Vaya con dios

Naturally, the last day of tri camp had the nicest weather. We had to say good-bye to a few ladies, but there was a small group of us who were able to go out for one last ride before we packed up and hit the road. Sally proposed a ride up to the prison, which was a six mile climb. I’d been hoping for something a little more low-key for the final ride, but I decided to give it a go. As with yesterday, there were a few stops to regroup/make adjustments/take pictures:

But eventually, it was just all about the climbing.

This early in the season, long climbs like these are just not fun. It’s basically a low-grade sufferfest. I hung in there for a while, but eventually I’d had enough and cut the ride short. I opted to do a little out and back on my own which was far more enjoyable than climbing the final mile of the hill. Some of the other girls gave me a hard time about it and seemed disappointed that I’d quit, but I stand by my decision. All things considered, it was still great to ride out in the sunshine on a largely traffic-free road.

Then it was time to pack up, say my good-byes and hit the road. I’d left my phone charger in Burbank, which meant I got to spend a little more time with my Burbank girls before catching my flight.

Heidi lives very close to the airport, which made for the most pleasant wait for a flight ever. I mean, sitting in a sunny backyard, watching the antics of these two?

Awesome. It was so great to spend a little more time with them and ended my weekend on a nice relaxing note. My flight back was uneventful (which is my favorite kind). It was a fun trip, but also nice to be back home and see the boy. Besides, we had work to do. Lots of boxes to pack before next weekend…

Here comes the sun

There was still a dusting of snow when we woke up the next morning, but the sun was shining and there weren’t a bunch of black clouds on the horizon so we were feeling optimistic that a bike ride could happen. (I didn’t haul that damn thing all the way down here to not ride it at least once!) One of the ladies had gotten up really early and gone for a sunrise run. I love this picture she captured of Dan’s horses:

After breakfast, we went over to Dan’s side of the compound to attend a lecture he’d offered to give about bike fitting. (For those who are unaware, Dan’s a leading expert on this topic and trains fitters from all over the country, so this was awesome.) We waited in his fit studio for the magic to start:

Dan has a wall full of all sorts of saddles, handlebars, stems and numerous other bike parts. It was impressive, to say the least:

Here’s the man himself:

Dan announced that we’d be talking about road bike fit, which I was visibly excited about. (Ever since I got Slim, I have not been able to get my road bike to get back to be being comfortable once I took the aero bars off of it.) When I made a comment about being excited about this, he offered to let me be the guinea pig that he did the fit on. SCORE! I ran over to get my bike clothes and shoes. The fit process was really interesting. It was a lot like the eye doctor. He’d make an adjustment and then another and ask which one I liked better. (And like the eye doctor, there were times where it was hard to know… )

But at the end of the process, I got a sheet of numbers that I am going to take to a local bike shop and have them help me get my bike set-up. So awesome. After all of that virtual riding, it was time to hit the road for reals. As usual, it took forever to get everyone ready and situated with loaner bikes.

But soon enough, we were ready to hit the road. Gail was leaving camp (she lives on the other side of the foothills and had a race the following day) so she snapped a group shot for us:

(We look cold, don’t we?) Once we got moving, we warmed up pretty quickly. The wind made things a little chilly, but the sunshine was awesome.

And, per usual, there was much picture taking at the rendezvous points:

I was very happy I’d brought Slim. I felt good on the bike and, for once, wasn’t the last person struggling up the hills. Despite this being the second time I’d been on the bike outside. And per usual, it was fun to ride with an awesome group of ladies:

There were a number of stops to take pictures/adjust bike fit/shed layers, which made for a fun day.

Afterward, it was back to the compound for a delicious dinner and some lovely wine. Then a bunch of us brought our wine and kept Kristi and Christina company while they packed up their bikes. Some girls tried out some new saddles and there was general tomfoolery. Mannequins may have been posed with…

It was a pretty fun way to cap off the final night of tri camp…

Unlucky weather

When I was growing up, my mother swore that Friday the 13th was actually a lucky day for her. Since I usually don’t even notice that it’s Friday the 13th, I can’t really argue the point. Well, at least as far as the weather was concerned, we were definitely unlucky up at Xantusia. There were gray clouds, wind and rain. (Hmmm, kinda sounds like Seattle weather, not Southern California weather, doesn’t it?!)

