 2 is key – I am not going to do myself any good training all fast so I stuck with it.  Thursday, I did 8.25 miles slightly less but still excruciatingly slow (1:42), with slightly less but still a lot of problems keeping my HR down.  It’s like February’s HR frustration all over again but in 80 and humid, so a much higher degree of difficulty. 😛

Sunday’s run was a little better.  Running off 55 trainer miles in the noon heat, I knew there was no way I was going to stay in zone 2 unless I wanted to do a 5k brisk walk, so I just ran with Zliten.  He’s a big jerk and much more HR and heat trained right now so he was cruising along at 11 minute miles and I was huffing, puffing, panting, growling, and hurting through them, but slowing down felt worse and it felt kinda good to push myself.  At the end I was even in the 9s (…and my knee was fine!!!!).  I figured my average HR would be about 200, but it was only 164 – aka – top of zone 3.  Probably about where I’ll race as long as no other factors are in play, so good practice.  Could I have done 10 more miles?  It may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but yeah, I could grasp doing it.

Overall note: 4 sessions instead of 9 = way less workout gear to wash.  That’s kinda nice!

Monday: off
Tuesday: Bike: 2 Neighborhood Loops 7 mi 01:30
Wednesday: Bike Trainer + Star Wars Episode I 40 mi 01:43, Run: Running Day Brick 1 mi 00:11:33
Thursday: Run: Slow and Low, That Is The Tempo 8.25 mi 01:42
Friday: off
Saturday: off (yard sale)
Sunday: Bike: Trainer Intervals + Star Wars… 55 mi 02:27, Run: Short Neighborhood Loop 3.1 mi 00:35

About 8 hours total.  While in a perfect world there would have been some swims in there, I’m pretty happy with a nice bike/run heavy week.

Food…

I wish I could blame my fail this week on the hungries, and I suppose that was part of it, but I just flat out ate a) too much and b) crap I shouldn’t have more often than I should have.

Monday, I was craving tacos like WOAH and hit up a mexican food restaurant super duper hungry, which meant chips and salsa, plus I ate all the rice and the beans and flour tortillas and if that was it, I probably wouldn’t be whining.  Later there was some ramen as a snack, and a cookie.  Tuesday-Thursday were heavy training days, so though I had more calories than normal, I’ll give those a pass because I don’t usually do 2 hour runs on weekdays, and it was all good food.  Then, Friday, we went out TWICE – for lunch it was pretty good except for the green bean fries appetizer we split.

Then, for dinner, we tried a new chinese buffet… I was out of my mind going out for questionable food twice in one day but a plate full of veggies sounded good and I can usually get that at these types of establishments.  We tried a new spot and, holy crap, I’m still recovering.  It made me shoot up about 5 lbs in weight overnight and felt awful for days.  The food was actually fairly tasty, but must have been loaded with more MSG than I’ve ever had because holy crap… so much bloating and usually I’m just fine with salt overload.  Then Saturday, I forgot to eat vegetables and fruit and filled up on three tortillas, some meats, some cheese, and beer.  Sunday, I had a nice healthy lunch, but dinner involved white bread, half a bottle of wine, and corn cake.  Weekends are my kryptonite here.

However, I owned up to and tracked all my calories and yep, too much, too much.  ~2400 all weekend and considering two of those days were days off training… yeah, not good.

This week, I have pre-tracked and am ready to tell people no to the junk food and hopefully that will do nice things with how I feel, because sitting here typing this I’m sure my waist has gained about 5 inches and I’ve got a double chin with how my body feels.  Ugh.  I have to remember than one bad meal I can shake off no problem, but 3 days of mostly bad food makes for a miserable next week (or more… I’m still working on sweating it out).

Monday: 17 DQ, 1896 calories
Tuesday: 28 DQ,1674 calories
Wednesday: 25 DQ, 1838 calories
Thursday: 13 DQ, 1895 calories
Friday: 11 DQ, 2301 calories
Saturday: 12 DQ, 2271 calories
Sunday: 14 DQ, 2486 calories

DQ Average: 17 (yuck)

Calorie Average: 2051

Weight: low of 175.8, high of 181.0.  I was thrilled with the 175.8, but this weekend erased all that progress somehow.  Not happy about this upward trend.

