Just in

I just received confirmation that my shoes have arrived on my door step. Yay, except I won’t wear them running for another week. But they will be fun to look at and transfer my speed laces over to them. Also arriving today are my new Compression sleeves. I am super excited about them. I am going to put them on as soon as they arrive. I will be playing softball until I die tomorrow so I will wear them in between games. The games, I get more beat up than when I just do tri training, but it gives my muscles a little bit of a different workout. My legs have just been so dead this last week and a half and I still have another week left. I really notice that they are tired when I do hills on the bike and they are super tight when I run. I think my body is trying to tell me to not run. I have this pain in the very bottom center of the ball of my foot today that developed when I was sleeping. Great. I am hoping it goes away by tomorrow. I will need to put my orthotics in my cleats tomorrow because those are what kill my feet. If the field was a little bit softer it wouldn’t be so bad. Well my run last night really sucked. It was such a gorgeous day and I felt like shit. My legs were so tight. I spent quite a bit of time before I ran stretching and that helped until I had to run up a hill and then they tightened up and I was miserable. I feel like I am running with two stiff boards. They don’t cramp up, they are just tight. I need someone to give me a massage. I got home and stretched out really good before my softball game. Good thing I did because my first at bat I had an in the park homer that I had to sprint around the bases. My quads gave out after I rounded first but they kicked back in before I fell on my face. I am glad I am not sore, but my body is defiantly screaming for a day off. I think I am going to take next Tuesday off because that seems to be the day I have my horrible workout and I am completely spent. That will recharge me to finish out my last week strong. As much as I would rather be sitting at home eating ice cream and watching a movie, I am going to really miss doing these long workouts. I had the most perfect workout Wednesday night. I got to the pool. Had the whole pool to myself. It was such a great peaceful swim. That hour went by way to fast. I even sat in the hot tub for 5 min. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I needed to get home to do my bike before it got dark. I took off on the bike. It was so nice out, not hot, not windy. Perfect. This was the first time in a while that I was enjoying myself. This is where it hit me that I was really going to miss training for an Ironman. I am sure now that I will do this again. I need to figure out what I am going to do after my race. I need something to train for otherwise I won’t get my butt outside to do anything. I need to have a goal. I wish there was a half IM closer to Des Moines in the spring to do. After all this Ironman thinking, nothing else really seems challenging to me. I am thinking about just focusing on getting fast for the Olympic distance to qualify for nationals at Big Creek next year and actually doing Nationals if I qualify. That might be a lofty goal, but hey, I have a whole year to train for it. It will just be hard to get myself going fast after doing these long easy workouts. I will have to ride with Tribeaner. She kicked my butt on the hills.

Compression Sleeves

I ordered calf compression sleeves this morning. I have been up in the air whether or not this was something that I needed. I have not really had any problems with my legs being sore or crampy until the last 2 weeks. My run yesterday turned into another 25 min run and a 35 min walk. Legs were just tight again. I did get lots of water down so I knew it wasn't dehydration this time. I actually had to pee 2 times on my run. I probably could have run another 10-15 min, but I started to get a bit of an upset stomach so I just walked and wasn't going to suffer through that. I still had the burning feet thing too. I put aquafor on my feet, but that did not help. Going to try this blister powder stuff and hope that helps. New shoes should be here by this weekend so I will get those on next week to start breaking them in. So my crampy legs last night was the deciding factor in ordering the compression sleeves. I am hoping that will help with my recovery in the next week and a half and then get me even more ready for Louisville in 32 days!

