shelby apples

Janus

2012-01-16T11:52:00.002-05:00

In elementary school we learned that January was named after the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings and endings. He is literally two-faced at once looking both backward and forward. Thus, it seems like a good time to look forward to this year, while looking back at how 2011 went.

2011 was a year of experimentation with my triathlons: new bike, new hydration and nutrition strategies and at the end of the year a new coach. I competed in six races and placed in 4 of them, a new record, and I got to go to the Age Group National Championship (but damn, those girls were fast). That's the good news. Though clearly the run was still a struggle. In AGNC, Mooseman and Mass State, I dogged the run. From my other races, it seems that I can run a good race. I just have to make it to the end with the endurance to run. So that's the big goal for this year, getting that balance right. And breaking 2:40 at an olympic.

Also, injury free. The shin update is that I stopped running just before new years, to allow for some more healing time. I've also been treating it like it's a stress fracture, just in case. Going to see the specialist in another week or so. Right now it's completely pain-free, so that's progress.

And now a look back at what really matters: the schwag. This year's race t-shirt round up has had some surprising results.

As I said last year, what makes a good race t-shirt for me is: 1) size 2) something I'm not afraid to be seen in public wearing and 3) material.

This year, I didn't have a clear favorite, partially due to a disturbing trend. My race t-shirts have gotten fatter. Many races are offering extra-small t-shirts, which I wholeheartedly support, but those t-shirts are getting wider. Check out this comparison of 2011's Lobsterman t-shirt under 2009's Lobsterman t-shirt:

The same size shirt from the same race has gotten much bigger. Check out the AGNC shirt. It is wider at its waist than it is in the shoulders:

That's not foreshortening:

I guess the upside is if I ever fall pregnant I won't need to shop for workout shirts.

In the most improved category, I give you the Jingle Bell 5K. You'll recall that last year, this race has the worst shirt of the season. This year, they had extra-smalls, and though the logo is somewhat misleading (Somerville in December is not the island paradise depicted), this is a huge improvement over last year's barren warehouse district illustration.

Finally, the coveted worst shirt of 2011. This honor goes to the Devil's Chase 6.66 miler. This was such a fun race, but the shirt was disastrous. It was so bad that I have already sent it on to greener pastures, so I don't have my own photos of it. First, the cut was bizarre, the small arrived roughly at my knees with arms so wide I could wear them as tights. Here's two women in the shirt at the race:

[photo credit tdavid12]

Second, the logo is a naked, muscley devil, who is just managing to conceal himself while running. It's just awkward.

There you have it. 2012 is looking to be a huge year: planning a wedding, starting a new job and going back to AGNC, just to name a few. Looking forward to it.

Rebranding

2011-12-31T17:34:00.000-05:00

I've come to the conclusion that it's time to rename the blog. The URL will stay the same, but, honestly, The Trouble with Living in Sin never quite fit.

When I started the blog back in 2007, I was moving to Australia, and I wanted to write a travel blog. A few weeks before my departure, I was perusing a handy book of Australianisms, reading them aloud and laughing at their ridiculousness.

"''Chuffed!' It means happy. 'Knackered' means tired. 'Seppo' means American. 'She'll be apples' means 'Everything is going to be all right.'"

"Shelby apples?" my friend asked.

"No, 'She'll be apples.' Although, I sorta like the sound of that 'Shelby Apples.' A misunderstanding of Australian culture, but meaning everything will be ok. I think I'll name my blog Shelby Apples."

And thus, Shelby Apples was born.

One side note: I don't think I ever heard any actual Australians use the phrase over the two years I lived there.

Then, I moved back. Shelby Apples didn't feel like it fit anymore. Paul and I had just moved in together, and discovered that neither of us owned the essentials like cutlery. I was griping that the trouble with living in sin was that there's no registry, and a coworker commented that The Trouble with Living in Sin would make a great blog. I thought that I'd be blogging more about my adventures with Paul, so the name would fit.

Obviously, that's not what's happened. The blog is clearly triathlon focused. So, baring any fantastic suggestions from my loyal readers (Paul is pushing for Team Riegle, but I'm not sure that fits), I'm going back to Shelby Apples. It's a good story.

But, there's another reason why it can't be called The Trouble with Living in Sin. Cause my days of living in sin are numbered. On December 31, 2011, Paul proposed to me, and after some prompting (my head kept saying yes, but my mouth was stunned), I accepted. 2012 is going to be an amazing year.

Fun with numbers

2011-12-24T13:17:00.002-05:00

I saw this comic at xkcd this other day (If you don't know xkcd, you should check it out. It's always super geeky, sometimes culturally-relevant and once in a while incredibly informative), and it reminded me of the mnemonic I use for counting laps at the pool.

Over the summer, I was reading Moonwalking with Einstein, a book that chronicles how the author became the US Memory Champion (yes, it's a thing). That may seem a bit dull, but he starts roughly a year before the championship as just an every day guy, and then he infiltrates this subculture of competitive memorizers. It's fascinating.

Anyway, he gives examples of how he memorizes names, numbers, to do lists, etc. And it occurred to me, maybe I could use a technique like this when I'm counting laps. You see, and this may come as a shock to some people, but I'm terrible with numbers. Or at least, I'm terrible with numbers if I can't write them down. Even simple math, if I don't have the calculation memorized, the numbers swim around, mix themselves up, and I end up being the MIT grad at the table desperately trying to divide the bill into 4 equal parts long after the cash has come and gone.

It's no different with remembering the lap that I'm on, particularly in the pool. Even short sets like 3 x 300 start to become difficult. Was that lap 4 or lap 5? So here's what I do. I associate images for each of the numbers 1-10. Each of them has some relevance to the number, so it's easy to remember. Then I place that image (usually person) at the end of the lane, mentally. I picture them as I'm swimming. If I'm not sure which lap I'm on, I just check the end of the lane. Who's there is the lap.

For instance, the number one is Paul (cause he's my number one guy - AWWWWW)

Number two is my parents. There is actually a specific photo that involved theatre t-shirts and suspenders, but I don't have a physical copy of it, so for your own enjoyment, here's a picture of my super cute mama (and a butterfly):

At three things start to get creative. Three is the three kings: the burger king, King Friday (the puppet) and a very sad looking Prince Charles (cause he's not actually a king). In the book he explains that the more ridiculous the image, the stickier it is. And for that reason the number six is the Easter Bunny, holding a basket of a dozen eggs and making a peace sign.

But isn't thinking of all these images just as hard to remember as remembering the number itself? Well, no. I don't really understand the science behind it, but somehow the images are easier. Maybe it's using the other side of my brain or something.

Give it a try.

I don't want to go home yet

2011-12-20T21:55:00.000-05:00

It's been a while. I started running again two weeks ago, and my shin is not better. It's been frustrating.

Last week Paul's dad suggested that someday (someday soon) I wouldn't be able to keep running. My shin wouldn't recover. What the hell? Sure, I don't expect to be running when I'm 95, but at 32? Come on, I'm bound to have a few good years left.

Then today, one of my running buddies went to the orthopedist for some nagging quad and knee trouble and came back with a recommendation to give up running or face knee replacement. I guess we're not invincible after all.

It's got me sorta bummed out. Maybe three weeks wasn't enough time to heal. I've tried ART, massage, acupuncture, changed my running gait, more aleve than any one should take and so much ice. This shin is just stubborn.

Last weekend, I ran in (but didn't race) the Jingle Bell 5K.

This race was the largest in Somerville's history and featured runners dressed as 8 inflatable reindeer, Santa with a shopping cart sleigh, and a woman dressed as the lamp from A Christmas Story. How could you miss that?

Recovery can be fun too

2011-11-25T16:34:00.001-05:00

It’s been almost two weeks since the Chilly Half and exactlythat long since I last ran. And I feelok, both physically and mentally. Yesterday, I missed my first race due to this shin splint, and I didn’thave that nagging feeling of missing out.

As I trained for the half and the pain in my shin waxed andwaned, I went through periods of despair that this injury would end my bid to runmy best half marathon ever. The morningof the Somerville Homeless Coalition 5K, I made peace with the thought that Iwas going to need to take some time off from running and forego the Chilly Halfto allow my shin to heal. But, then theweek after the 5K my shin improved. It wasstill not pain-free, but I could run on it without it impacting my stride.

I picked up my t-shirt and bib for the Gobble, Gobble,Gobble 4 miler last weekend, knowing full well that only half of those itemswould get any use. Yesterday morning, Iwent out to the race course to support my friend A as she continues to makefantastic strides in her running (serious negative split and beat her goal!), and to cheer on both BPC and BTT athletes. As I stood at the finish line, a man next tome asked why I wasn’t running, and I replied that I was signed up but had a bumleg. It was as if fate had sent him totell me, “See you’re not disappointed. Takingcare of your body and not running is ok, too.”

Of course, I miss running. Maybe it’s that setting a PR at the Chilly Half hasinstilled a new confidence and calm within me. I feel a bit like a kid in a candy store: which PR do I want to tackle next, all ofthem are within reach. I’m very temptedto return to the half marathon distance again this season with an “adequateendurance base.”

You see the week before the Chilly, my coach told me thatalthough I would likely set a PR at the race, I did not have an “adequateendurance base for a quality half.” Canyou hear the sound of tires screeching to a halt in my brain? WHAT? I’d been training for 9 weeks for thisrace, and it’s not like I was starting from a couch potato fitness level. What Alan meant was, there’s a differencebetween having the fitness to go out and run a half (maybe even your best halfto date) and having the fitness to run the best half your body is capable ofrunning. Despite the long miles I hadrun in preparation, I hadn’t even come close to running the 20 mile long runsfor 8-12 weeks that is necessary to prepare for that best half ever time.

Since I’ve stopped running, I’ve been swimming and bikingmore, and I’ve added some legitimate weight training. For the last several months, my strength traininghas been limited to body-weight core exercises (think planks and bridges). Though I enjoy these, it doesn’t compare tothe pleasure of hitting the gym for bench presses and lunges. The weight room at one time was a place thatraised my heart rate just by going in. After training with Paul two years ago, it’s no longer daunting. I know what I’m doing, and I emerge feelingstronger for it.

My shin is improving, too. I can run my finger over the spot that once was too sensitive to thetouch and have no pain. I’m still onNSAIDs, so I’m not quite ready to declare victory just yet, but I’m encouraged.They say that triathletes are either injured or racing or both. My goal for right now is to be neither, sothat come August I can be firmly in the racing camp. Of course, a lot can happen between now andthen: there are no guarantees. All I can do is put my faith in the processand enjoy the (bike) ride.

Signs of good things to come

2011-11-13T20:21:00.000-05:00

I can now wholeheartedly recommend actually training for a Half Marathon.

I was surprised at how nervous I was for this race. I'd had three less than optimal runs this week that didn't do much for my confidence. Saturday was all about the details: what to wear, how to use my watch, what time to arrive. Luckily, I have a very detail-oriented coach who loves getting into this stuff. Seriously, we were discussing the blend of polyester and spandex in my tights to determine whether or not they would be appropriate for the slightly warmer than anticipated temperatures (they were). And he gave me the ok to use not just the virtual partner, but also the advanced workouts in my garmin (so I could have a visual on pace and an auditory alert if my heart rate exceeded the prescribed zone for each portion of the race).

Sunday morning with my wardrobe approved and my watch programmed, I felt ready. I got to the race course early, and got a great parking spot. The race began and ended at the Newton South High School, which was great to have a structure to wait in and indoor plumbing! I caught up with a few friends, and before long it was 7:05, time to warm up. I ran my 16 minute warm up, ate a gel, drank some water and headed for the start line.

Despite having finely tuned my garmin, as I was attempting to lock the bezel, I managed to start the watch. I think about 30 seconds elapsed by the time I realized this and stopped it. I didn't have time to reset the watch, so I just restarted it when the gun went off. This meant that when I started running, I was already well behind my virtual partner. I tried to stay a consistent number of seconds behind the VP.

And that worked until I got to the first hill. You see, This course covers some of the heart break hill area from the Boston Marathon. I've heard it referred to as the Chilly Hilly Half. I was prepared for the "big hill" at 5.6 miles, but there was still a fair bit of "undulation" before you got there. I decided as I floated down a hill, pulling my VP back to 10 seconds ahead of me that this was ok. Having an average 7:45 was the goal, I can't expect to go the same speed uphill as downhill, and I might as well take advantage of the free speed on the downhill.

Touring some expensive neighborhoods in the western suburbs of Boston, the miles peeled off. It was mile 10, and I was feeling pretty good, but also getting a bit anxious to be done. I wanted to pick up the pace, but of course the plan was to stick to the 7:45s til 11.1. And I was very glad that I did. I picked it up at 11 and started passing people, only to hit one last hill at 12 that allowed some one to pass me back. Ok, none of that, keep picking people off. Just as the finish line came into view, a woman sprinted up next to me. No way. I dig deep, find my last ounce of effort, and sprint past her, finishing 2 seconds ahead.