We decided to head up to Punchbowl for a run/hike. We figured the trail would be fairly protected from the wind and shouldn’t be too bad. What we didn’t count on was the little pellets of frozen rain that would sting our faces and force most of us to walk/run/hike with one hand protecting our face from the onslaught. We did have cover when we got to the trail, but the girls who were walking/hiking were definitely not going to want to be out there longer than 30-40 minutes, so we cut the run a little bit short. I stayed back with Gail so that no one was on their own, and I’m afraid I got us a little lost on the way back. But we found our way back to the parking lot and took a quick photo to commemorate the experience:

We don’t look nearly as cold and wet as we actually were. We headed back to the house with the plan of going down into Palmdale to swim at their awesome pool. Monty called the pool to make sure they were open and unfortunately they had thunder down there, so had to keep the pool closed for 30 minutes. So, we called again and the same thing had happened, which pretty much meant swim wasn’t happening. So, no swim. Definitely no bike. We already went for a run. What was a house full of stir-crazy triathlete chicks going to do? There’s only so much chihuahua torture you can do:

Luckily, we’d planned a gear swap/gift exchange where everyone brought either a little gift or piece of gear they weren’t using any more. There was quite a spread:

We then drew numbers to select an order for people to pick things. We had so much stuff that we got to go through the rotation three times. Yours truly scored a bottle of wine, a cool bag and some sweet Las Vegas socks. It was such a great idea, I’m going to have to put one together at home next time I have a bunch of gear to get rid of. It’s like shopping but without having to spend a bunch of money.

Then we had a little outbreak of sunshine (and a gorgeous rainbow):

It was too late to go for a ride and we’d already started drinking margaritas, so what to do? Andy came up with the crazy idea of a “margarita mile” (well, it was only 0.8 miles to the bottom of the bottom of the driveway and back). Just about everyone came out to participate in the run portion at least:

And we’re off!

Emmy was the winner and actually chugged her margarita at the finish line. What a trooper!

Rounding out the podium was Andy, Christina and Mrs. Monty:

Mrs. Monty wasn’t looking so good:

Here’s yours truly heading for the line for fifth place:

All in all, I’d say the First Annual Slowtwitch Womens Margarita Mile was a rousing success!

Shortly after we went in for dinner it started raining again, so our timing was perfect! Later on, the rain actually became snow! I never thought I’d see snow up here in April:

(Thankfully, these were neither my running shoes nor my bike.) I guess Friday the 13th has some lucky qualities to it after all…

Let the games begin!

The next morning, I spent a little more time with my girls including a trip to a nearby indoor playground where they had a play date. The place was called Under the Sea and was like heaven on earth for little ones. There was a bouncy house that Kamryn was super excited about:

There were a ton of slides that the girls were also very excited about, although they have very different approaches. Kenley likes to go down the slide backwards:

And she was so pleased with herself:

Kamryn was more of a classicist on the slide:

But soon it was time to bid the girls and Heidi farewell and head off to tri camp. But I first had a planned detour, a trip to the gorgeous Santa Clarita Aquatic Center. Who cares about wind and gray clouds on the horizon when there’s an opportunity to swim here:

I had a lane all to myself. Heck, I had the womens changing room to myself! It was awesome.

And then of course there was a quick refueling stop at the In-N-Out burger:

And finally, it was time to actually finish the drive to tri camp. I’m always struck how out in the middle of nowhere this camp is:

And there usually isn’t snow on the mountain tops. But I made it in one piece and got to meet most of the other girls who had just returned from a bike ride. I chit-chatted with them and then got my bags out of the car. There were a few girls wanting to go out for a run, so I decided to join them. I love that we can run on a dirt road like this right from the door:

With my favorite joshua trees along the path. There were a few still flowering, which was cool:

We also got to meet Monty’s wife and 8-month old son Wyatt, who was rocking a head-shaping helmet:

He was a cute little guy, (even if he does look like a mini-Magneto) who had no shortage of attention from the ladies:

All in all, a very successful day. It looks like a big fun group and I think it’s going to be a good time.

Taper tantrum

So, it’s our final weekend of training before Grand Columbian next Saturday. It’s the period of training called the taper and it’s rapidly becoming one of my least favorite phases of training. It’s not only very hard to find that balance of just enough vs. too much training, but I also find the reduced workload seems to lead to a much more “emotional” state of mind.

Yesterday, the boy and I headed over the Green Lake for a final open water workout before heading to the race site. I’ve swum with the boy numerous times in the pool and I’m always comfortably faster than him. In the lake, the wetsuit helps his body position more than mine, so the margin is closer but I’m still usually faster. This year, after my winter in the pool, I’ve been struggling with incorporating my new stroke with the wetsuit and open water. It doesn’t feel natural and in fact it often feels like I’m fighting the wetsuit/slower in it. So, when we headed out and T caught up to me, I was surprised but figured he was just pushing harder. But then on the return trip he dropped me like I wasn’t even moving. I’ll confess, some bad words were said and I was not a happy camper. To top it all off, I was swimming crooked – something that hasn’t been an issue for me for years and years, so obviously something was going on with my stroke.

