A little Background Information

So I have finally started to develop the mentality needed to spend hours at the gym. I use to cringe everytime I had to be on the trainer for more than 10 min. I guess I just started to get anxious to get the next thing done and get to the race. Now I was able to keep my butt on the trainer for an hour with a 40 min. treadmill run after that. Very happy. Last week was a great training week. Didnt do my long bike on Sunday because I was studying and when I felt like studying I better do it. Got out saturday for a 6 mile run, would have went longer if it wasnt getting dark and my dog was thristy. So this week I will have 3 workouts because My exam is Friday and Saturday of this week and I am driving to Omaha on Thursday. Can't wait to go to the Zoo! I am actually really excited now to go workout at the Grubb YMCA. The people are great. Equipment still sucks, but the people there are now informed that I am doing an Ironman and they are more than willing to help me and out and give me encouragement to keep up the good work. They are working hard to keep the kids out of the swim lanes, moving spinner bikes all over and have towels ready when I walk in the door. It makes me feel like a I am a professional and a celebrity. Just waiting for the day when they want my autograph and for me to give a speech :) lol.
Since this weekend is my exam, I will not be working out and eating bad junk food. I am not thrilled about this since I have come so far in losing weight and eating good that I am scared that I will get that greasy food craving for the next month and wont be able to resist it.
Background Info: January of 2007, I weighed 175 pounds. I decided I needed to get my butt in gear. I recently got my dog and had started walking twice a day which wasnt enough for him so I started running. My friends are runners so they convinced me to do Dam to Dam. I thought ok. I finished the race, but was very sore. I think it was from the shoes I got when I was a sophomore in high school and the holes that were developing in the bottoms. Socks dont help. Little did I know, you were suppose to change your shoes 300-500 miles. I probably had 10,000 miles on them. My knowledge of shoes: they are good until a hole develops, then you get new ones, so I had about another 3 months left in them. Wrong. I bought new shoes and continued running. Then my friend told me he was training for a triathlon. How cool, I want to do that. What do I do? I had recently bought a mountain bike in April of 2007 and was doing that. I started biking to work and on the trails. Swimming...how do I do that? I took swim lessons, it cant be that hard to remember how to do it. Wrong! I thought the life guard was going to kick me out of the pool from flailling around so much and causing a distrubance. Never did make one length of the pool. I did the backstroke awhile and left while I was still alive. I left there thinking, I will never be able to do this. I need HELP. Luckily one of my friends is the aquatics director and was willing to teach me. I give her credit for my swimming. I am slow, but coming around. So now I can swim, bike, and run. So I signed up for the Walnut Creek Y tri team and the cyman triathlon. I was on my way. My boss also does triathlons and convinced me to get a tri bike. I went to rassys and bought one. One of the best purchases I have ever made. They say you should wait until you do your first tri before making any real purchases, but when you love training for it, I couldnt see any reason to wait. I think it helped to really get me loving it. The class was a great help and finished the race and loved it. I was hooked. So here I am now training for an Ironman. I am so excited. My race goals: 1st Finish, 2nd finsh under 15 hours, 3rd finish in 12 hours. I feel like I can finish in the 12 hours if I really work hard over the winter. I also really want to have a good finisher picture :) I really just want to make sure I finish and the time doesnt really matter. At the time it wont, but it will after. My half IM time this year at the Dutchman Half was 6:30. My swim was horribly slow (by 10 min), the bike was miserable (40 HUGE hills in 56 miles) and the run I felt great (should have run faster). Big problem was my nutrition, I double mixed powerade and thought I will drink half the bottle and then fill full with water. DO NOT DO THIS!!!! You will have GI problems. I think if I had not dont this I would have had a much better time. So now back to today, I weigh 130 pounds now. I still have about 5-10 more to go. Belly fat will not go away. I feel so much better about myself. On the downside, all this working out has not helped the sleeping problem, but that is what the pills are for :).
On a side note, hinking about what I am going to wear next year at the Ironman, I am trying to find a great pair of tri shorts. Anyone have suggestions? I want ones with no seams in the croch, not super sticky leg grippers and possibly a side pocket. Places around here just dont have much of a selection so I will have to order online.