I came in in 1:40:02. Two minutes faster than my goal and over six minutes improvement on my previous PR. And 10th in my age group out of 154. This race gives me a lot of confidence for the coming season.

Of course in every race, there are things that you could do better, in this one, I did not negative split. As best I can tell I ran 49:55 for the first half and 50:04 in the second (oh, and according to my watch the course was short by about a tenth of a mile). And the first half of the course had more climbs (247 ft versus 146 ft), so that only accentuates my getting slower over the race.

My shin felt ok throughout the race. Not recovered, but it didn't bother me. In fact, right now the thing that's bothering me most is my left hip. Maybe it was all the climbing or descending, but it's very sore. Regardless, both will have 3 weeks to recover with no running as I take a break to try to get back to injury-free running.

Chilly Half Race Plan

2011-11-08T08:16:00.000-05:00

The Newton Chilly Half is just 5 days away. It will be my seventh half marathon, and the first that I've really trained for. You see, three of those half marathons were part of half ironmans. Totally different game. My first half, back in Australia was just after I had moved to Brisbane, I used it as an excuse to keep myself training, but I think I only did one ten mile run in preparation. Then two BAA Half Marathons, each on the tail ends of tri seasons where I was taking some time off from training, but not racing. The danger of half marathons is that they are just short enough that I feel like I can just go out and run it without training.

Not so this time. That is not the Coach Alan way. I've been training for 9 weeks with increasing distance each week, starting around 7 miles, topping out around 11.

Race starts at 7:30, it's gonna be about 35 degrees then with winds around 10 mph. I'm planning on wearing the same gear as the Devils Chase. Brief warmup. I'm gonna be racing at a 7:45 pace (hopefully with my virtual partner on my Garmin if I can get everything working right) with heartrate varying with the HILLS.

That's right, this course has several of the hills from the Boston Marathon itself. So, yeah there's that.

My current Half Marathon PR is 1:46. I'm feeling pretty confident I can beat that. If I hold my 7:45s, I'll come in at 1:42.

Finally, the most important part of the half marathon: the BPC Brunch. No training can prepare me for that. See you on the course.

Calculating your resting heart rate

2011-11-04T09:55:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned before, I've started tracking my daily resting heart rate.

(Not sure why it says weight. It should say pulse. I promise I don't weigh 61 pounds.) So, first it's pretty erratic, but what I can see are tough workouts. Like say, Saturday's race. On Sunday, my resting heart rate was up to 59. After 2 days it recovered (only to spike again today, I don't have a good rationale for that one).

But trickier than figuring out what the heart rate data means, is figuring out what my resting heart rate is. I've taken to keeping my garmin next to my bed. When the alarm goes off, I pull on the strap, start my watch, and snooze/check my phone for >5 minutes. Then I upload this data to garmin connect. It looks like this:

As you can see, it moves around quite a bit, and it always has a peak near the beginning as my heart rate recovers from putting the strap on. I couldn't just use the average over the whole interval cause that peak would throw it off. I had been eyeballing the average heart rate over what looked like the minimal minute. But the engineer in me just couldn't cope with the inaccuracy. I needed... a spreadsheet!

I've created a google spreadsheet, although the same functions work equally well in excel. You're welcome to just use it to calculate your minimum heart rate, or you can read further where I'll explain how I created it.

Either way, you'll download a TCX file from garmin. Excel whines a bit and throws several errors about the data, but after accepting the risks and data formatting problems, it will open. In the file, you'll see a column with the time you started the workout, the max heart rate, average heart rate, then observation times, heart rates at each observation. Those last two are the only ones you need.

Those first two columns are directly from the TCX, just copy and paste. If you're creating your own file in excel, you'll need to paste as text, in the google spreadsheet you can just paste. You're calculated minimum heart rate over a minute will display in cell J3.

Now, if you're still with me, here's the fun stuff. First, we need to get the time stamp out of the string in that first column. We can do that using the =time() function and the =mid() function (which just takes characters out of a string). I'm not worried about the the hours here, so I just set it to zero.

Next, I want to find the time that is one minute before the time stamp (this is the time I'll be looking for to determine how many rows to go back to average).

=D2-time(0,1,0)

Then I confirm that I have at least a minute of data to average by comparing the minute back time to the first time stamp in the set (don't forget the absolute reference otherwise bad things may happen).

=if(E3<$D$3,false, true)

Now for the magic. You see, the garmin doesn't record obervations at regular intervals. If it loses its connection to the heart rate monitor, then it doesn't record anything, so we can't just do a rolling average of say, the last 10 records. We have to figure out how many observations were in that last minute. We use the =match() function. This finds the greatest value that is less than the sought value, so if we're looking for the minute before an observation at 2:59, match will look for the greatest value that is less than 1:59. The result is the number of cells from the top of the field where that minute starts.

Now all we have to do is compute the average. We use the =offset() function to compute the range of observations to average. Offset takes an initial cell, shifts from that cell down a number of rows and columns, and then returns an array of the number of rows/columns specified, so we give offset the first heart rate value B3, shift by the index we just calculated, and then tell it the number of rows from that cell to the cell we started at.

That was easy. Now we have a column that gives the trailing average heart rate, we take the minimum of that column and we're good to go.

Planning for 2012

2011-11-01T19:47:00.000-04:00

Got any good recommendations for spring races? I'm thinking of another half marathon before the tri season and I'd like to get in a few more 5 and 10Ks.

Tentatively, I've got:

Feb 5: Super Sunday 5K/10K, I think, website not updated from last year
Mar 18: Ras Na hEirann (or an Ras Mor)
Apr 15: BAA 5K
May 13: M.O.M.'s Day 5K
May 27: Run to Remember 5mi/Half Mara

What do you think?

Devils Chase Race Report: Following the plan

2011-10-29T17:10:00.007-04:00

Coming into the last mile of the Devil's Chase this morning I had one thought in my mind: My coach was right. He was right about the pacing, he was right about using the virtual partner on the watch, he was right about what to wear.

This was my best running race in I don't remember how long. Like many good races, then pre-race had a few hiccups, but I'll get into that later. First, the race. 1200 people, at least half dressed in some devil-themed fashion, including a guy in a red speedo and body paint and many variations of deviled eggs (unofficial pictures here).

The plan was to run 7:34s throughout the race, monitoring my heart rate and reducing pace if the heart rate rose too much. I didn't want to go out too hard like I had in the Somerville Homeless Coalition 5K. I've spent a lot of my run training in low heart rate/ low pace zones, so I was a little worried about how fast 7:34 would feel. Turns out, it felt great. Comfortable for the first few miles, then hard, but not impossible.

I love using my garmin for to manage my run. Because the plan was pretty straightforward and because I can only program 1 "advanced" workout into my run, I had uploaded the warm up workout. Unfortunately, I had cut it a bit too fine and didn't have time to reprogram the watch for the actual race. So I just had the instantaneous pace displayed to work with. I hadn't appreciated just how much this metric varies. I'd look down and see a pace of 8 minutes then of 7, then back to 7:20. I knew I wasn't varying that much, so I tried to keep it fast and consistent. Next time I'll definitely use the virtual partner for this type of run.

Just past mile 2, a woman caught up to me. I held with her for a bit, then saw that we were some where near a 7:15 mile. Too fast. I thought about what my coach had said about catching people holding my pace and catching people at the finish. I let her go. She never got out of sight, and I caught her and held her off around 4.5 miles. :)

At mile 5 I was still feeling good. We came around a corner close to 5.2 miles, and I decided it was time to see what I still had left in the legs. I started picking people off. I got passed by one guy between there and the 6 mile mark. After that no more.

I did the 6th mile in 7:17, then sped up a bit more and did the final 6 tenths at a 7:04 pace. (Note: the first lap is 3 miles.)

I did the first 10K in 45:47 which is right around my best 10K time. I was so happy with this. I was the 104th person out of over 1200 and the 6th in the women 30-39 age group. So pleased.

Ok, back to the start. We got to the course a bit later than planned. You see 95 and 128 are pretty much synonymous in Boston, but apparently as you get to the north shore, they diverge. Andrea and I were engaged in a very in depth conversation about cords of firewood and missed the split. We still got to the course well before the start, but with registration and port-o-potty queues and dropping our warm, outer layers at the car, there wasn't a lot of extra time. So as we were dropping our clothes off, I thought I'd rather just run into the bushes to pee, rather than risking missing the start waiting for a port-o-potty. I searched out a spot that wasn't visible from the road and squatted. Then I noticed there was a bur on my gloves. Wait, there are burs on my jacket. Oh, no there are burs everywhere, outside and inside my tights. I did my best to de-bur-ify myself, but those were some scratchy tights. Luckily, the cool temperatures were numbing.

This little guy followed me home:

What to wear for cold weather running

2011-10-27T18:58:00.002-04:00

Double post today!

One other factor I'm thinking about for the race Saturday is weather. It's supposed to be 35 degrees And sunny (it's sleeting right now - hooray, Boston). I was talking with my coach last night about how best to dress for that weather.

Coach Alan sent this link along to me that I wanted to share with you: http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/whattowear

My plan is tights, long sleeves, gloves and newly purchase headband to protect my ears. And I'll bring a light windbreaker as well.

Race prep: Salem Devil's Chase 6.66 miler

2011-10-26T19:50:00.005-04:00

After five days at the beach and a visit to my coach in DC, I'm back and settled in to my routine and ready to take on the 6.66 miler this weekend.

The trip to Galveston for Paul's family reunion was fantastic. I still did some training: one open water swim, a little over 20 miles of running and a fun bike, but mostly it was about hanging out. My days looked like this.

Catch the sunrise

Relax

This weekend is the 6.66 mile Devil's Chase in Salem. I've been training for the Chilly Half Marathon coming up in 2.5 weeks. This weekend's race is a fun one, to practice for the half.

The plan is to not go out too hard (again, just like the 5K, except this time, I'll follow the plan). I've got a pace to hold and heart rates to stay under. I'm feeling good about it.

This weekend is also R's second 5K. I'm looking forward to cheering her on Sunday at the Superhero 5K.

Finally, I was a little nervous about working with a coach at a distance, but it's been great. Getting to run and swim with him last week was definitely a highlight. And then today, I got my feedback on my last run, including this:

Look at that cadence improvement. Yay.

The Anti-Social Triathlete

2011-10-09T15:16:00.004-04:00

It's been four weeks since I started working with my new coach. I have a few thoughts on how it's going.

Holy running, batman.
I'm becoming an anti-social triathlete.
I'm officially hardcore.

1. Running.
Fall running season is upon us. The Newton Chilly Half is just 5 weeks away, and as a result I've run 74 miles in the last 4 weeks. That's not a lot for real runners, but for me, let's put this in perspective. Prior to starting with the new coach, it took 10 weeks to get to 74 miles. Over the last 4 weeks running has made up 38% of my training time.

I've been struggling to balance this volume with my low shin splint. It hurt a lot in the warm up before last week's 5K. I was pretty much ready to throw in the towel on the half. But, Coach Alan gave me Tuesday off from running to help it recover. That meant, I didn't run from Saturday until Thursday of this week. The rest in conjunction with some ART and my own "squatting stretch" has helped immensely. (This stretch is one I made up a few years ago that seems to help with my shin splints. It's just squatting down with heals off the ground and shifting weight from one side to the other. I think it's stretching my tibialis posterior. At a minimum it feels good. Do you have any suggested stretches of your own?)

Thursday's run felt ok. Not pain-free, but it was the first run that was actually better than the previous one. I ran again yesterday, and it seemed ok again. So, I'm hopeful that the half marathon is still in the cards.

2. The Anti-Social Triathlete

I've done a lot more of my workouts over the last four weeks on my own. Sure, I've done my Thursday runs with Lauren, a ride with Chad, a few swims and a trainer ride with Andrea, but I've done a majority on my own. I was worried that I might get bored or lazy without that local person to be accountable to, but instead, I sort of enjoy having a few workouts all to myself.

You see, the workouts are very prescriptive. An 80 minute run with a heart rate between 151 and 159 means that the only people I can run with are those who are willing to run at the pace that gets me to that heart rate. Sometimes it works out, like it did yesterday with some BTT folks out by the river, but sometimes it's just too hard to make the logistics work. And, other times it's nice to just tune into my workout, no distractions.

And that got me thinking. My friend R who's just started running doesn't like to run with anyone else. When I first started running, I didn't want to run with any one else either. But slowly, as I developed confidence in my running, I started wanting to run with people. And, as I started running with people, I started getting faster. Now I'm not superfast, but it is interesting to feel this shift away from the social element of my training.