I got to the shore and promptly burst into tears and had a little mini-tantrum. Swimming is the only sport that I’m better than T at, so it was definitely upsetting to have it go so terribly wrong and for reasons that I still don’t understand. It was a huge blow to my confidence, as I’d been feeling pretty good about finally having a faster swim leg at Grand Columbian. Now, I need to decide what, if anything, I can do about it and if I should pull out the sleeveless wetsuit and see if it restores my stroke to it’s swimming pool counterpart. We followed all of that drama with a couple of laps around Green Lake and some frozen yogurt, but I was definitely not in a happy place.

This morning, we had a bike ride on the agenda and since it was such a beautiful day, we decided to do our Edmonds ride. I was still in a sulky mood when we headed out, but eventually the sunshine and being out on the bike cheered me up. When we arrived in Edmonds, there was a huge classic car show going on, which gave our usual Starbucks stop a far more festive atmosphere than usual. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures:

Here’s T, being patient with my photo-taking:

Heading back, T’s derailleur gave up the ghost so that he could only use the big ring of his gears. Which was very inconvenient given that we had a couple of significant climbs between us and home. But there was nothing to be done about it, so we soldiered on. The final big climb, which we call the “Shoreline climb” since it’s next to Shoreline Community College is a beast of a climb that I was certain T was going to have to walk part of. He didn’t, which I was very impressed by. But even better was that it was the first time I’d climbed Shoreline where I didn’t have to stop and rest after a particularly steep section that has a very enticing cul-du-sac right next to it. (Perfect to stopping and panting over ones aero bars until the dizziness and nausea subside… ) Thanks to all of our brutal Issaquah climbs, it was a much less difficult task than usual.

I was so pleased with this feat that all of my faith in my training was restored. Hopefully, this is an excellent sign of things to come next weekend. (I’ll gladly trade an average swim for an awesome bike… ) Fingers crossed!

Epic training day

We had a busy agenda for the day and no time to waste. First, we dropped the dogs off at their boarding place and tried not to be offended at the eager way they ran inside. (Ungrateful bastards!) Then it was off to the new race course for a long ride, followed by a run. My biggest concern for the new course was the fact that I haven’t spent that much continuous time in the aero position and wasn’t sure how it would go. We were doing two loops, so I set up a combination aid station and transition area in the trunk of the car:

We lucked out on the weather. It was AMAZING:

The course goes right past the airport, so we had a number of planes land and take off over our heads as we rode. But my favorite part were the fighter jets:

There’s something about riding with a fighter jet zooming above your head. It really inspires you to kick it up a notch!

Mount Hood was clearly visible in the distance.

Riding a flat course is a very different challenge than a hilly one. You really have to work on your pacing and I’m going to have to really work on eating and drinking, as I didn’t do enough of either. This made the run afterward a little rough, so I’ll definitely have to work on that. On the plus side, I went a lot faster than the hilly course that I’d been training on, so that was fun.

T rode with me during my run, which was really fun. It was nice having him to chit-chat with and I didn’t have to feel bad about leaving him in the car while I ran. (Plus it makes you feel like a real athlete to have a bike escort, I must say!) After all of that, we had dinner plans with our friend Luke so we had to hustle back to my parents house to shower and get changed.

Luke showed off his bartender skills by whipping up my favorite drink from Pok Pak: the Tamarind Whiskey Sour. You know you’re in Portland when someone mixes a drink in a Nalgene bottle:

But he made up for it on the presentation:

The drinks were super strong (especially after the day’s exertions) so I was done with drinking after one. But T & Luke followed it up with a second cocktail at a wine bar where we had delicious burgers. So, between the training, eating and drinking, it was an epic day all around.

Switching gears

I’m not sure how much I’ve talked about this year’s racing plans, but I’ve been structuring my training around two half ironman races. A new one in Portland on July 10 and then returning to Grand Columbian on September 17. Grand Columbian is the higher-priority one, as my training has been fairly lackluster, due to the crappy wet spring weather. At one point, I wasn’t even sure I was going to do the Portland race as it had both a tough bike and run course and I wasn’t prepared for either.

I finally decided to plan a weekend in Portland to ride the bike course and run a loop of the run course and then see if I still wanted to sign up. I booked vacation time and warned my parents we’d be staying with them. Then about two days before we were supposed to head down, I started hearing rumors that the course was changing. Now, the primary reason that I’d chosen this race was because it started in downtown Portland, (where T would have lots of entertainment options to keep him busy while I raced) and the bike course passed within a mile of my parents house (so they could come out and see me race without a lot of hassle and drama.) The new course was out at Blue Lake, a venue that I’d raced an Olympic at when we lived in Portland, so I knew something about the course. (It’s very, very flat and windy.)