What a workout

This weekend I completely pushed myself harder than I have in the season. I did not start out thinking that I would. I thought, I will just go on this 2.5 hour bike ride and not even think about pushing myself. All way good until I was about 40 min into the ride when I came to a "T" in the road. 2 tractors and a car passed and I pulled out behind them. There was 2 more tractors coming but I figured I would make it to the next turn before they caught me. We got to the next turn and of course they were going my way so I kept following them. The other tractors never caught me and I wanted to go faster than the tractors in front of me so I passed one. I was riding with the wind so it was easy to really fly until we turned again and it was into the wind. Oh my gosh my legs and lungs were burning to stay in front of this guy. After about 30 min of super hard riding they turned and I backed off and was barely moving. I made it to Big Creek and then turned back for home. I made it back to Ankeny and that is when it hit me. I did not want to peddle and I did not want to sit on my saddle. I was moving so slow that I think I had to speed up to stop. I finally made it home and I was completely wiped out. I have never had this feeling before. No energy to even want to breathe. So I veged out on the couch the rest of the night. Sunday I went on an hour run that seemed like it lasted forever. If my dog was not pulling me, half the time, I would not have made it home. By the end both he and I were looking at each other like it is your turn to pull, lol. We made it home and I went to the beach and skipped the short bike. Monday was an awesome day for me. I had a long swim workout that I nailed and felt great. I felt so fast and smooth in the water and was actually able to complete the whole workout in the time it said by 3 min! I then went to lift for 30 min. I am getting ripped from the 3 times I have lifted, lol. I did squats for the first time ever and I hurt today. I am going to bike indoors tonight because the chance of rain and it is suppose to be windy, and then a short 30 min run. Should be a nice night to take it easy...

Training Plan

So this week of training went really good. I got a couple good swims, couple hard bikes and easy runs in. This weekend I am going to do a 2.5 hour bike ride as it will probably be the last time I will get to do it in nice weather and enjoy myself. Sunday I will finish up with an hour run and a half hour bike. This week I will have gotten in 8 hours of training, plus 2 hours and 20 min of walking, and 45 min of lifting, also I mowed my lawn last night...finally. So now this brings me to reading over my work out schedule for the next year. This thing is telling me to do this workout in the morning and do this workout in the afternoon. Now the first thing that comes in my head is: "does this morning workout have to be productive?" Last year I tried to do a run and a bike in the morning and it was not going to happen. I spent the time doing them, but I could not do anything more than go through the motions. I do walk in the mornings with my dog for 20-25 min but I dont have to try for that, he just pulls me along. I would have to get up 2 hours before I actually wanted to workout to get my body ready to workout, so now it is 4 am which means I would have to go to sleep the night before at 7pm. This is just not sounding any better. The problem is, is that I have a sleeping disorder called Idiopathic Hypersomnia where basically it is like narcalepsy but I dont have the sudden sleep attacks, but I am always tired and could sleep at anytime so I have to get 9 hours of sleep a night. Some of you probably are thinking, damn I am jealous that you get to sleep so much. Let me tell you, I am jealous of you not having to sleep as much as I have to. It is such a waste of time that I could be enjoying life, but instead I am sleeping. So back to the workout schedule. I decided that I am just going to put in the effort each night after work plus then I only have to convince myself once to go to the gym :) I am kind of looking forward to training this winter and being able to get everything done at one time instead of going to the gym to swim, then going home and changing, then getting the bike ready to go for a ride. It should be more efficient when it is all at the gym. I think running on the treadmill will be a huge relief for my legs from running on concrete all this summer and last winter. Next Monday will be 49 weeks out from Ironman Louisville. I thought about taking some time off, but feel that once I do that, I wont want to workout again, so now I am working out but not nearly as hard as I was. The "professional trainers" say to take this time to work on your weakest disipline, but I feel I did that last year and it made the other two take so much longer to come around and I feel like I have improved so much over this season that I will just keep working on all three and see where that leaves me next year. I really feel that my run has the most potential to get better, but right now my legs couldn't stand pounding out 4-5 runs a week so then that leaves me with a lot of time where I am spent recovering and not being productive. So week 49 will be easy training, week 48 will be my "recovery" week since that week will mostly be craming for my exam at the end of that week and then week 47-41 will be working on building my weekly hours easily so I am ready for week 40 when my training plan starts. I cant wait!! It is going to be hell!!!