And then the consultant in me had to make a visualization.

3. I'm hardcore.

If you're still with me, thanks! I promise this is worth it. Yesterday, I was running the river with two other people. At almost 8 miles in, something hit my eye. What was that? I wiped my eye and came away with bird shit. EW!!!

But here's the thing. I kept running. Didn't even mention it to my running buddies. There's not much that could be done about it at the time. When I finished the run, I went into a Dunkin Donuts and washed up.

Told you it was worth it. :)

SHC 5K Race Report: Jack rabbit starts always hurt

2011-10-02T19:37:00.005-04:00

This 5K felt like a race, which was weird. How did I know it was a race? I made a morning schedule:

6:45 - Wake up, check heart rate and weight, eat, bathroom, warm up ankle, bathroom, grab wine (as you do... see below), water
7:10 - Leave home
7:30 - Arrive at R's, assemble strata for brunch (hence the wine)
8:20 - Head to the race
8:39 - Warm up
8:55 - Water + gel
9:00 - Race

I usually approach road races as just fun training, but yesterday I was out for a PR. Then again, it's also been 18 months since I've run a 5K (I know, I was surprised by this as well), and I've gotten more competitive in that time.

This being the first race with the new coach there were several new elements to it. Like a warm up. Coach gave me about 2 miles with progressively harder effort to get warm and ready. I've been struggling with the development of a low shin splint (originally occurred just before nationals, but keeps acting up). It hurt on this warm up, but the combination of the adrenaline and the warm up made it pain-free during the actual race.

The race strategy was to not go out too hard and to negative split the race. I got to the start line just as the gun went off. I tried to stay with friend D. But within a few yards, it was clear that keeping up with him was out of the question. I tried to keep the feeling of pushing hard, but not crazy. And then I passed the 1 mile mark. 6:52. Shit. That's way too fast. Ok. now I'm trying to maintain a hard effort, but still have something left in the tank for the last mile. Not the plan.

The second mile was 7:19. Gah, over-correction. Ok, all out for this last mile. This hurt. And then it was over. In fact, that was the thing about this race, the time felt like it went fast. And it was fast 22:17. A new PR (and 5th of the 116 women aged 30-39). But Coach says if I had followed the race plan, it would have been even faster

But that's not the end of the story. I wasn't the only one with PR. Coworkers D, J and K all posted PRs too. And as I mentioned in my last post, my officemate R was running as well. I've been playing fake coach and real cheerleader to R over the last 6 weeks. This was her second attempt at the 5K distance. She ran the whole thing and smashed her goal of running in twice my time. In fact she ran sub-40 minutes. (We're gearing up now for the Jingle Bell Run 5K in 9 weeks.) To celebrate, we enjoyed a homemade brunch crepes, coffee, potatoes, fruit salad, banana bread and, yes, strata. The only thing we were missing was some post race photos.

Running in the Blue Ridge Mountains

2011-09-26T13:37:00.006-04:00

This past weekend, Paul and I went down to Asheville for my sister's wedding. It was a beautiful day with a very laid-back ceremony and reception. Absolutely perfect.

But beyond the wedding, we had a weekend to hang out in this fantastic log cabin way up on a mountain. The image above is from the driveway, looking back down to the street. Here's the topography of the neighborhood (yes, that is a 20% incline, and that doesn't even include the driveway which was the by far the steepest part of the trek).

Needless to say, I didn't do my Saturday run from the cabin. Since I've started my new training regime for the fall running season, I've been running 3 days a week. One long zone 2 run, one long run with mile repeats at pace and one long treadmill hill run. See a pattern here? It's only been two weeks, but here's my mileage:

24 miles last week. Whew. Considering my previous weekly run distance was closer to the 6-10 mile range, this is a big step up. Saturday's run was one of the zone 2 runs. I set my garmin to beep at me if I go out of the zone 2 range, I drove out of the neighborhood, and I took off. I've also discovered that I can download workouts to my garmin, so I can specify heart rate or pace goals, and it will beep at me when I'm outside of them. Very nice for those 2nd type of runs.

This week will be much shorter (~13 miles) with my first 5K race of the season on Saturday. Expect a race report on Sunday. By the way, if you know my officemate R, wish her good luck in the 5K race. She's gonna PR (and she's not gonna walk - unless it's at a water stop).

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2011-09-16T17:02:00.004-04:00

September already and another New England triathlon season has come to a close. Those Brisbanites have it so good with races straight from October to March and "winter" training that still includes outdoor rides.

This has been the most successful season on record. I competed in 6 races, podiumed in 4 and went to the National Championship.

I have the coaches and athletes at BPC to thank for that. When I first arrived back in Boston, I was looking for a team similar to my Aussie team, the Brisbane Tri Squad. I wanted more than just a team, and I wanted more than just a coach. I was looking for a team that offered group coaching to keep me motivated (nothing gets you out of bed like knowing your friends will all be at the pool). BPC was that team.

Over the last two years, I've gone from a participant to a competitor. With Duxbury last year, I took my first climb up the podium, and I qualified for Nationals. After my first taste of victory, there was no turning back. I bought a tri bike, and I kept myself mostly injury-free. This season has been all about getting ready for and competing at Nationals.

As I start looking toward next season (and, yes, I'm already thinking about and planning for June 2012), I've decided I want to try something new with my coaching. I started researching coaches online, reading bios, talking to friends about their coaches, reading blog post after blog post on why I need a coach and why I don't. I narrowed it down to four coaches who all came highly-recommended and who I thought would be a good fit.

I put together a bunch of questions on their athletes:

How many?
Breakdown of long versus short course?
Athlete profile (just getting fit versus national champ)?

their training philosophy:

Hours per week and breakdown by discipline?
Periodization?
Role of recovery and forms?
Role of strength training and forms?
Training metrics (e.g., power, heart rate, speed)?

and their communication style:

Forms?
Frequency?
Number of weeks in a program? How far before starting the program will I receive it?

In the end, I'm lucky to be working with Coach Alan of DCRainmaker fame. First goal with the new coach is the Newton Chilly Half Marathon in 8 weeks. It will be the first half marathon that I've really trained for, so I'm excited to see how far we can go.

Lobsterman Race Report: Bringing it home

2011-09-12T21:44:00.006-04:00

The final race of the season was a gorgeous one. Before we get into the recap though, I have to recognize how well this race was organized. Not just for the athletes (most races have knowledgeable volunteers and well-marked courses), but for spectators as well. This may seem small, but they had spectator food. Many races just have their sponsors (e.g., a protein shake, a yogurt sample) available, but for a longer race like this, it's really nice to have breakfast available to the families out there supporting. So, thanks, Lobsterman.

One note, more to myself than the organizers, get the extra-small shirt. The vendor for the shirts has clearly changed their sizing. My small shirt from this year's race is about 2 inches wider than the one from two years ago.

Onto the race. The water which I was expecting to be quite cold, was fine. They announced it was 68 when they measured in the morning (before the tide had really come in). I think it was a little cooler than that, but still nothing compared with two years ago.

The swim was only 3 buoys: 3 turns, a diamond shape. The way out to the first buoy was smooth sailing. I could see I was in second place about 20 feet behind the first place girl, but she wasn't putting any more water between us. It was a little seaweedy, but reminded me how much I love swimming in salt water - so buoyant. Making the first turn it was tough to find the 2nd buoy: sunshine, rougher water, catching the wave ahead of us and about 400 yards of distance all made it difficult, but no repeats of Nationals.

Coming out of the water, a friend told me I was in third for the age group. Transition was tough. I struggled to put on my garmin after the swim. I needed to use it so that I'd have heart rate data for the ride, but I can't swim in the watch. It felt like forever. Looking back, however, my transition time wasn't that far off. Onto the bike.

Note to Future-Laura: Next time you do this race, remember that first hill deserves a granny gear. It looks like it's not that tall, but it just keeps turning and climbing, and I definitely attempted it in too high of a gear, which is clear from that heart rate spike in the first mile. There was not a single foot of flat on this course. And heading out it just did not feel very fast, but I just kept grinding away at it. I got passed by several women in the 40-49 age groups (geez, those ladies are fast), but wasn't until about half way that I got passed by a woman with 34 on her calf. Then at mile 20 or so, I got passed by Lauren. I thought that put me in 5th.

Off the bike, I thought about what my coach told me, about getting faster throughout the race. The first thing you have to do is go back up that killer hill. Ok, head down, cadence up. Not much really stands out from the run: it was hilly, and it hurt. I didn't look at the watch much other than to occassionally check my pace. That was it, just run hard.

Coming back into the park, I knew I'd be close to my 2:40 goal. I hadn't timed the swim, but I knew the bike and run were coming in just under 2:10, that meant if my swim and T1 were on target, I would hit it.

And the verdict: 2:40:20. So close to breaking into the 2:30s. I can review every detail of this race to try to find those last 20 seconds. Could I have gotten that watch on more quickly, could I have pushed the downhills just a little bit more? I'm not going to beat myself up about it. 2:40 is still a minute better than nationals on a much trickier course. And I felt good throughout the race.

Here we have it. Looks like I was second out of the water, and further passed the first person in transition, putting me in first as we went out onto the bike. On the bike I was passed by two people, putting me in third, which I held for the remainder of the race.

Here we are winning our mugs. I was awarded second (once again my height makes me look like third. As best I can tell, the woman who came in second had a bib number that was out of the range of our age group. I'm guessing this meant she registered late, so she didn't get included in our age group awards. That is definitely a shame.

Next up, fall running season!

Getting fitter

2011-09-08T16:58:00.005-04:00

Way back in 2008 I got my first heart rate monitor. The first thing I did with it was to measure my resting heart rate: 72. Hmm. That was a little higher than I expected, but still in normal ranges. I tried again. Same results. I resigned myself to the fact that I just had a high resting heart rate. I chalked it up to being a mathlete for so many years.

Last night I took my resting heart rate again: 57. That's 15 beats. I'll take it.

UPDATE: Thursday night, it was down to 52!

Lobsterman Race Plan: Last Dance (for this year)

2011-09-05T22:33:00.006-04:00

UPDATE: I came down with a cold on Wednesday. I'm taking it easy and trying to get myself better, but there's a real chance I don't make it up to Maine this weekend. Disappointing, but I don't want to do it if I'm not 100%.

---

It's been two years since I've been to the Lobsterman race in Maine. It was one of the few races I did in 2009 after moving back to the states, and what stands out in my mind is that it 1) still holds the record for the coldest tri-swim I've ever done and 2) has a very hilly bike.

On top of this, Lobsterman is my final triathlon of the 2011 season, which feels like it went really fast. And I still haven't cracked 2:40. With this last tri, I will try once again to make this barrier tumble.

Water temperature today ranged from 61 degrees to 63 degrees, so I think it's safe to say it's gonna be a cold one again. Plus, the air temperature is only supposed to top out at 68. Generally a great air temperature for riding and running, but less exciting after 30 minutes in the some cold water. So... good news: I will not overheat at this race. Bad news: I may need to consider adding a layer in T1, so I don't have a repeat of Mooseman.

Onto the bike. I'm still not going to get a chance to preview the bike course before the race. And this year, there's apparently a significant stretch of road that is currently packed gravel. Two years ago, I completed the bike course with an average speed of 17.25. Last year's top speed for the course in my age group was 21.5. I doubt I'm gonna hit 21 mph, but I think high 18s seems possible, given Griskus average of 18.8 and the new bike.

The run's focus will be high cadence and bringing it home strong. I'll report on how it went on Sunday.

Cranberry Sprint Race Report: Going fast.

2011-08-28T17:07:00.006-04:00

After a whole season of races that take more than two and a half hours, it was really nice to have a race that I finished in just over an hour. That's not to say that I wasn't sore after this race or I didn't take a mondo nap. It's just nice to go fast and be done.

[Bikes racked, goggles checked, ready to race. ]

I had planned on it being a wetsuit legal race, but when I got there, the water temperature was 79 degrees. At that temperature, wetsuits are allowed, but you're not eligible for prizes. The swim was supposed to be a half mile. I had estimated that without a wetsuit, I'd probably finish in about 14 minutes.

Another change: I had decided to try out a different top this time around. Both my head coach and one of our assistant coaches race in the "running singlet" rather than the tri top, so I thought I'd give it a go (the tri top zipper sometimes chafes).

I started the swim on towards the front and on the left with all the other women in 30-34 and 35-39. When the horn sounded I started swimming hard. Quickly, I was out ahead of the mele. I could see about 6-7 girls ahead of me all swimming together, but I was mostly alone. Without my wetsuit the top swished around a bit in the water. Not a big deal, but my heart rate strap also came dislodged and started inching its way down my waste. Just at the final buoy, I saw another woman from my wave come up on my right. I held onto her as best I could, but she got out of the water about 5 seconds ahead of me. Paul was waiting for me on shore and told me I was less than a minute behind the leaders and in 8th or so place. My watch said 7:30. That swim was short! Afterwards the officials said it was closer to 0.3 miles.