Other Stuff…

BSLT Nerves:

I am going between being super confident and ready to kick ass at BSLT, and terrified.  I had convinced myself I was doing well with my training, that I would be ready, and then I read up more detailed accounts of the bike course.  I’m not horrible at rolling hills, but that first climb out of transition looks (and by all race report accounts) is brutal on cold legs.  Also, they throw in a little “fuck you” climb right at the end which by many accounts smashes your legs for the run.

Also, while I’m having frantic visions of being the one lone wuss walking my bike up a too-steep climb, I’m also a little terrified of those climbs the opposite way.  What goes up, must come down.  And being the scaredy biker I am, and reading reports of other, probably less scaredy bikers having to ride their breaks down some of the descents… ieeee.  Total kryptonite.

The swim sounds awesome (a nice spring fed lake), and while the run will be hot and with hills, but this week I proved to myself I can do that.  I’m just scared of getting through the bike alive at this point.

Early Bird:

This week, deciding to do those longer sessions, we had to set much earlier alarms.  Honestly, it wasn’t so bad!  It’s weird, once the heat hits, I’m a lot more ok with wakeups in the dark and/or at sunrise.  I just can’t do it when it’s cold.  Getting on the bike or out to run in the 6am hour wasn’t the death of me, and getting 2+ hours in before work feels good, and means I can have more rest days/not have to do 5 hour long epic weekends/not have to do so many individual sessions.  For this cycle.  For the next, it means I can ramp up the hours a little – this 70.3 is about survival and conquering an injury.  Kerrville (and maybe Austin) will be about chasing down some serious PRs.

Yard Sale:

We spent Saturday morning hawking our wares on the lawn with our next door neighbors, and my parents even brought a table.  We got rid of Zliten’s old bike, a ton of my shoes, two terrariums, our old dvd player, a monitor, and more.  What was left (minus a few things I wasn’t willing to part with for free) got donated.  By doing that, we made 2 rooms much more usable, and with the 150$ we made, we’re going to buy the storage piece we need but didn’t want to spend money on for the workout room, and we can pretty much call that room good.

Also, we got to test the theory that some beers before a training day wouldn’t kill us.  As of right now, our days off training are Friday and Sunday, so we save our funning for Thursday and Saturday nights.  We turn down a lot of plans because of it.  However – what if we lived in a world where a reasonable amount of beers did not impact the ability to get up and train the next day?

The experiment for me consisted of 6 beers (12 for Zliten, but his were weaker) over 8 hours.  During that time, I made sure to eat reasonable amounts of food (no beer for dinner day), hydrate well with lots of water and nuun, and go to sleep very early.  I woke up the next morning feeling just fine, and while I probably wouldn’t have wanted to head straight out the door for a run, I was plenty fine for a long bike ride (and would have also been fine to swim).  After a nice 55 mile warm up, I had a great run.

So, the moral of the story – with some care and attention, I don’t need to be a complete wallflower if plans conflict.  However, we’ll still be alcohol free the week of races (makes the champagne better), which sucks this coming weekend, because I had to turn down about 5 different invites I actually would have liked to attend because of Lake Pflugerville the next day.  Oh well, there will be more parties, but there is only one Pf!

Question of the week: what’s your kryptonite? If I go crazy then will you still call me superman? 🙂

I really don’t have all that much to say, but going to do this for completionist’s sake to have a weekly report (EDIT: ok, fine, more to say than I thought).

Food:

I stopped tracking around Thursday at lunch because, honestly, carbing up for a longer endurance race is something you need to do, but doesn’t look pretty on the diet quality score and the calories.  In retrospect it was silly not to track since it’s just a number, a metric, but the last thing I wanted to do was restrict calories too much the days before and be underfueled.  It was a good thing too, as I felt like my tank was topped off, I had zero stomach issues, and I even forgot my nutrition on the run and did just fine with a few sips of powerade at every other aide station.