D.O.athlon for Life - another victory

Sunday was the D.O.athlon for life race. 5k 20k 5k. The do is for the doctor of osteopathy or something or another. I really really did not want to do this race because the run is my worst event. Last year I did this event and got my butt kicked majorly. This year seemed to be better because there was more people at it. So I tried to get warmed up since that is the hardest thing for me to do it get ready to run right away. Gun went off, no wait, cannon. At that point I think the earth cracked in half it was so loud. We took off. I was behind a woman I knew was pretty quick so I thought I would see if I could keep up with her and of course I couldnt because I got stuck behind 2 women that were chatting it up and 2 guys that looked like they were going to pass out already. So I finally got around them. Running running running. Get to mile one 7:52, oh my gosh no way. I have never run under an 8 min mile ever. I was really excited, but then I thought, crap, I am going to crash. So finished the first run still feeling good. Get to my bike. What in the world! someone had moved my bike. I have to rack my bike by the handle bars because it is to short and flops around in the breeze if I dont, so someone racked it by the seat putting my helmet on the aero bars on the other side of the rack, so I dive over the rack to get it and get my bike. My helmet strap is twisted. That torked my noodle! I was ready to go. So I jump on the bike. I never understood why people dont jump on the hammer right away, instead they lolly gagged all the way through the park until they got to the road. We head out. I knew that there is a big hill and knowing that I am not very good at hills, it was going to hurt. I hit it and before I know it I am barely moving. Then which seemed like 10 min later I was to the top and rolling. Passed a bunch of people on the back stretch. Riding into the wind is my specialty. So made loop and again here comes that big hill. I knew I had nothing to gain by pushing myself on it so I switched into my granny gear and just tried to make it up without using any energy. Soon to the top and off I go again. Get to the run and I feel stiff. I think it was from the rain and cold wind that kind of made my body tighten up again. After a slow mile 1 (8:40) I was able to kick it in again. I finished in 1:29:20. I had to 5 ks of 23:50 which is super awesome for me, i was really happy except my bike time was horrible for me. I am not even going to put it down. If you want to know, look it up. So come to find out, I got first in my age group again. I love it when other people in my age group are super fast to get in the top 3. They are so fast. I want to be them. Just to train with them for a week would be an awesome experience just to know how they do it. Are they naturally kick *ss people or did they have to work the butts off to get that good. Either way I am jealous. Well this race wraps it up for my season for this year. Overall I thought it was a great season. Time to start my Ironman Training.

Booked

I booked my room today at the Seelbach Hilton Hotel today in Louisville. I was debating whether or not to stay a little further away to save some money, but through some connections I was able to get a great rate that would save me the hassel of driving and finding a parking place for each day I would have to be at the race headquarters and race day. Well worth it. I am super excited and I wish it was August already and I was done training and was ready to race. As it is starting to get colder here, I have been searching for some options for me this winter to keep my butt on the trainer. I think if I can do that, I will be in good shape. There is a spin class at my YMCA, but every night I have looked at it, it has been full, so I know that I will have to get there early to get a spot. My only other dillema is that I cannot workout in the morning which I am fine with spending a couple hours in the evening workingout since I have no life outside of triathlon. :) Also, my pool doesn't have morning hours. One of my 3 nights at the pool will be spent in water aerobics just because it is right in the middle of the swim time unless for some reason the 300 kids that normally show up for the open swim, don't. That would be a dream come true to swim laps and not have to yell at kids to stay on the other side of the ropes, but that is what you get for swimming at the most financially deprived YMCA in town. I could go and force myself to swim at the downtown Y, and pay for parking and hope that I can get in the water right away and only have to share a lane with 3 other people. To busy for me. Lifting weights went good this week. My gym has like 5 machines to use, GREAT! NOT! I am going to have to get creative with the free weights. I did a nice long run on Tuesday. I ended up running a mile longer than I had planned because I completely spaced out and ran passed where I wanted to turn around. This is a good problem. I run with my dog on the cooler days which I think helps make the time go faster. I got 2 good pool workouts in and a short bike ride. I was suppose to go running last night, but only ran 2 miles and walked 2. I was feeling a little sore which I dont want to be for Sunday's Duathlon. So tonight is a day off, actually I have to mow my yard, which I am hoping it quits raining out. Saturday is a hour bike and 30 min run to get me loosened up for Sunday. Plus tomorrow is the big Iowa vs Iowa State game. Go State!!!!