[trying to get the heart rate strap back in place]

[I had pretty decent rack positioning, near the bike out, though a bit off to the side]

I beat the woman who overtook me in the swim out of transition by about 40 seconds, and successfully mounted my bike. The bike route was two loops of 5.5 miles, and it went pretty fast. On the first lap, I was passing people, but never sure if I was passing people in my age group. I saw a few 25-29, at least one 35-39, and I was pretty sure one 30-34. I did get passed by the elite woman toward the end of the first lap. On the second lap, all bets were off. I was passing people a lot, but I stopped even trying to keep track of age groups. I didn't get passed by any other women.

[heading out on the run]

Paul was waiting for me at T2. I asked him how many girls were ahead of me. He said he thought I was in 5th place (out of 30-34 and 35-39). Off I went. Got about 300 yards outside of transition and decided I really didn't need to be running in my visor. It was cloudy and misty out, no need to shield my face. So as we rounded the corner of the parking lot, I tossed it onto the fence post.

I got passed by a few men but mostly just focused on picking people off. At the one mile mark, I saw a guy pull over and star to walk. As I made the pass, I reminded him, "Only 2 more miles, dude." He said thanks and started running again.

I got to the hill and saw a female runner up ahead of me. I forced myself to up my cadence and direct my eyes down at the pavement. Whew, made it to the turn (the halfway point in the hill), and I've gained some ground on this woman. Eyes down, cadence up, and we've cleared the top of the hill and come into the water stop. Just after the water stop, I caught up to her. I asked, "Are you 37?" She said, "yes, and you?" I told her 32. She said, "oh, well done then." I said, "you, too." She said she would have wished me luck even if I had been in her age group. Isn't that nice.

My next mark was a 50 year old man, but I just couldn't seem to pass him. I followed him all the way back to the park. Just as we were about to turn in, I finally catch him. The volunteer rightly tells us, it's about two tenths of a mile to the finish (I hate it when they throw out completely inaccurate numbers). And I try to squeeze out every last drop.

[my favorite shot from the race: the finish line, just after I had crossed it]

Paul tells me he thinks I was 4th in my age group. But I ask if that included 35-39 year olds, and he wasn't sure. We wait for Andrea and Rachel to finish up and snap this shot:

The results come in: 3rd place in age group. We find a dry spot in the tent for the awards, just as it starts to rain.

[Third place and looking pretty short on that podium]

It's not quite the win I'd planned, but I feel like I really went hard, and I'm very satisfied with the outcome.

Analyzing your results

2011-08-28T08:38:00.008-04:00

I took 3rd in my age group yesterday at the Cranberry Sprint, and I'll post a full race report tomorrow. Today, I wanted to talk about analyzing race results.

You see, this morning, I awoke to find the full results from the race posted to Cool Runnings. I wanted to find out how my discipline times stacked up against the rest of the girls in my age group, but with the raw dump of results it's hard to figure out. You can use excel, but excel is, let's just say, not very graceful with this kind of data. I had to use a handful of tricks to massage the data to a usable format. Here's how I did it.

Just the basics

First, copy and paste. I usually paste results in as text (Using excel, 2007, from the Paste drop-down, select Paste Special, then choose Text.) Depending on how the data is organized it may pasted into individual cells. If not, from the the Data menu, use Text to Columns to quickly spread the data into columns.

I then use an autofilter to view just my age group results (from the home menu, select Sort and Filter, then Filter to add the filter). In the column labeled div (i.e., division), use the drop down to select just your age group.

Then I can sort by each discipline to see how my times stacked up. Sorting by swim, I see that I had the 5th fastest swim in my age group. By bike, I had the 4th fastest time, and by run I had the 4th fastest time, which led to my overall 3rd place age group finish. Nice.

With a race where each of the discipline times is under an hour, this works well. But try sorting by Tottime (Total Time) smallest to largest. You'll see the folks who completed the race in under an hour end up at the bottom of the sheet, not at the top.

Fixing times
Excel is looking at the times for the top 9 finishers and thinking they did a 50+ hour race, not 50+ minute. To fix this you need to use several time functions: TIME, HOUR, DAY and MINUTE. Here's the equation you can use (where E2 is the Tottime):

=TIME(0,HOUR(E2)+24*DAY(E2),MINUTE(E2))

TIME takes 3 inputs: hours, minutes and seconds. Basically, this says, set hours to 0, set minutes to the hours field (plus days because the HOUR function doesn't return values great than 24), and set seconds to minutes. You can use this function for everyone in the top 9 in a separate column, then copy and paste-value to the Tottime field.

I use similar functions to this one to convert each of the discipline times, so they are comparable.

Fixing the rankings
Excel tries to be smart. When you enter 1/18 in the Div/Tot field (i.e., your rank within your age group), it reads that as the date Jan 18, 2011. This is probably helpful much of the time, but doesn't work when you're trying to show that a person was the first out of 18 in his age group. You'll notice for people in the top 12 of their age group excel is replacing the rank with dates, but after 12 it displays them properly. The short answer for how to fix this is:

=IF(ISNUMBER(F2),IF(YEAR(F2)=2011,CONCATENATE(MONTH(F2),"/",DAY(F2)), CONCATENATE(MONTH(F2),"/",YEAR(F2)-1900)),F2)

Basically, this function first checks if the entry has been converted to a date, then it recreates the ranking as a text item. (There's also a little funny business in there about the year being outside of 2011.)

Cumulative time

Finally, I like to look at my positioning in the pack at relevant points in the race. Having fixed each of the discipline times above, I create a cumulative time exiting T1, entering T2, exiting T2, to see how I'm fairing versus the competition. It's pretty simple: Exiting T1 = swim time + T1 time, Entering T2 = Exiting T1 + bike time, Exiting T2 = Entering T2 + T2. I then graphed the resulting ranks in powerpoint (I'm in orange!).

You can see the first woman out of the water held onto her lead throughout the race. I came out of the water 5th, passed one person in transition and another on the bike to put myself in 3rd place, which I held onto for the remainder of the race.

Cranberry Sprint Race Plan: The Encore

2011-08-25T11:22:00.003-04:00

It seems like it was just last week I was planning for Age Group Nationals. Ok, it doesn't just seem that way. This weekend, I've got the sprint at Cranberry.

Every year since I returned from Australia, I've done the Timberman Sprint with my good friend Andrea. She and I did our very first triathlon together way back in 2005, so it's sorta special to get to do Timberman with her each year. This year, unfortunately, Timberman Sprint was scheduled for the same day as Nationals. Andrea competed in Timberman without me last weekend (and beat her previous best course time by five minutes!), while I raced at Nationals. We decided we'd need to find another sprint to do. Enter the Cranberry Sprint. We chose it because it was close enough to our A races that we wouldn't really have to train for it. In fact, since Nationals I have trained exactly once: a 20 minute or so open water swim yesterday.

I raced Cranberry Olympic last year. This year, I'm pleased to be doing the sprint because (a) it appears we'll be able to get it in before the hurricane hits (the olympic distance may not be so lucky) and (b) it's my only sprint for the season. Last year's Timberman plan was to have fun and go hard. Plan for Cranberry is the same. And add to that a win. We'll see how I'm feeling race day, but from this comfy couch, it certainly feels doable.

USATAGN Race Report: My best meets the best

2011-08-21T08:34:00.014-04:00

2:41:20. Not quite the 2:35, that I still believe I'm capable of, but still a PR by two minutes. The short story: bad swim, great bike, hit the wall on the run. Grab a snack, cause this recap may take as long as the actual race.

[Pigtails do not enhance my tough-guy, pre-race face]

Things that worked well:

Mantras. I mentioned how I used the "If you want to get faster, you have to go faster" mantra at Griskus. Here, I had a transition mantra: "Quick, but not in a hurry," and an overall mantra "Get behind me, Unbelief." You see, I had a lot of doubts coming into this race. Last week, Paul reminded me of this speech from a Notre Dame pep rally last year:

On the bike I'd been going back and forth with a guy on a yellow cervelo (my oxygen-deprived brain was really entertained by that phrase). At mile 10, I checked my average speed: 17.2. I started thinking, "Guess I'm not gonna hit that bike split either." And, then I realized that was just Unbelief talking. Get behind me, Unbelief. And while I'm at it, Get behind me, Yellow Cervelo. I passed the Yellow Cervelo and dropped him.

Nutrition. Followed the plan exactly (Clif bar at 5:30, gel at 8, 200 calories of heed on the bike, plus gels at miles 5 and 20, water on the run). And it worked great! No stomach distress despite the high heart rates.

Hydration. The new speedfil bottle worked like a charm. I had forgotten to bring the cap for it when I racked the bike on Friday afternoon. Saturday morning, there were a few bugs hanging out in there. I rinsed them out, and I'm pretty sure I got them all. I had pre-mixed my heed in a 24 ounce bottle, poured that in, then topped off the the speedfil with another 10 oz or so of water. This worked surprisingly well, the heed and water, didn't completely mix, so as I drank, the solution got less sweet, which was refreshing. It also meant, I got more calories earlier on the bike. I was so well hydrated out on the run that I peed myself. Generally, I would think it a failing to not make it to the bathroom, but in triathlon, I'm actually sorta proud of it.

Hotel. Comfort Inn people let us stay an extra hour. I had set us up for a 1pm check out, but we didn't make it back from the course til 1:20. We came in prepared to plead and bitch and moan, but instead they just told us to take our time, which meant I got to have a shower before the long drive home. Win! Especially considering the last bullet point.

Things that didn't work so well:

The swim course. It was a big fail, not just for me, but for a majority of the athletes. I think a few things went wrong. First, I'm pretty sure that the course we swam was different to the one we planned. As best I could tell, here's the difference: The turn at the third buoy was much more acute than it had looked in the course map. Second, making that turn, you started swimming directly into the sun. When I came around the third buoy, I couldn't find the fourth buoy. I even breast stroked for several strokes trying to spot it. No luck. The pack I had been swimming with was getting further away from me, so I decided I should just follow the pack, but I kept looking up and trying to spot that fourth buoy. Finally after another 60 strokes or so, I switched back to breast stroke, and finally located the fourth buoy WAY OFF TO MY RIGHT. Ugh. Not much USAT can do about the blinding sun, but they could instruct their watercraft to help people make that turn. Why they weren't steering people back on course, I don't know, but it was very frustrating.

Speedfil. I lost a screw on the speedfil, and it rattled for much of the ride. Also, I had set up the straw too short. Each time I went to drink, my visibility went down to about 15 feet in front of me. Not ideal

The run. The first two miles, I reeled people in. Ran a little better than 8 min miles with a super steep first half mile. But after that, things started getting harder. My legs felt heavy, and the miles were just so far apart. Worse still, when we had ridden the course the day before, we hadn't gone all the way out to the turnaround, we thought we had, but no. So the run just kept going and going. At the final water stop near 4.5 miles, I walked through it. I picked it back up again, but my pace suffered. My heart rate was consistently around 190.

With nutrition and hydration squared away and weather out of control, what can I do to improve run performance? It's still an endurance race. I need to find the right balance of bike to run.

If I want to do a 2:35 (assuming 25 minute swim, 5 minutes of transition), then I need to average 18.8mph on the bike and 7:20 min miles, or 19mph and 7:30s.

One thing that did seem to work: form on the run was looking good even in the final shot:

Warm ups. I had a solid hour between when transition closed and when my wave went off. I did a quick warm up and some dynamics just before transition closed, but then sitting around for an hour seems like not the best thing. Any suggestions here?

PS. Only burned 1600 calories out there. I still don't understand what "workout" that fitbit person was doing.

USAT Age Group Nationals Race Plan: Here we go

2011-08-18T21:44:00.005-04:00

Well it's finally come together. The final touches have been put on the bike. The bags are packed. The list of morning items is complete. Here we go.

I've been thinking about and planning for this race for over a year. Since they announced the AGNC would be in Burlington. I watched some of my teammates compete for spots in Team Australia in 2009, and I've been wanting to get to go to the US champs ever since. With all this time to ruminate, the pressure had really been getting to me. Earlier this week the stress was making me feel like I might come down with a cold (and I'm not the only triathlete who experienced this). But after some good talks with my teammates and coaches, I'm feeling confident and rested, if not relaxed going in.

Last year, when I told my coach I wanted to go, I believe her first response was "those girls are fast." Now, 36 hours away, I'm thinking they better be fast if they're gonna help me get a PR.