Less than 5 weeks

Time is ticking off very fast. I did a final review of my training schedule to fine tune it and compared it to a couple "recommendations" on the last 3 weeks and feel it is right on. I just hope I have done enough up to now. I feel like I don't hardly ever work out anymore. I just found my very first training schedule I wrote 2 years ago for my very first triathlon. My max work out week was 6 hours. Hahahahaha. Oh the days. I use to have a hard time staying on the bike for more than 30 min. Now I can't even get warmed up in 30 min. That is an equipment check.
Last Friday I had a 5.5 hour bike. I was more focused on dealing with the wind because it was windy and super hot. My ride got cut short because I am pretty sure I was developing a bit of heat exhaustion. I got home and jumped in the cold shower. I had a good ride otherwise. Nutrition felt good, I felt good and only a couple times did I curse at the wind, but it was very brief. Saturday no workout. Sunday I ran for 2.5 hours and only got in 15 miles. The combination of new orthotics and socks was causing my feet to be on fire. I would run about 1-2 miles and then the balls of my feet would just be burning so I would have to stop and remove my shoes quick and then go on again. My feet are just sliding around a little to much. I tightened my shoes a bit, but I didn't want to too much because the tops of my feet start hurting when I have my shoes to tight. It was a good run. I jumped on the bike for 30 min after for a quick easy spin. I even felt great for softball later in the day. Monday, I went home after work and grabbed my mountain bike and was going to bike to the pool. One thing I forgot was that I still needed to fix my break from earlier in the year. It still works, but keeps catching so it was scary on the steep down hill. Made it to the pool and swam for 45 min. I feel so slow because I get so tired. After the swim I biked to the grocery store to pick up a few things and then biked home. It was great to get my swim and bike all done in one. I came home and mowed lawn and then reviewed my schedule and started making notes about the course at Louisville. I have a lot of work to do on that yet, but that is what I am planning to use to keep my busy during my taper. I ended up staying up a lot later than I wanted because I was reading the newest Triathlon Life. :) Today I have a 1:15 run. Tomorrow I have an hour swim and 1.5 hour bike. Thursday is an hour run and then softball. Friday I am going to attempt to make it to the pool for a half hour since that is all I can get in now that they are closing it at 6. This weekend is kind of up in the air. I am suppose to play in a softball tournament on Saturday, but not sure if they are going to have enough players so I may not. In that case, I will do my 6 hour bike Saturday and my 2.5 run Sunday. If I play, I will just switch them around and do the run right away Saturday morning. Training is winding down. Perhaps when I am not working out 17 hours a week I will start getting nervous. I hope not. There is just so many things I still need to figure out like how am I going to carry my salt tablets on the run? I need to figure out how many I am going to need too. So many things, but it is a good thing there is a lot because it will keep me focused and busy so I don't start getting anxious. I am starting to get excited again.

OOOO la la

Change of plans last night. I felt like crap leaving work and really did not want to go to the pool. I told myself to suck it up and get your ass in their because you only swim twice a week and you cannot slack on the swim. I was tired, but I went. I get in the pool and didn't really plan out what I was going to do. I figured I would just start swimming and figure it out while I was warming up. I started swimming, kept swimming and kept swimming some more. I decided I was going to swim 2000 yards. Nope, I changed my mind, 3000 yards. I felt so great and smooth that I was willing to give up a bit of the bike tonight in lieu of a great swim. It is not very often I feel like swimming and very rare that I feel like not getting out of the pool. I ended up getting in the laps in 1:05. The pool I swim in is only 21-22 yards so I am not exactly sure if I swam slightly over 3000 yards or slightly under. I just figured each lap was short 3.5 yards and added the extra laps for it. By the end, my face was going to explode. How do you keep your face from building up so much pressure? I need to figure that out. After my swim, I headed home and had a bowl of oatmeal and then headed out on the bike. I only got in 1.5 hours because the sun was almost set and people can't drive. I started out on the bike and went up a very short, not steep hill by my house and I about died. My legs were soooooooooooooooo tired. I didn't think I was going to go longer than 20 min. I kept going. I couldn't hardly get going so I decided I would just take it easy and spin my legs out more to get them ready for Friday. By the time I got to 15 min, I had forgot my legs were tired and was back up to normal speed. I headed up through Ankeny and then back home. At the turn around, I really wanted to be home. Good thing that that is where that thought came up so I couldn't turn back early. I was going to have to make the entire trip. I am trying to work on the mental part of these long bikes. I need to not think about the time and just enjoy the ride and focus on form. I got home at 8:30. I get heartburn really bad if I eat after 8 so I could only eat something very light. Bowl of corn flakes. Blah. showered and then turned on a baseball game and started one of the books I got at the library today. "How to stop worrying and start living". It is pretty good so far. I started the other book "the secret" and left it at work to read during lunch. That one is kind of slow because it really only has one point to make and it just keeps giving examples of it. Ok I get it, move on. Hopefully it will expand its point a little more. Tonight I am going to do my "loop of pain" on the bike. It really isn't. It encompasses the 6 hills that are by where I live. There is 2 short quick hills, 3 long gradual hills, and 1 really steep hill that just kills me. I wish I had more time to do repeats on it. I will try to work that in several times in in the next couple weeks. Then I will do a short easy run after before my game. Tomorrow is going to be a tough day. It is suppose to be windier (10-15 mph wind) and hotter than it has been plus a chance of rain. It will really test my mental toughness.