My weight ranged between 176.8 and 180.0.  It was the week where I typically don’t make any weight progress (thx u hormones), so that was expected.

What might be more interesting is to note what I ate the last few days before the race because it was NOT normal:

Thursday:

• Normal fage, berries, alpen granola, and pb breakfast
• Went to a work lunch and ended up (not intentionally) with a teeny tiny greek chicken salad.  Oops.  And a few fried pickles.  Double oops.
• Outdoor training + no electrolyes with (oops) meant I needed salt badly on the way home so I ate half a bag of smartfood popcorn.
• Normal type dinner.  I don’t remember exactly what it was.  I was pretty satiated from the popcorn but OMG I had to have something right then or I was going to get dizzy on the ride home.

Friday:

• Normal breakfast
• Went Vietnamese for lunch.  Normally I avoid since it’s not whole grains, but I indulged in a big chicken vermicelli bowl with lots of fish sauce and hot sauce.  Day before, I eat nothing spicy.  Day before the day before, I enjoy. 🙂
• No snacks because, huge lunch.
• Another normal-ish dinner.  Again, don’t remember what (this is why I track) but something normal like fish rice/quinoa and veggies.

Saturday:

• Bean and cheese breakfast taco with normal flour tortilla
• Cookie stop at Colin Street bakery – had 2 small cookies
• Lunch: turkey club sandwich, salad.  Asked for it without mayo, it came with extra mayo, was too hungry to care and ate it.
• Snacked on pretzels all day whenever I got hungry (probably about 2-3 servings)
• Dinner:  Room service… grilled cheese sandwich and mashed potatoes, a few of Zliten’s fries

Race Day:

• Pre race: oatmega bar, chai tea (meant to have another cookie but forgot), half a honeystinger gel 15-30 mins before, ~225 calories
• During the race: 1 powerbar chomp, 2 cliff shot chomps, half a pack pink lemonade honeystinger chomps.  Probably about ~200 calories.   On run, meant to take down more chomps, but forgot them so just some powerade sips… probably about ~100 calories max.
• Lunch: In n out cheeseburger and fries
• Dinner: Champagne, beer, and random snacks I found around the house (half a bag of carrots and hummus, etc etc).

I was pretty hungry the next day (in a perfect world, I would have skipped the champers and beer and refueled with chicken breast and veggies but… well… y’know), and ate a few hundred more calories than normal but all was right with the world Tuesday.

I felt much better with the heavy carb/less fat meal the day before, and doing a little extra white carbage the few days before I think helped my tank feel full without a whole bunch of fuel the day of either before or during.  I mean, it was only a 3 hour race so it’s not really indicative of what will work for a 70.3, but it’s the best data I have before BSLT so you better believe I’ll be finding a place to get a damn club sandwich on sourdough bread. 🙂 Going to go back to the normal steak/taters/veggies next week though and see if there’s a difference.

The next few weeks I’m trying to be on the straight and narrow – I would really like to roll into June 30th as light as I can (within reason of course).

Training:

This was a week of just trying to prepare to race a distance I, in all rights, was not ready to race being cleared from injury just 12 days before.

Weights: I’ve just stopped weights work, minus my chiro sanctioned PT, and I’ll pick it back up in July after the race.  Joe Friel says that during the thick of tri-season, you may or may not find weights helpful, and while I am definitely someone who usually finds weights helpful, I need to make sure that I pick my knee stress wisely and I really need to use all available time making my comeback.  One odd tidbit – my chiro said that women should never ever do squats without a smith machine with significant weight.  Apparently we have too much boobs and butt to actually be able to balance the bar correctly.  So I shouldn’t feel too much like a wuss that I’ve only squatted a) with like less than 40 lbs in Group power class or b) on the machine.  It was science!  Or anatomy, or whatever.