Other than all the bike changes (a detailed list follows for your amusement), I'm planning a similar strategy to Mass State. Same nutrition plan, with a bit more fluid on the bike. Temperatures are only slated to be 72 by the time I finish, so I shouldn't have the same heat issues I had before. The swim is a strength for me, so I'm gonna try to use it to my advantage. On the bike, it's all about keeping people in my sights and hanging on. The woman I passed on the bike at Griskus will be at this race, so I'm gonna make it a goal to catch her again. The run will just be going crazy, pushing my limits and seeing what I can do. The Garmin has been acting up, so I won't have pace readings on the run, but I will still have my Polar. Go hard and go fast. That's it.

---
How to get a tri bike a month before your A race:

Decide you want a tri bike, 29 days before the race
Get the bike from your coach, 23 days before the race
Ride the bike for 40 miles and discover the computer is set up for 700 wheels instead of 650s, so the speed and distance are off (also swear that you will never ride that saddle again), 21 days before the race
Try to schedule a fitting at your favorite bike shop, only to have them tell you they can't fit you in til 5 days before the race, 19 days before the race
Schedule a fitting at another bike shop for 18 days before the race, 19 days before the race
Work from the road, so you can go to the shop for the fitting, only to find out that you've been double-booked and they won't be able to fit you for another week - But will give you the $300 fitting for the trouble, 18 days before the race
Take the aero pads off the bike to allow them to dry in the house rather than the basement after getting drenched, only to realize that I had separated the pads from the velcro, 18 days before the race
Order replacement pads online, 17 days before the race
UPS loses the pads, call the vendor to call UPS, discover that it's going to take a week to look for the package before they'll send you out a replacement, 14 days before the race
Attempt to change the wheel size in the computer only to discover that the you have to hook up the bike computer to a real computer to reset it, 14 days before the race
Go to the fitting, replace the stem, the saddle, add rear cages, replace the aero bars because the ones on there aren't adjustable (briefly consider taking the bars off the old bike to put on the new bike, until you're told the ones on the road bike are probably too short anyway) (briefly get excited that you at least have replacement aeropads that you could use with the new bars, only to discover profile designs changed the design), 11 days before the race
Decide to get a speedfil instead of using the rear cages, call around to many and online retailers because they are about to launch a new model so nobody's got the old model, find an old model, then order the seat-tube-mount-adapter kit online because your bike doesn't have a downtube bottle mount, 10 days before the race
Cancel the lost order for replacement aero pads, 10 days before the race
Call to see if you can pick up the bike, no, you cannot, 9 days before the race
Have your boyfriend rent you race wheels, 9 days before the race
Call at noon (might not be ready til tomorrow), at 4 (he's working on it now), at 5 (eh, probably another 90 minutes) to see if you can pick up the bike, finally at 7:30pm, pick up the bike, 8 days before the race
Get a mile away and realize the bike shop didn't give you back the old saddle, aero bars, etc, turn around and go back, 8 days before the race
Attempt to afix the new waterbottle with the seat-tube-mount-adapter, only to discover that the cage you have actually doesn't fit with the adapter, 8 days before the race
Freak the fuck out, 8 days before the race
Boyfriend contacts speedfil, gets them to send out another cage that will fit with the adapter, 8 days before the race
Take the bike out for a 25 mile loop, ooh, it feels so good, but I'm so thirsty, 7 days before the race
Decide I'm just going to have to replace that bike computer cable if I want accurate speeds, so order it too online, 7 days before the race
Bike computer cable arrives, 4 days before the race
Race wheels are attempted to be delivered, but no one is home to sign for them, have them redirected to a kinkos, 4 days before the race
Have an awesome send off dinner with the team, 3 days before the race
Pick up the wheels, 3 days before the race
Take wheels into yet another bike shop to have the cassette swapped over, 2 days before the race
Receive the water bottle cage and finally successfully mount the water bottle with limited water spilled, reset the computer to 650 wheels and put the race wheels on, 2 days before the race
I think that's it. I think I'm actually completely ready, and I've still got 36 hours!

Fitness Marketing Hall of Shame

2011-08-16T11:39:00.002-04:00

I came across this image on the fitbit website site, and it was just so ridiculous I had to comment on it. Fitbit is a pedometer that wireless connects to the internet uploading steps, distance and calorie burn information. So far, so good. They also have a website where you can enter additional information about what you're eating and your exercise routines. Also great - what gets measured gets done.

And then they have this copy: 80 calories in lunch, 2154 calories burned in work out. WTF. Who has an 80 calories lunch? Who does a workout that burns 2154 calories after that 80 calorie lunch? Let's put this in perspective, that apple she's holding, that's about 95 calories. Her lunch would need to be less than one apple. When was the last time you got most of the way through and apple and thought, "Whew, I'm stuffed!" I burn about 2000 calories in an olympic distance triathlon. I eat way more than 80 calories during that race. And, let's remember that this is a pedometer, used primarily for walking. I would need to walk 10 hours to burn 2000 calories. How many curls do you think this model would need to do with her 2lb dumbbells to get to 2000 calories?

The problem with this copy is it sets unreasonable expectations. I'd imagine the core demographic for fitbit are exercise newbies. One of the most challenging things about getting fit is understanding how much you burn and how much you take in. If you've bought a fitbit, it seems like you're really interested in gaining that understanding. But, then their website tells you that you should be having an 80 calorie lunch and burning 2000 calories at the gym. Either it will make your estimates totally off (that salad must have been less than 100 calories - it's a salad, afterall!) and you will not see the results you expect, or it will make you feel bad that you only burned 300 calories on that elliptical at the gym.

Tweaks

2011-08-13T20:12:00.005-04:00

One week from right now, I will have completed my first showing at the Age Group National Champs. At the moment, however, it's all about the pre-race jitters. I am constantly thinking about this race.

Two weeks ago, I tweaked my ankle. I'm not exactly sure what's up with it. I rolled it during a hill workout, and two days later it started hurting on my track workout. It's generally fine to walk on, only when there's significant impact does it get sore. I've been ginger with it since then, and it's improved, but it's not 100% back. I'm a little suspicious that it might be another shin splint, just much lower. I'm not worried about running on it next weekend. I will run on it, but it's definitely impacted my training the last two weeks.

Then we've got the bike. After my last race, I decided I needed to get a proper tri bike. Conveniently, my coach has been looking to sell her old tri bike. Best practice, of course, is not to change horses two weeks before the race. But then again, I'm not gonna get any faster over the next two weeks, but on this bike, I will go faster. There are lots of details that come with changing the bike: getting it fitted, replacing the saddle (ouch!), replacing the aero pads when I separated them from the velcro, trading out the aerobars for adjustable ones, returning the new aero pads since they don't fit the new aero bars, installing a new water bottle system, realizing the new water bottle cage will not fit on the new bike, replacing the power meter cable so I can change the wheel diameter in the device so I can have accurate speeds on the bike, renting race wheels (hooray, birthday presents). Each on their own is a small tweak, but taken all together, they begin to feel like there's no way I'll be ready to race on this entirely different machine.

Finally, there's the race goal. I had been hoping to come top 25. For one thing, last year, there were 55 women in my age group, so coming top half doesn't seem unreasonable. Also, Nationals qualifies you for Worlds. There are 18 spots for each age group, rolling down to the 25th place finisher. Worlds are in Auckland next year. So if I got offered a spot, I would go.

This year, however, there are 97 women in my age group (so far). Where did all these ladies come from? Upon registration, you are asked to submit an estimated finish time. Of the 71 athletes who submitted them, I would come 51 if I hit my target. I was feeling good with my performance at Griskus, but it's occurred to me that perhaps New England is not the hotbed of triathlete competition I had thought it was. So, I started googling people who I might have raced before. The first one comes up with a news article "Local Triathlete Heads to Kona." Ok, maybe that was a fluke. The next one was a 3rd place finish at Duxbury last year. Sweet, I won that race, so I'm feeling good. Oh, wait, that was 3rd place female, not age group. She beat me by several minutes.

Thinking about the competition out there sorta makes me queasy. So new goal: PR. My current PR is 2:43:05, set at Cranberry almost exactly a year ago. I've improved my run substantially since then, and the Cranberry ride is long. If everything went to plan, I think I should have a 2:35 in me. I'm putting Auckland out of my head and focusing on having best race I can and letting the fastest in the country push me.

Mass State Race Report: Unexpected results

2011-07-17T20:18:00.005-04:00

Well, that was rough. I was cooked on that run. It was hotter than expected, and I needed more water on the bike. Lesson learned, take a second bottle of just water. I got through the first mile and half before stopping to walk. My heart rate kept creeping up over 180, so I kept stopping. Eight times in total. Ended up running a 59 minute 10K. Yeesh.

At first I didn't like having the gps watch on the run cause those splits were brutal, but I ended up appreciating having it, monitoring my heart rate, slowing pace or walking when it got out of hand.

Here's the thing though: I had exactly the same time as last year. I did the swim in 23 minutes (so 5 minutes faster than last year - advantage: wetsuit), did the bike 1:19 (2 minutes faster, average of 18.5mph), and then did the run 7 minutes slower. And I took second in my age group, and I got a pint glass.

I felt sort of bad that after such a crappy run, I could still place. If I had been in one age group up or one age group down, I wouldn't have placed by about 20 minutes. But, that said, I came 2nd out of 18 in my age group.

Lessons for next time:

Water on the bike. Also drinking all the way up til the start.
My stomach was still not happy, but considering it was unhappy for the whole day I'm not sure how much of that was race-related.
Need to practice those mounts/dismounts again.
Definitely more taper for that next race.
Also may try to do a little more mid-day running to better acclimatize.

Mass State Race Plan: the Dry Run

2011-07-11T21:05:00.006-04:00

Here we are. July. One last race before Nationals. Yeesh.

I'm thinking of Mass State as my last chance to really try out the game plan before the big day. I want to practice really pushing, keeping that "go faster" mentality from Griskus. But the big experiment is nutrition.

By the time I got to the run at Griskus, my stomach was a wreck. It was not interested in taking on anything else. I had originally based my race nutrition on Hammer's recommendations for endurance athletes. (There's something really satisfying about sinking your teeth into 144 pages of nutritional info.) The basic takeaways that I used were: Eat 3 hours before exercise and not again til you're moving, take in about 250 calories/hour, drink about 20 oz per hour.

After the race, I talked with my coach. She suggested perhaps the gel I was using was not mixing well with the sports drink. So, I've switched those up (now I'm entirely hammer-fueled). I also think that I was probably just trying to take on too much. I came across another local triathlete's blog, who suggests a lower calorie approach, so I'm reducing across the board and going for the lowest end of the hammer guidelines (150cal/hour, 16oz/hour). The hammer guidelines are written for people doing all sorts of endurance events, and although olympic races typically take me over 2.5 hours, they're not endurance in the traditional sense. I like olympic races because you can race them. The heart rate is higher, and I think that's why it's harder to absorb quite so much. Also, it turns out I'm not that big of person.

I've been trying out a less-is-more philosophy in training, and that's what I'll have on Sunday. Plenty of water before the race, a gel before the swim and one on the bike, a single bottle with half sustained energy and half heed (so it's not too sweet), then water on the run. On the whole, no-eating-before-the-race thing, I never do that in training. I always eat something before a workout, even in the wee hours of the morning, and it's usually within an hour of the session, so I'm having my clifbar when I feel like it. So that's the plan (and here's the spreadsheet).

Oh, right, except there's more to the race than what I eat. I've been approaching this race as a C race. My body is still feeling the effects of some very heavy sessions last week and early this one. I'm taking it easier now, but I'm still not to that itchy I-have-to-move feeling that indicates a nice taper. I want to race on perceived effort and not get too caught up in numbers or podiums.

OK, who am I kidding? I live for numbers. So here they are: last year I had a strong swim at this race, so let's do that again, 25 min goal (if I swam my pace from this morning I should finish in 22). That bike has got a wicked hill, twice. I averaged 18 last year for the whole thing with a negative split. This year, let's go 18.5 for the first lap and see what I've got for the second lap. The run felt long and wicked hot. It's supposed to be cooler this year. Goal for the run is to keep the legs turning over and shoot for 7:30s.

This should be fun.

Oh, and I've been playing around with my new gps watch. Here's my swim from Walden this morning. Looks like my sighting is improving.

Griskus Race Report: Racing by Feel

2011-06-19T20:58:00.005-04:00

Two things:

I took second in my age group at the Pat Griskus Triathlon on Saturday.

Did you know Scooby Doo is a Great Dane? (I didn't, until I checked the pocket internets.)