Starting to freak out

This last week I am starting to freak out about my training. I feel like I haven't done enough and I have just about run out of time. I am going to push these last 3 weeks and hope that I have done enough to get me through. I have picked up a couple books about not worrying about things I don't have control over, but I have invested so much time, how can you not worry. Augh. I finally realize this past Sunday that this Ironman is going to be hard. I did a 2.5 Bike/1.5 run/1.5 Bike/30 Run. I was exhausted after that. That is only about half of what I need to do and add a swim on top of that. I wish I could have another 4 weeks to train. I have 2 6.5 hour bikes, 1 5.5 hour bike and 3 2.5 hour runs left along with my normal during the week workouts then taper time. The time is coming up so fast. I can almost smell the Ohio.
Update on the foot: I got my orthotics last Thursday. I ran 45 min on them Thursday night and felt really good. No pain and most importantly, no pain the next day. I ran again Sunday for my 2 hour run. Stupid me, I didn't wear socks so I have a huge blister in the arch of my foot. That skin is not use to having anything touch it. The run went good. I attempted to run again last night, but my job distracted me from drinking water all day so I was very tight and crampy for the run. I ended up only running for 20 min and walking for 40. My legs felt very heavy. I am sure there was some fatigue from Sunday, but it didn't feel like it normally does. I am sure I was tired, but the no water thing really hurt. Tonight I am getting in the pool for an hour and a 2 hour bike to follow. Tomorrow a 30 bike/30 run followed by a softball game. I am doing my long bike Friday since I will be out of town and not able to do it Saturday so that will be my day off. I will be eating very bad food all day at the family reunion. Yum! Sunday a 2.5 hour run. Probably will break it up into a 1.5 hour run/30-60 bike/1 hour run.

How can someone so fast get faster?

I completed my 100 mile bike ride in 5:15. Yes! I was so pumped. That will equate to a sub hour bike for an ironman, except now I need to figure out how to make Louisville flat. lol. Because I did not have any "real" hills on this ride. I actually felt really good on this ride the entire time. My neck started bothering me, but it never got to the point where it was painful. I was super pumped about doing the Ironman now, until I opened up my blog and saw there was only 48 days left. Augh. I am super nervous now. Scared mostly on how the day is going to go and knowing that I am going to be in pain and it is going to hurt like hell. I just saw that Chrissie Wellington finished Challenge Roth this weekend in 8:31:59! New world record for an ironman distance. That is so insane. She is so fast. How does she keep getting faster and faster? A 4:40 bike for the new record too. Wow is all I can say. Wow!
My training has brought me to this week. This will be my longest hours of training for my entire Ironman training. 19 Hours for the week. I am hoping to get all of these hours in. My foot has been "up in the air" the last week and I have been more nervous about running on it than I really should have been. I am hoping to get in some good mileage running this week to get my going again. This last weekend wiped me out. It was so much fun. When you try to squeeze in lots of fun, sleep tends to be the thing that gets shorted. I was kind of looking forward to working today just to get some structure/routine back. But it was a super great weekend.

Century Ride

Tomorrow about this time I will be a memeber of the century club. I have my first ever century ride tomorrow. I am excited to do this ride, but I know when I am doing it, I will hate it and want to quit. I need to really work on pushing myself through hard to finish what I need to. Anyway, I am tired today. Had my first summer session softball game last night. We have moved up to the "B" league. I will definately say the guys hit the ball a lot harder in this league and the girls actually hit the ball. I like the more challenging competition. Had a great game. Got hit in the shin with a ball. It hurts a lot today. Relaxing tonight to get ready for tomorrow's big ride.