I will admit that I didn’t take the news very well at all. There was a lot of whining and some sulking. But then I thought about it and realized that I’d never done a flat half before and my rented race wheels that T got me for Christmas would be far more effective on this course than the old one. So, the training weekend was back on, but with a whole new set of challenges.

At the start line

I won’t lie, I’m still not a fan of 2011. The eye continues to be the bane of my existence with too many doctors appointments and eye drops, though not as many of either as there used to be. I am keeping it dilated all the time and I’m still confined to glasses, all of which feels very oppressive. I suppose I should be grateful that I live in dreary Seattle and it’s January, but that feels just as oppressive right now. I would love to get away for some sun, but not only is that not in the cards financially, it would kill my dilated eye. So, I’m trying to put my awesome athlete mental toughness skills to work and am trying to focus on future goals and rise about the crap that’s going on right now.

To that end, I’ve spent the last few weeks putting together a training plan and targeting my “A” races for the upcoming year. The last two weeks have been spent in a “prep” phase where I’ve been doing some unstructured running, biking, swimming and weights and generally getting used to working out again. I’ve also been learning to use the new heart-rate monitor, as one of my goals is to be better about testing/measuring my fitness over the course of my training. Yesterday was my first test – a running time trial in the rain, with M & T as company. Though it was fifteen minutes instead of the 20 I was supposed to do, (I’m not a math whiz at the best of times, but even less so when I’m trying to calculate finish time while trying not to barf… ) I was relatively pleased with where I’m at pace-wise and it’s very cool to have so much data at my finger-tips.

Today is swim and bike testing (though not at the same time.) then next week training starts in earnest. I’m hoping the eye will get better soon and I can go back to wearing contacts and feeling like a normal person. I’m pretty excited at this more structured approach to my training and am hoping it pays off come summer. Worst case scenario, I’ve got to think all of this “mental toughness practice” I’ve been employing lately certainly will.

New toy

As a reward for all of my swimming (and because I had a Road Runners gift card left over from my birthday) I chose to buy myself a last Christmas present on my way out of town. (Oregon’s lack of sales tax means it’s like getting things 10% off, when you live in Seattle… ) Behold the newest addition to my training arsenal:

It’s so much fancier than my previous heart-rate monitor, it’s not even funny. Granted I bought my previous one in 2004 and it has served me faithfully despite the shameless amount of abuse I have put it through. (It even sensed the end of it’s era – when I went to take it off my wrist, part of the watchband broke. Talk about timing!)

Since I’d had such a great run with my old 625x, I’d considered getting another Polar, but alas they still don’t really support the Mac platform. Garmin, on the other hand, is super easy to connect/download and has an insane amount of data for me to geek out on. It’s pretty unbelievable. I’ll try not to flood the blog with too much triathlete-geekiness…

Testing, testing… is this thing on?

I’ve been grappling with whether or not to do my final race of the season. My training plan got completely thrown off with the layoff and while I’ve been getting back to it, I’m no where near where I wanted to be. So, I decided to do a little diagnostic test and see where my fitness was and let that help me with my decision-making. I mapped out an approximately 30 mile ride from Marymoor park to do with T (with a little out and back to add some bike mileage on my own without killing T) and then I planned to do an hour long brick run.

We were doing the same loop that we’d gotten lost on last time, but this time I thought I’d identified where we went wrong. Unfortunately, I still found a way to get lost and while we found our way back to Redmond, we had only ridden about 15 miles. Grrr… T graciously agreed to kill even more time at the Peets and I did my out and back on the multi-use path from Marymoor to bring my mileage up to 37 miles. As I fought the headwind back, I was pretty certain that I wanted to race but that I should do the shorter option. I pushed the pace hard to make up for the shorter distance and my legs were definitely feeling it when I got back to the car. I told T my thoughts on the race as I changed into my run gear and added a flip remark like “unless this run goes awesome, I’m doing the shorter race.”

As I headed out on my run, my legs felt like their usual crap and the first fifteen minutes felt like the start of every longer race I’ve done. Cramping, dead legs and generally off my game mentally. I was able to run at first, but then I started taking a few walk breaks and tried to regroup. I ate a gel and drank some water and started running again, hoping I could run for five minutes straight before the next walk break. And then a funny thing happened, I fell into the zone and felt great. I ran for the rest of the run without incident and ended the run feeling really strong.

So, the conflict goes on. Do I do the race I’m under-trained for and face the possibility of another half-iron death march? Or do I do the shorter race that might not be as satisfying? Time will tell…