Ok, back up. This race did not go to plan:

I underestimated the amount of time needed at the race course. I didn't get to do my warm up run or swim.
It was so foggy, we couldn't see the buoys. The organizers considered cancelling the swim before they decided to shorten it down to about 750 yards. That first buoy was still so tough to see, the first wave went off in two different directions. Luckily, I was in the 4th wave.
When I got on my bike the computer was not working. Damn. I hadn't checked it after traveling down to the race, and the sensor must have gotten knocked. About 20 miles into the race, I decided to check my mileage and realized that it was my cadence sensor, not my distance sensor, that wasn't working. I had averaged 17.2 for the race. Max of 38.
I drank a little over 24 oz of heed on the bike, not the planned 36, and I didn't eat my final gu, cause my stomach was very cranky when I started the run. (If anyone has suggestions for this, I'm all ears, want to experiment with some different strategies before Nationals)

Standing on the start line, fretting about the lack of warm up and the unpredictable swims, one of my teammates reminded me that sometimes the best races happen when things don't go to plan. And I guess this was a case in point.

The night before the race, I started stressing that I had once again set unattainable goals. How long have I wanted to run sub 8s and to swim 1:40s? It feels like those have been my goals for the last year, and yet I never seem to meet them.

As I was thinking about that the morning of the race, I was reminded of something one of our assistant coaches told me a while back, "If you want to get faster, all you have to do is go faster." Simple, right? Out on the bike, and more so on the run, I kept thinking to myself that I needed to go faster. No letting up (and many more cliches). But it seemed to work. I passed the 2 mile marker in sub 15 (with a significant downhill), and ended up completing the run in 45 minutes. I'm still not convinced that the run was a full 10K, cause otherwise that would be a 4 minute PR, but still, it felt fast, particularly for the course.

After the race, I went to wait for my friends to finish up. Sitting there, I thought about my 17.2mph bike, and my 45 minute run, and I decided regardless of how I finished relative to my age group (2 girls had passed me on the bike, and I'd passed 1), that I had achieved my goals. When I checked the results, they listed me as 3rd in my age group. Then at the awards, the woman who was listed 1st in my age group ended up being 3rd overall female, so each of the awards bumped up, and I was awarded 2nd. It was awesome.

Debriefing with my coach afterwards, she asked me, 1) would I have gone faster with a speedometer on the bike and 2) if I could have gone harder on the run. I'm not really sure about either. The speedometer, I think probably not. I focused on pushing up those hills, and knowing my speed on that hilly of a course, probably wouldn't have mattered that much. On the run, I definitely expected a longer chute, so I had just picked it up to a sprint when I crossed the finish line. I could have put a bit more into the last 400 yards, but I'm not sure how much of that would have translated to an over all time.

Regardless, I'm incredibly happy with my performance at this race and the confidence its given me going into nationals. I know the competition will be fierce, but I can feel certain that I belong there now.

Griskus Race Plan: Getting back up

2011-06-16T16:01:00.004-04:00

This weekend is the Northeast Regional Champs at the Pat Griskus Race in Connecticut. Regional Champs qualify more people for Nationals. In fact, the top 33% of each age group qualifies. My goal is to requalify for Nationals. I'm using this race as a gauge for how ready I am for Nationals. The race is only 600 competitors, and last year it only had 9 athletes in my age group (12 the year before). So I need to look to be in the top 3 or 4 to meet that goal.

Swim
The swim is a little long for an olympic. It's a mile. My goal pace for oly swims is 1:40 per 100. That would mean my swim goal should be 30 minutes (technically 29:20, but let's give a little leeway). I had a brilliant swim this morning at Walden, that reminded me of the joys of open water swimming. I think I should be able to push it a bit, get into a good rhythm, then shoot for a negative split in the second half.

Bike
The bike promises to be hilly. See the bike course topography below:

They warn people, particularly on that first descent, to take it easy. Not only is it steep, but it's winding. My plan is to go for safety on the downhills. I'm too much of a scaredy pants to go screaming down anyway. Then to try to push it on the uphills. Small gears, high cadence, and making sure that I don't drop power as I near the top of each hill. This course is tougher than Mooseman (the age group winner at Mooseman average 21mph, here it was 19). The 3rd place competitor last year rode it at 18. I think I can give a bit more cushion cause of my swim, so I'm thinking 17mph is a good goal. That would mean a 1 hour 28 minute goal.

Run
The run is two out-and-backs. Should be exactly 6.2 miles. That means I should be shooting for my typical 8 min miles. 50 minutes.

So:
0:30 swim
1:28 bike
0:50 run

plus 4 minutes transition = 2:52 total time. This is not going to be a PR. But hopefully enough to accomplish my goals.

Nutrition
It shouldn't be that hot (60 degrees at 7am, 70 degrees at 10am), so dehydration shouldn't be too much of an issue. Still, I want to try to stay better hydrated than I did at Mooseman, where I got a headache after the race, despite cool temps. Here's the schedule with nutrition.

4:30am wake up, clif bar - water (goal of 1 24oz bottle per hour, pre race)
5am leave for race
5:45 register/rack
6:10 warm up run
6:30 transition closes, warm up swim, 1 gu, 3 endurolytes
7am race starts
7:30 bike, gu, 12 oz heed
8am bike, 12 oz heed
8:30 bike, gu, 12 oz heed
9am run, gu, water on course (~6oz)
9:30 run, water on course (~6oz)
10am FINISH! 6 endurolytes

Mooseman Race Report: A Little Rusty

2011-06-16T12:30:00.003-04:00

I've been dragging my feet about writing this race report, cause I just didn't know what to say. The race was really tough, mentally more than physically, and I haven't really figured out what went wrong.

I read several tri blogs, and I was reading this race report from the Boise 70.3, and it made me feel a bit better. I have a lot of respect for Ray, the author, and his experience is a good reminder that some races just don't as planned, even for rockstars like Ray.

So what happened? Well, I think it was a combination of things: cold water, lack of taper, and just mentally out of it.

The water was a chilly 58 degrees, and I just didn't feel like I was moving. No gliding, my muscles just didn't feel like they warmed up. I've since done another open water swim, and it reminded me that swimming open water feels slower than pool swimming. Because you can't see the bottom, you don't get the visual feedback on your speed. Swim was still about 3 minutes off where it should have been.

Out on the bike, I continued to be cold, and I just didn't feel like I had anything to give, like wringing a dry towel, nothing coming out. Every time I asked my legs for a little more, they were already maxed out. I think this had to do with the fact that I did a tough kettlebell set a few days before, and my legs hadn't recovered.

I usually think of the swim as setting a good precedence for the race. I can start strong and feel good coming out of the water. Without that, my mindset on the bike was grim. I kept thinking about pulling out of the race. My body wasn't responding the way I wanted it to, and I wasn't sure if that was a time when I should be "listening to my body" or pushing through. In the end I decided that I only get 6 races this season, it would be a shame to not finish one.

In the end, I came 6th in my age group out of 30+ competitors. All things considered, that's not so bad. It's not good enough to qualify for nationals (which had been my benchmark), but not bad for a day when things didn't go to plan.

Probably the highlight of the weekend then, was the following day, when I got to be the biker leading around the first place female runner on the half ironman course. It was inspiring. She held a solid 6:15 pace for the whole half marathon with a 100+ cadence the whole time.

After the race, I was riding my bike back to the cabin and passing people still coming in off the bike course. I got many waves and smiles, as people thought that I had actually won the race. Not this time, folks.

Mooseman Race Plan: Testing the waters

2011-06-03T06:09:00.003-04:00

In 24 hours, I'll be putting my gear in transition, but for right now, I'm a bit of a wreck. I usually swim on Friday mornings, but last night at 10:30 as I was still desperately trying to get everything packed for the weekend, I decided a sleep in would be more beneficial to my race. Of course my nerves wouldn't allow for that, so I woke up at 5:45 and decided instead of tossing and turning, I'd put my consciousness to good use and write my race plan.

I can look at this early morning wake up as a good way to keep my body on schedule: it will mean it's easier to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Or I can look at it half empty: I only got 7 hours of sleep. How this sleep schedule will impact my race is yet to be determined.

This seems to be a theme going into this race. My off season has been different this year, and until I race tomorrow, I won't know whether the changes I've made will pay off.

This year, I ran more, biked less, did not injure my shin, nursed my knee back to health, caught cold after cold, and added kettlebells to improve my posterior chain and power. And until just now, I thought that translated to many fewer hours, but here's the numbers.

Since December, average hours per week: 5.02
Last month's average hours per week: 5.95
2010 average hours per week: 6.09
May, 2010: 9.01

Here's what this says to me. I did 50% more hours per week in May of last year (remember, I was training for long course), but I have actually trained more consistently this year than last. That's not so bad.

Comparing the breakdown, this month (The crosstrain this past month is kettlebells):

May 2010:
It feels like I've been riding less, because I have been riding less. Even if I count all of my brick time to cycling, I'm not coming close to hours I was putting on the bike last year. Again, long course training and injured shin explain a lot of this difference. But still a lot to wonder about going into race day.

My only indication that this new strategy is going to pay off, was at track last night. My coach asked me to run 6x200 on 37 seconds. This sounded ridiculously fast to me. My last 400TT was 1:22. But I thought, eh, I'll just give it a go, see how close I can come. I ran them consistently between 36 and 38 seconds. Compare this to 4 months ago, running indoor track 200s on 41 seconds. Yeah, that's news I can use.

So, back to this race, here's the schedule:

5:30am wake up, eat oatmeal, get ready, check tires
6:00 head over to transition, get racked, sunscreen
6:50 go on a 15 minute warm up run
7:15 put shoes back in transition
7:30 eat a gu, get in the water, have the wind knocked out of me, take a few brave strokes
7:46 start racing
Swim hard out of the gates, then settle into a good temp, take it up again for the last 200
Do my new mount onto the bike. Use the first 4 miles to spin the legs up. On the first hill drop to small chain, keep cadence up. On devil's hill, small chain again. Gu. Go hard on the bike every stroke - average speed of 19 is the goal. Drop into small chain again for the long hill before turn onto Cass Mill Rd, and for the rollers afterwards. On West Shore Dr, drop a gear or two, spin the legs up. Do my new dismount. (drink the whole bottle of heed)
Get that cadence up on the run immediately. This about the sound of Lauren's feet. Gu. Drink as necessary. At the turn around, take the pace up, one gear.
Finish strong.

Well, that's it. Time to see if all this work is gonna pay off.

The Hills Were Alive...

2011-06-01T13:14:00.003-04:00

I went to southern Vermont for a wedding over Memorial Day weekend. We were staying at a ski lodge, and I decided I would try a trail run along and up their mountain for my exercise on Sunday. A few observations follow:

1. It was just a bit muddy out there.

2. This quickly became more of a hike than a run. Although some of the trail was cutting back and forth across the ski runs, at least half of it was just straight up the run, and these were no bunny hills. I ended up covering around 3 miles in around 1 hour. So, yeah, maybe it was mostly hike.

3. I saw a fox, 2 geese and a wild turkey.

4. Running down the mountain (definitely running for this part), I could not get the Sound of Music out of my head. Particularly this part:

To laugh like a brook
When it trips and falls
Over stones on its way

Luckily, I did not follow its suggestion.

Hot new ride

2011-05-27T10:30:00.004-04:00

Just a quick update. I bought this bike yesterday off of Craigslist. It's a 1984 Centurion Dave Scott Ironman Expert bike. And it's salmon-colored with yellow tape, steel frame, 12 speed with shifters on the downtube. It's got a few dings, but it's been pretty well-maintained (new cables, new Shimano 105 gears, new brakes, new tires) and hasn't seen many miles in the last few years. With the Boston weather finally cooperating, this will be my traffic-beater bike for my commute to work, and it will allow me to try my hand at doing my own maintenance, if I'm brave.

I love the idea that this was a pretty serious road bike in its day: it has a sticker that proudly claims it was designed in the USA, but made in JAPAN! It may have even done a triathlon in a former life.

And extra bonus: I had a little time to spare before my track workout last night, so I practiced my mounting and dismounting. And I did not fall, not even once. I'm still not totally confident, and the bike got a little wobbly there at times, but it's a start.

Transition training

2011-05-25T13:58:00.005-04:00

Last weekend, I organized a transition training session, aka. the Triple Tri, inspired by Coach Mark at the Brisbane Tri Squad. The basic idea is that you do 3 mini-triathlons in a row to simulate race conditions and allow you to practice doing your transitions. As this was the first time hosting a transition session, there were lessons for me, not just about my transitions, but also about the session itself.

1. I had been worried about the prospect of getting back into wet wetsuits after the first round, but it turns out, this was not an issue, since we did not swim. Not something commonly faced in Queensland, both air and water temperatures were in the low 50s, so the decision was made that it was not advisable to swim, then strip down to nothing and ride a bike for 3 miles. Instead the event became the Triple-Du.

2. One consequence of the missing swim was that none of us was particularly warm when we started the bike. In the future, I would recommend an easy run/bike to warm up before trying to push race pace.