Absent

I have been absent from my blog for about a week now. I have been very, very busy. This week will not be much different. Couple highlights of last week. Swam for 45 min straight Wednesday, Biked 4.5 hours Friday and another 4 hours Saturday morning. Thanks TriBeaner for keeping me going. I wanted to quit many times. Thursday I was able to run for an hour. No running since then because my foot, once again, has decided to give me problems. I am going to the doctor today to talk about the possibility of getting custom orthotics. I have been doing a lot of research and believe that a person with my foot type will benefit greatly from orthotics. I am hoping it will eliminate these random problems. I attempted to run yesterday morning. I ran for 3 min before the top of my foot cramped up. It finally "released" and then I was left with a sore tendon. The metatarsalgia is still present. It comes and goes. Monday of this week I swam for 45 min and then had a 1:45 bike. Tonight I am going to attempt to swim for an hour with a 1.5 hour bike. I have a feeling I am going to be exhausted tonight so it might end up me just floating in the pool. Tomorrow is the first game of softball for the summer session. I am excited. Keeps things exciting and not just doing triathlon specific workouts. Well that is all for now. If I remember I will update you on the foot orthotic situation.

Hyvee Race Report

It has only taken me a week and a half to get this up and I just stole it from my Register blog instead of writing a new one. Basically I just want to forget about it and move on because it wasn't an A race for me, things went wrong, but there were things that went right. So anyway...

Hyvee Triathlon Finish: 2:48:09 12/73 Age Group 104/418 WomenSwim 37:20 T1: 1:11 Bike: 1:15:29 T2: :59 Run: 53:14Am I happy? No. Why am I not happy? I don't know. Looking at my times, I should be very happy, but why am I not. I had a very disappointing swim. I contribute 80% of that to my start. I had a great starting spot. Right behind one girl on the right center. I started a little further to the right last year and had a great start so my plan was to do the same. I was to far to the center and I got hammered. After about 20 meters into the swim girls kept hitting my legs so I just could not get going therefore they all swam over top of me. I tried to make my way to the right further to get out of the mess, but there was just to many people to my right. All the way to the first buoy was horrible. When I got to the first buoy, it got worse. Since I was right up next to it, I got hammered again and even panicked a little bit. It was the first time ever I had considered stopping to let the crowd pass, but I kept at it. I went around the buoy and made my way almost off course to the way inside since everyone else had kind of went out wide. The traffic cleared up, but to much so now I did not have a draft. I started to make my way over behind another girl, but she could not swim straight for anything. She was running into people all the time so I decided to abandon her and just swim my line and wait for someone else to pass and jump in behind them. Well no one else had passed until the last turn where it got a little crazy again. I swung out wide to avoid the mess. I started getting into some heavy traffic from the 2 waves in front of me. Spent most of my time navigating around them and not really swimming. I felt really good on the swim and was relaxed, most of the time. I knew I had been in the water longer than I wanted, but did not expect what my watch read when I finished. 8 min way to long. I was going to have to make up serious time to meet my 2:40 goal. In and out of transition. I love transition. Out on the bike. It was great. It was flat and very fast. I just went hard. I had expected the wind to be more of a factor, but I really didn't feel it so then I thought maybe it isn't out of the West. I got to the turn and nope the wind was behind me. Awesome! I flew. There was not one person I passed that I didn't just fly by. It was great. Gave me a lot of confidence. Coming into T2, I was unsure of how my legs would feel because of how hard I pushed the bike. I jumped off my bike and ran through T2. Calf almost cramped up. I put on my shoes and went off on the run. I felt pretty good. Stomach was a little upset, but forced myself to throw up before the second aid station and that made me feel so much better. No mile markers so I wasn't sure of my pace which was tough because if I needed to pick it up, I wouldn't know. I got to about 5km and finally my legs had completely loosened up and I could push it a little more. I need to do more bricks to get my legs going a little earlier. I had a great run. The hills were big, but I just focused on keeping my knees up and my cadence quick. Having not run any hills for about 3 months, I was very surprised at my run time. I will take what I have learned from this race and keep improving. I will come back stronger next year. Each day I am realizing I should be happy and each day I am becoming more pleased with my progress. I want to thank the DSM Register for the opportunity to share my training with everyone and send out my congratulations to all the athletes.I will change my focus to my training for Ironman Louisville August 30th of this year. I will continue to focus on my running because I feel I can improve in that "easier" than I can with my swim. Swimming is so technical that it can take a couple years to drop a couple min off your time. The run, I should be able to drop a good min off my 10k pace by the end of this year to be back to where I was last year. I need to continue to work on my nutrition. Still having major GI issues and heartburn pretty bad. I am finding that this extreme endurance training is wreaking havoc on my body big time. All in all, I love triathlon more everyday and will continue to push my body to its extreme to see what I can really do.