Swimming:

I’m cutting down pool swimming time this month as a) I’m in really great shape here b) I focused on this in May and c) more time for biking and swimming.  I am going to try to make it to the Lake to swim at least 3 times this month and hit up the pool 1-2 times a week as well (after this week – the pool and I are on a break).  However, last week, for which this recap is being written – I actually swam a lot – 4 times (3 times during the week and at the race).  I’m pretty happy with where I’m at pool-wise.  This month, my gains need to be in open water, and sacrificing pool time for long bike/run sessions.

Bike:

I didn’t do a lot here, although I did get a very hot outdoor ride in which actually did bad things for my confidence.  I did a trainer ride on Wed that had some race effort miles in the middle which felt great, and the ride outside in the 90 degree heat at PF.  I felt really weak and wiped after 13 miles at about 0.1 miles per hour (ok fine, 15.5, but still!).  I couldn’t figure out how to dismount off my higher seat and had to circle back once and then at the parking lot almost fell.

My biggest fear at the race, after coming back from the injury and having a lot of other shit to worry about, was that I would biff it on the way into T2.  Someone did that on my second lap.  Instead of wrecking, my brain finally wrapped around the flying dismount – slowest ever, but it gives me hope in like 20 years I might actually look like a veteran triathlete coming in and out of transitions.

Run:

I missed the 3 mile run the Saturday before the race, but I had to get on with some longer runs to ramp up, so I did 4 on Tues and 5 on Thurs.  I can’t lie, they were both kinda rough.  It’s been a long time since that distance was a challenge, but after a month off and weak quads, I was done at the end of each run, no flowery “I wish I could have done more” poetry at all.  However, finishing 5 slow ass miles made me realize I was fine for the race.

The suckiest thing was the combination of starting heat training and starting running again after a month off.  I ignored my heart rate and ran what felt easy, but *foreshadowing* my heart rate is back up through the roof with an effort that was previously perceived as a super easy jog.  I knew I would have to address that soon, but this week, running 4 and 5 miles nonstop was more important to me for race prep/confidence than adhering to a HR plan.

At the race, as I suspected, the limiter was my knee.  I ambled along at about 10:30s which is actually better than I’ve ever done at an Olympic, but any time I tried to push much faster my knee protested, even though I knew the rest of my body could go faster.  So, I raced that line as close as I could, and Zliten noted that I wasn’t limping through most of it, but I definitely had a weird gate at the end, so success – pushed myself as far as I could.  I was hot and a little tired at the end but I definitely wasn’t spent, so here’s hoping that with extra healing, I’ll have a little more to give in race 2 and 3 this month.  My only solace with BSLT’s brutally hilly course is that my knee actually tends to be happy with uphills.  So there is that.

By the days:

Monday: off (volunteered for Cap Tex Tri for 5.5 hours and was WIPED and knee sore after so no training)
Tuesday: Run: Neighborhood Loop + Some 4 mi 00:47, Swim: Estimated Laps 1290 m 00:30
Wednesday: Bike: Trainer w/Pickups – XxX and V… 11.47 mi 00:30, Swim: Race Effort 150s 1350 m 00:30
Thursday: Run: Neighborhood Loop + North Sch… 5 mi 00:58, Bike: Pfluger Loop 13 mi 00:50, Swim: Lake Pf 550 m 00:15:00
Friday: off
Saturday: off (meant to swim but oops)
Sunday: Race!  Swim: Play Tri Olympic Swim 1500 m 00:32, Bike: Play Tri Olympic Bike 22 mi 01:14, Run: Play Tri Olympic Run (short) 5.5 mi 00:58

Thoughts and Other Stuff:

For the next 2-3 weeks, I’m focused on longer sessions.  I’ve been lucky to be able to pull out huge PRs at my 10 miler and my Olympic tri on very minimal miles, just a straight head on my shoulders and very strategic sessions, and race karma for volunteering.  I don’t feel like my luck will continue with BSLT unless I do some work.  I have proved to myself I have the speed I need to hit the paces I want there, I just need to make sure I don’t die endurance-wise.  I think I’ve ended every dailymile post with this.  I now think I will coin a twitter hashtag of #dontdieBSLT2013, or something.

And now, off to do what I do best, go to sleep right around sunset, so I can wake up early and train.