3. LVOR kindly offered to come be our bicycle guard and purveyor of homemade granola bars. With this small of a field (just the 4 of us), I think we were all grateful to have some one keep an eye on things, even if it was just to keep the dogs from marking our territory as theirs. Thanks, LVOR!

4. The transition rack that I borrowed from Landry's is awesome. And the fact that they let me borrow a $300 rack for the weekend is even more awesome. It's 2 tripods that lock together. The whole thing folded up and stored in a handy canvas bag that easily fit in the back of the car. Honestly, I sorta want to buy one of these now.

5. Lauren had us review what worked and didn't work after this practice. This was a great addition to the practice. On one of the runs, I could hear Lauren and her nice, quick cadence catching up to me. I consciously increased my turnover to match hers. It felt hard, but it did the trick. She reminded me afterwards to drop my gear at the end of the bike and spin the legs up.

6. The other thing I struggled with was mounting and dismounting the bike. I've never been one to master the flying-mount (despite many attempts). Right now, my current mount involves, coming to a complete stop, throwing my leg over and stepping onto my shoe. It's not all that slow, but it certainly isn't elegant. I want to learn how to skate with one foot on the shoe and throw the leg over while rolling (and similarly dismount). I accidentally did this type of dismount at Cranberry last year. I was just so caught up in the race, I just did it without even thinking about it. I want to get comfortable with this type of mount, if not for the time advantage, then for the improved confidence and bike-handling skills. Any suggestions for how to get this down?

The rhythm method

2011-04-27T09:48:00.003-04:00

Paul and I were watching the NCAA championship swim meet the other day, and those dudes swim the backstroke twice as fast as I do the crawl. Not that being a male NCAA swimmer is my goal, it just put things in perspective: there's always room for improvement.

A bit of background (you can skip the paragraph if you've already heard my Total Immersion soap box), in 2005, I couldn't swim more than 25 yards in a single go. In preparation for my first triathlon, I picked up a copy of Total Immersion at the suggestion of some random guy at the pool. TI breaks the crawl down into a set of drills that don't really feel all that much like swimming (i.e., kicking on your back, kicking on your side, kicking on your side with one arm by your ear). The focus is on getting your body in the right position in the water, so you don't expend a ton of extra energy trying to keep from drowning, and instead you use that energy to propel you forward. TI takes a lot of commitment to going to the pool and not swimming, but if you're willing to put in the time in the drills, it really does clean up your stroke significantly. I recommend it to any one wanting to improve their stroke.

I credit TI with creating my relaxed stroke, but the flipside of a relaxed stroke is that it's sometime hard to swim faster. At the relay a few weeks back, Paul commented on how I didn't look like I was working very hard during the race. A few months ago I read an article (either in Lava or another tri magazine, I can't recall), written by Terry Laughlin, the founder of TI, on using a metronome to slowly speed up your stroke rate, while maintaining your distance per stroke, thus speeding up your swim overall. I was intrigued. Terry's written more about it on his blog.

There are two devices I've found that serve this purpose the Tempo Trainer and the Wetronome (yes, really). But seeing as how I have a waterproof case for my ipod, and I could download some sample tracks from SwimSmooth.com and try it out less than 12 hours later, it seemed the way to go.

First, my options are somewhat limited with the tracks. They offer tracks in 5 beat per minute increments. Turns out my natural pace is somewhere between 55 bpm and 60bpm. 55 just felt slow, and 60 gave me a cramp. Both metronome devices offer finer tempos. For now I think the tracks will suffice, but if you're looking to get me a present in the near future, take note.

Second, I'm never going to be somebody's back-up dancer, but I like to think that my rhythm isn't that bad. I was pleased to find that I don't slow my stroke significantly to breathe. I was a bit afraid that my stroke-stroke-stroke-GASP might be a problem, but it was ok. Still, getting back on tempo at the wall was tough on a few of those turns.

Third, I'm still excited by the potential this tool may have to improve my swim. I'm looking forward to using the metronome to plot out my curve of time per 100 versus strokes per length to find my baseline optimal stroke count, then to try to improve it. Though I'm a little concerned that trying to start my watch, count my strokes and sync up with the beats may be a little challenging. We shall see.

Have you ever tried swimming with a metronome? Any suggested workouts?

Elite Fluid

2011-04-21T11:07:00.006-04:00

Geoffrey Mutai set a new course record (and will possibly be recognized for a new World Record) on the Boston Marathon course Monday. And I had his water bottle at 10K. I think I deserve some credit for his win.

OK, ok, he didn't actually take the water bottle from my table. A lot of runners decide not to take their designated bottles, be it, they just don't want a drink, or they are on the far side of the pack from the fluid.

Here's how it works. Every 5K there's an elite fluid stop. Each athlete provides their own bottle of whatever they want to drink in advance of the race. For most of them it's just a few ounces. There are ten tables each with 4 bottles. As an athlete approaches the stop, they know their bottle will be on the 2nd table in the 3rd spot (for example).

Each bottle is different. Some people decorate their bottles so they're easy to spot:

Ryan Hall signs each of his bottles and tosses them to the crowd as a souvenir when he's done.

After the elites have passed through we broke down the tables and signs. By the time the amateur runners start coming through, there's no sign that we were even there. As we were packing up, we realized that the leftover elite bottles (the ones that weren't collected by their athletes) were just going to get tossed, so we did a taste test. They broke down something like this: water, gatoradey and, wait for it, salty. The worst tasted like a cherry-flavored ocean. Blech. (I didn't take note of what Mutai had, he hadn't won the race by this point).

All in all, a spectacular experience. Amazing to be so close to the elites as they sprint by and great to be in a spot to cheer on the amateurs where every one is still just rapt to be there.

Signs of spring

2011-04-15T13:28:00.003-04:00

I'm calling it. After all those hours shoveling snow this winter, we're done with snow for the season (and we won't make a full Shaq's worth). I'm ok with that though. It's still cold in Boston, but it's definitely springy. Even those snow banks that seemed they would become permanent structures have receded and disappeared from Cambridge and only left a few shady remainders out in Concord.

I know this because last weekend, I went on my first ride of the season. We took the short River Runs Through It CRW loop, which is 28 miles. I probably rode this loop a dozen times last summer and knew it by heart. This time around, I realized the turns that stood out were the ones I had missed in the past. Landmarks played tricks on me, everything seemed familiar, but nothing was certain. Here's a house with a stone foundation that I recognize, or an out-of-place modern boxy house from the 60s, or a tiger striped mailbox, or one hanging from a tree. They all start to blur together. Was that on this loop or a different one? We only had to consult the cue sheet once to confirm a turn. Despite that, it was bucolic and bordered on a Disney cartoon: flowers bursting forth, squirrels running along side, birds singing and playing in the trees above our heads. Maybe it's just the excitement of feeling the cold air rush past or the lean and lurch of the bike as I increase the pressure, but this ride was perfect.

Another sure sign of spring, the Boston Marathon takes place this weekend. I'm volunteering once again. This year though we've been upgraded to "Elite Fluid Distribution" at 10K. Thus far though it seems like our responsibilities are to (1) match the labelled bottle with the label on the table (and not to worry to much about it because some one will come by to fix our mistakes) and (2) stay out of the way of the elites. Will let you know how well we achieve these two goals.

Finally, not at all related to spring, I just finished reading my friend Erin Tocknell's book Confederate Streets. It's a fantastic read (and not just because there's a brief mention of my coxing in the final chapter). Erin's attention to detail astounding. Reading her book, seeing Nashville and Pittsburgh through her eyes and experiences made me realize how little of the day to day I appreciate and remember.

Jumping right in

2011-03-19T20:50:00.004-04:00

I competed in my first swim race today. It was a 4 x 400 relay with my team at the multisport expo. I don't remember being this nervous for a race since my first half ironman. I was swimming the second leg behind my coach, Christina.

Going in, I started getting worried that all of the other competitors would be former collegiate swimmer, with their diving starts from the blocks, their flip turns, their completely shaved bodies.

Watching the first leg, I felt a little better, there were a variety of levels present, and our lane actually looked pretty competitive. My turn. Oh, I don't dive in. I'm not a swimmer... I'm a triathlete.

This sort of swimming is almost serene relative to tri swimming. No one swimming into me, over me, through me, no one even in my lane. And no one to pace off of. It's hard to see the people in the next lane. I knew there was a girl about a half a length ahead of me from the start, but I quickly lost track of her. No sounds from the pool penetrate, just the sounds of my breathing.

But it goes fast. 4 laps to go, 3, 2. Oh, there's that girl who was half a lap ahead of me. She looks, closer. Last lap, push it. I come into the far wall, just as she's leaving. I'm gaining. Sprint, Sprint, SPRINT! Catch her!... Got her! Right on the wall. Hell, yeah.

I finished in 6:02. That's 1:30s per 100. Faster than my previous 200s pace by 4 seconds. Our team came in 2nd in our heat, and 4th overall, we think. Not bad for our first showing.

Having fun in Vegas without losing (much) money

2011-03-10T15:14:00.005-05:00

Paul had a conference in Vegas at the beginning of last week, so we figured, since he already had free flights we might as well make a vacation out of it. I flew out on Wednesday night, and we took the next four days to explore Sin City. Here's what we found.

1. It can be a little overwhelming when it feels like every one is trying to separate you from your money. Not just the gambling, but there are coupons and discounts for shows and meals, constantly pressuring you to buy now and not miss out on a terrific bargain.

2. Despite this we found plenty of things worth spending our money on. We really enjoyed Le Reve, which was like Cirque du Soleil (but not Cirque du Soleil) but in a pool, with synchronized swimming and diving, and trapezes and people being lifted out of the water on trapezes, then diving back in. Pretty spectacular. We also had a few really good meals out at B&B and La Cave.

3. On Friday, we rented a car and drove out to Red Rock Canyon. There, we hiked and climbed and took our only pictures of the trip.

The rocks

Rock striations (do you see the person on the ridge?)

Paul is making these rocks look small, in reality, they are very far behind him, and VERY big

There we are.

Calico rocks.

My new favorite food: lentils

2011-02-01T20:43:00.003-05:00

With the new year, Paul and I have been trying to clean up our eating. Let's just say we'd gone a little soft over Christmas break. This time around we're doing the slow-carb diet, which essentially means all of our carbs come from legumes. Mmm, legumes.

Thus, our new favorite food is lentils. We have them every day. We tried out canned lentils for their simplicity, but they are sorta, mushy. We've tried out green lentils, brown lentils, and french lentils. We've got a pretty quick recipe for green lentils. It works for any lentil that doesn't need a soak, or any that does after the soak. It goes like this:

Put the following in a pan:

1 C green lentils

2.5 C water

half an onion, sliced

2-3 cloves of garlic

2 cloves

1 small bay leaf

sprinkle of dried thyme

shake of cumin powder

2t of salt

pepper

Bring pan to a boil, and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes depending on how mushy you want them. Remove from heat. Remove cloves and bay leaf. Stir in 1/2 T of butter (cause it's yummy).

Stretch goals

2011-01-19T17:13:00.011-05:00

Well there it is. Official. In print. On the web. I'm registered for the US Age Group National Championship Triathlon in August. In seven little months, I'll be competing with the country's best athletes. I hope that's enough time to prepare.

I've got a few goals to get me there. But first, let's look back at last year's races. Here's how my rankings stacked up for each leg.

Clearly the sprints suited me better. The big hill at Mass state took its toll, and the run was my weakest leg (pun intended). And Noosa, well, those Australians are really good swimmers.

First let's work on my run. I've struggled with injury over the last two years, and I've seen my running basically plateau. This off season is all about keeping the shins healthy and working on hills and sprints. Shins, hills, sprints... and data. Here's the results of my first attempt at sprints at the indoor track at Harvard.

You'll note that the average pace for the 800s is very similar to the average pace for the 400s. This is something to work on. What should my goal pace be if I want to be running 45 min 10Ks?

On to swimming.

There are a couple of workouts here: a time trial and 2 different days of swimming. I'm really happy with the way the paces are shaking out. I'm swimming my 500s at the same pace as my 300s (which was the goal of that workout), and that's still about 11 seconds slower than my 100 TT (1:33). I'd love to see that long distance pace under 1:40 in time for the season.

I don't have any pretty graphs for cycling, cause I don't have any great data for cycling. I'm cutting my winter cycling from 3 session to 2 per week. Last year, I believe I was overdoing my training. I've got a time trial coming up, so we'll see how that stacks up.

Other goals: treat my stretching like it's a workout. No skipping. And get the sleep and water that I need. Hopefully that will get me to August.

Do as I say...

2011-01-19T12:08:00.001-05:00

The following is a shameless plug to get an extra entry in a contest to win a Garmin 310XT.