First Place in Age Group

This last weekend, yesterday to be exact, I raced in the Cyman triathlon and I had a great race. I finished 1st in my age group!!!! I was 9th overall women out of 99. I was very happy with my day. It was a little chilly in the morning, but was lucky the race didnt start until 9am. It was a sunny day with very little wind. The water was disgusting. Green algae everywhere. I was in the 3rd wave. Athena/clysdale in the first, 24 and under male and female 2nd. The swim was only 500 yds so I just went out as fast as I could. I was able to keep up with the front group until about at 300 yds when my goggles filled with water. I decided at this time the goggles were going in the garbage. I have had problems with them all year. Well when i was leaning to one side to dumb the water out, I came across a person with a snorkel. Yes, that is correct, a snorkel. Now to me this seems pointless, because the point of a snorkel is to look at things underwater and not have to pick your head up to breathe, am I correct? So what can you see in this dingy water and why would you not want to look up and SEE where you are going? well that gave me a good laugh to start out the day. Into transition, I felt slow but was no different from my other times. Out on the bike. Flat course so I blew by everyone. This course was basically a big loop so you never got to see people behind you. So I had no idea how close anyone was to me or who was in front of me. I got off the bike and out on the run. There were a few people around me that I was really surprised to see around me, but I never looked at their age so I just assumed they were in the under 24 group. I took off running my usual pace, which is slow about a 9 min mile. But some how, I felt like I could run faster so I did. I never got tired on the run like I usually do. One woman was behind me I could see but she was moving way to fast for me to even think about keeping up with her. She wasnt in my age group so I really didnt care either way. We can to the turnaround and I looked back and saw another woman coming up behind me. She looked like she was in my age group. she came up to me with about a half mile to go. I just wanted her to pass me because today I was really not in the mood to sprint out the finish. She passed me and also a bonus was she wasnt in my age group. I just tried to keep up with her to the end, but she was moving right along. I gave a little hard finish to the end so I could look good finishing, lol. Crossed the finish line at 1:19:46. Awesome time for me. Improvement of 5 min from 2 weeks ago. I contribute that to the flat bike course. It feels so great to have done that well especially that being the last triathlon of the season. I secretly really wanted to finish first in my age group this year, but realistically didnt think I could for atleast another year. I was over 11 min faster than 2nd place in my group. I got a medal and it is cool :) Well as that soaks in, I came home and cleaned up my stuff and began to plan my training for this week. Last race of the year is this sunday. it is a duathlon. It is going to be hard for me since I am not a strong runner, but I am just doing it to see how fast I can do it. Today I am going to swim and lift for the first time in about 3 years. Mostly arms since I wont really be needing them on sunday. After sunday, I am bascially taking 3 weeks off to study for my licensing exam I have in October and preparing my training schedule. I am kind of getting sad now that I have worked so hard this year to improve and now I have to go through 8 months of snow and cold weather before I can get out there and race again, so it will definatly be a mental thing for me to hold on to my endurance I have built this year and apply that to my Ironman training which will start in October after my exam. I need someone keep myself motivated through these upcoming winter months. 3 hours on the trainer is going to be hard for me. But until then, I am going to wear my first place finish medal around for atleast a week!

Officially registered

I have been waiting for about 9 months now to register for Ironman Louisville and on Monday I did it. I am now officially registered and I can not wait for August 30, 2009 to come. 2009 will be my 2nd full season of doing triathlons. I started late last season completing the Cyman (at Hickory Grove) for my first one and then did a small sprint tri in Rudd, Iowa. That was actually my favorite course. Flat and fast. This year I competed in way to many races, but it was a blast. In march, I did the friendly sons of st patrick 10k which was a nice for race. Next was the Dam to Dam the last weekend in May. June 8th was suppose to be the inagural Copper Creek Tri, but it got rained out and to tell you the truth I was kind of happy it did because I did not feel like I was ready to compete. 2 weeks after that was the Hyvee triathlon. I felt really good until the run in that where my legs were on the verge of cramping the entire time. I could tell my fitness was not where I wanted it to be. July 13th was the Iowa games triathlon. This was such a fun race. I felt really good and had a great day. Finished 3rd in my age group after a sprint to the finish from a fellow age grouper Kristina in which she beat me by 4 seconds. I will see her again. The 27th was the Big Creek Tri which I felt really good again and had another great race. This time I was able to beat Kristina without a sprint to the finish. It is so great when you meet someone at a tri and get to see them at the races and have great competition. August 9th brought my Season Goal race. The Dutchman Half Ironman Triathlon. Finished in 6:30. It was such a good race, I felt relaxed the whole time. Only draw back was my nutrition which affected me at mile 30 of the bike and last until about mile 2 of the run. I was really impressed with my run time. 2:22. Last year my half marathon time was 2:10. only 12 min slower and that was after swimming and biking for 4 hours. :) That really helped build my confidence for the Ironman next year. I completed the Hickory Grove triathlon (former cyman) a week and a half ago. It was nice to do the exact same race I did when i first started to see how I improved. I improved my time by 11 min!!! 1:21. Last year that would have won my age group, but this year, once again my unability to out sprint people at the end cost me 2 positions so I finished 4th in my age group. That is one thing i need to work on is my sprint finish among other things. This weekend I will be competing in the Cyman at Big Creek. Last triathlon of this year. It is so sad. I have one more race after that is the D.O.athlon at walnut woods since the Iowa games mountain bike race was canceled. Next year I will be competing in 3 races. Dam to Dam, Kansas 70.3 and Ironman Louisville. I can't wait. In the mean time, I will be blogging about my training. I really enjoyed reading of other peoples blogs throughout the year and hopfully people will enjoy this one.