Please don't enter too, as then I will have a lower chance of winning said watch.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/01/garmin-forerunner-310xt-giveawayjanuary.html

Year in Race T-Shirts

2010-12-19T18:41:00.005-05:00

With today's 5K, the 2010 race season is officially over. Looking back over the past year, there have been some pretty great races, but of course a race shouldn't be judged on course, organization, weather and personal performance alone, no, a race should be judged by its t-shirt.

What makes a good t-shirt? First and foremost, size. It doesn't matter what the t looks like, if it's too big, too long or just funny looking, I'm not going to wear it. Extra points for races that offer extra smalls or women's sized shirts.

Second, design. The reality is I'm only going to wear this shirt to train in or on weekends, so it doesn't need to be a work of art, but something that isn't completely ridiculous (see below) is needed.

Finally, material. Generally, I prefer the the synthetic ts cause I prefer to train in them, but I don't mind a nice cotton shirt (especially for longer races where I feel I've earned bragging rights).

Here's this year's favorite shirt:

There are so many good things happening here: women's fit, extra small, synthetic, long-sleeved, simple design. Well done, BAA.

The most improved from last year (which is a little unfair, since I only did a few races last year) is timberman.

2009:

2010:

It's a little hard to tell from the picts, but despite being a small, I had to cut off both the sleeves and the tail of the 2009 shirt to make it approximately fit. In 2010, timberman was bought by mdot, and they left their mark on the shirts. Not only did they offer women's shirts, they also offered extra smalls. Unfortunately, the combination of those two changes led to a shirt that actually fit my friend's three year old better than my friend, but points for improvement, and I'll know next year to get a small or maybe even medium.

Finally, the worst shirt of the year:

Why is santa parachuting in under a giant turd? Why is Somerville pictured as an industrial park? What's up with the giant popcorn, and the random words on them, and why is one of them unmarked?

More cooking!

2010-12-09T20:45:00.003-05:00

So it's been a few weeks, and the cooking continues. I've learned a few things along the way:

Tarragon tastes like licorice. Who knew?
Topping stew with sour cream is always a good idea.
You can still dry out salmon by poaching it.
Scallops are really hard to make.

So we've made baked pork chops, hungarian beef stew, poached salmon, and seared-ish scallops. All were pretty good. But really, why are scallops so hard to make? I use plenty of very hot oil, but they stick to the pan, and they don't really sear. And they make a mess. And they burned my finger.

But, damn them, they're so tasty.

New adventures in cooking

2010-11-18T14:56:00.008-05:00

Maybe it's because it's getting cold outside and curling up on the couch with a hot bowl of soup that's been stewing for hours sounds so inviting, or maybe just because I've gotten bored with our staple meals, I've decided it was time to dust off the old cookbooks (aka, epicurious) and get cooking.

A few notes:

So far I've made 3 trips to whole foods, and 4 meals. Hopefully, I'll get more efficient with my shopping as I go.
With each meal, I'm learning more about the foods that Paul like and dislikes (Likes: snow peas! Dislikes: Cumin, Ginger, Sesame Oil :-( )
I broke down and bought the online subscription to America's Test Kitchen. I used to have a paper subscription to Cooks' Illustrated, which I loved, but honestly, it just wasn't all that convenient when you wanted, say, a pork chop recipe ("Was that in May or March of 2007?"). The online subscription is easily searchable and cheaper than the original, but lacks the same beautiful illustrations. Already, I've used it to suss out curry powder, french onion soup and kitchen timers.

[not my picture]

Meal 1: Beef, Shiitake and Snow Pea Stirfry
I'd give this one a 4 out of 5. Paul felt like there was something sorta missing. I marinated the beef for a few hours in the hoisin and chili (but I followed the advice of some of the reviewers and replaced some hoisin with soy - I will not do this next time and hopefully that will address Paul's concern). This was really easy. I'll definitely make it again.

[my pictures - taken with iphone :(]

Meal 2: Hawaiian Pork with Stirfried Cabbage
This one was probably a 3 out of 5. The pork was way too salty (and this coming from a self-proclaimed savory person) and the cabbage was bland. The plus side was that braising the pork made it delicious and tender even for really lean cuts. I think I'll make this again, but with low-sodium broth and maybe adding dark rum or pineapple to add a little deeper flavor.

Meal 3: French Onion Soup
For this one, I went to ATK. I feel like for classics like this, I trust that they have scoured all the recipes I'd find on epicurious, tested them all and come up with this, the perfect French Onion Soup. And honestly, yes, this was definitely the best French Onion Soup I've ever had (and I've been to France!). And it was relatively easy. They recommend caramelizing the onions in the oven, which, if time-consuming, is low maintenance. And I bought the gruyere they recommended too. Really, this soup was awesome. 5 out of 5!

Meal 4: Curried Lamb and Lentil Stew
You'd think after that last review, I would never go back to epicurious, but somehow, I'd already picked this one out, and I did go to ATK to determine what curry powder to get (Penzey's, which I made a special trip for). Alas, this recipe failed on many levels. It was one note (even a good one note of the Penzey's curry powder didn't make up for it), the cook times were completely wrong - it needed a minimum of 2 hours to make the lamb and lentils tender, the balance between lamb and lentils was off. I tried to salvage by adding some maple syrup to add some sweetness, which helped, but this just wasn't the meaty stew I was hoping for. 1 out of 5.

Tonight, we're trying out Tuna Tacos ala East Coast Grill, one of our favorite local eateries. I'm hopeful that this will be delicious, but I'll let you know tomorrow.

Noosa Race Report: Back to Oz

2010-11-05T15:14:00.013-04:00

I went back to Australia for the first time 2 weeks ago. I had gotten an entry into the Noosa triathlon, so I planned a holiday around it. I went to Canberra, the Gold Coast, Brisbane and finally Noosa. It was fantastic to see old friends everywhere I went. It took several days to get acclimated to driving on the left, referring to my "mum" and thinking in metric, but it all came back pretty quick.

I did a terrible job taking pictures on this trip, but a great job catching up with people and making new memories. Lauren and I went to Question Time in Australian Parliament which was quite the experience, we hiked Mt. Ainslee with Kimberley and Hamish, I met Joslyn's new man Matt and shared a coffee with her overlooking the Brisbane River from the Powerhouse, I had lunch at Jamie's new cafe, had morning tea (and tim tams) with the ITIG guys, went shopping with Julie, shared homecooked meals with Julie & Jonathon, celebrated Jawad's birthday and finally headed up the coast to race.

[seriously, I can't figure out how to get this picture to rotate]

I went up with Vanessa Friday afternoon and met her elite brother and his elite girlfriend (who won the women's race after coming second at Kona 3 weeks earlier) and her parents. There were over 3300 individual competitors at the race. We registered at the massive bays:

And checked out the expo. Asics makes their own Noosa tri running shoe:

And we checked out the gorgeous sunset:

The race itself was not something I've been training for. Good races at the end of the season in the US had made me confident that I could have a good race at Noosa, especially relative to my last showing at Noosa in 2008. 2:48 was the time to beat.

Not sure exactly what happened on the swim. I got smashed in the left eye early on, and I couldn't open it for the rest of the swim cause my goggle was on so tight, so maybe I wasn't swimming straight with only one eye, but I came out of the water in 32 minutes and thought "sweet, oh, wait, this wasn't a half ironman distance. Suck." I expected at most a 28 minutes swim. Oh well. 3 minutes slower than 2 years ago.

On to the bike. The bike felt good, despite not being on my own bike. Heading out to the turn around, I was flying with the tailwind. I felt strong going up the hill, and cranked coming back home. My knee was a little cranky at about the 30K mark cause the seat wasn't high enough, but otherwise, everything felt good. 1:22 in the end. But I was watching my time and still shooting for sub 1:48, that meant I needed to do the run in 54 minutes, which seemed very doable.

Finally, the run. Two years ago, I had a terrible run. This year, I felt good. Ran it in 52. Sweet. End time was 1:47, so one minute better than 2 years ago, on no training and a bit of jetlag.

And on to the 4th leg. I went to the official Noosa after party at the surf club for the first time. It was fantastic. Every one was into it.

It was great having a chance to come back and see every one and even better to get to race in the 3rd largest race in the world. I'm thinking I might make a tradition out of it, and try to go back for Mooloolaba 2012. That will be another 18 months. Though having an extra week down there would definitely be in order.

BAA Half Race Report: it's better with friends

2010-10-18T20:39:00.005-04:00

Since the Duxbury race, I've definitely been in my off season. Sure I did a half marathon last weekend, and I've got an olympic distance race in Australia next weekend, but I've been treating it like the off season. Which means I've cut back to about 3 - 6 hours of exercise per week, and I've upped my ice cream intake significantly.

I showed up to the BAA Half Marathon last weekend with relatively low expectations. The Pumpkinman run gave me some confidence that I could do a pretty good time in this race, but I haven't done a half mara on its own since this race last year, so I was a little anxious, but not nervous going in.

Rachel and I did some pre-race warm ups, then headed to the line for the porta potties. This was my one complaint about the race. They did not have enough bathrooms. We waited for about 15 minutes in a line and still weren't even close. Rachel gave up and headed for the bushes, and I should have followed suit, but I thought, eh, I'll be fine.

About 2 miles in, I hear from behind me "Hey, I thought I recognized that ponytail." It's Nathaniel, Paul's roommate from Notre Dame. Nathaniel is faster than me. He runs marathons, but he had told me he was planning on running 8:30s, but now, apparently, he's feeling good. So we start running together and we're holding 7:55 - 8. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, I've never broken 50 minutes for a 10K before, if we keep this pace up... And there's the 10K mark, we've just run it in 49:14. Killer! But I hope that doesn't mean that I'll blow up for the full distance.

Now I start thinking about a sub-1:50. That would be pretty spectacular given that my fastest time was a 1:53:10. The second half of the course is a lot more uphill though, so I try not to get ahead of myself. Still we're pulling in low 8s: 8:04, 7:59, 8:02. We hit the 10 mile mark with a sub-1:20 time. Nathaniel turns to me and says, "if you've got 10 min miles left in you, you're gonna break 1:50!"

At mile 11, Nathaniel decides he's gonna see how much he's got left. I thank him for the pacing, and immediately drop back to an 8:33 mile. Hmm, that's ok, I've got buffer, it's just so much harder to push the pace when you're not trying to keep up with some one. Mile 12, only 1.1 to go. Geez, I've got to pee. But, it's only 1 more mile, you can hold it. 20 more paces, Ack! I can't hold it! I run behind a tree for a quick pit stop. So that added 30 seconds to my time.

Back to the race, and I'm ready for this thing to be over. We run around the grand stands and finally into the stadium where we finish off with half a lap. 1:46:26. Sweet!

I grab water, food, and t-shirt and look around for Nathaniel to no avail. I head back in to watch Jeff and Rachel finish their races. Rachel all smiles with an 8 minute PR!

Two big takeaways from this race:
1. I run better with friends, and I need to learn how to push myself like that on my own.

2. Make sure you pee right before the start of the race.

Stay tuned, next post will be from oz!

From worst to first

2010-09-19T11:38:00.007-04:00

I read a fair few triathlon blogs. They're right over there to the right. There are two styles of these blogs: people who are triathletes and people who do triathlons. Of course those are not the same thing. It takes a more than just your first triathlon to feel like you really belong in the sport.

Recently I noticed that I've crossed the divide. I'm no longer trying to become a triathlete, I am one. I'm no longer just "participating" in races, I'm racing. I came across this photo from my first race in Australia a few weeks ago.

That was a tough race. I didn't come DFL there (turns out I beat one kid and one grandma), but I did at others.

Contrast that to this weekend's Duxbury sprint.

It was my last race of the Boston season and a big team race with 14 of us racing for BPC. It's a sprint and given that it was only 6 days after the half ironman, I didn't have high expectations for it. Go out, have fun, then a big team end of season bbq as a reward. I haven't even done much since the half, I took Monday and Tuesday off from training, easy, drill-focused swim on Wednesday, strength on Thursday and rest day Friday. Didn't do a race plan. Riding over to the course the legs didn't feel like they had much in them, so I decide that those 5 miles to the course are actually enough of a warm up, even if they were 2 hours before the race.

We register and they don't mark our calves with our ages, which means out on the course, I can't tell whom I'm really racing. My coach remarks, that just means I have to be faster than everyone.

The swim has got to be the best spectator swim anywhere. We started on the main shore, and swam, along a bridge to the far shore. Spectators could just follow along, walking up the bridge. About 150 yards from shore, you could hear people cheering, it was great. Pushed it out to the shore. I saw a few pink caps ahead of me, but still felt like a solid swim.

Onto the bike, and of course the first thing you do is ride across that same bridge. It's a wooden bridge and about half a mile long, so not an ideal surface for putting on one's bike shoes. The ride was out and back. Not too far in, I get passed by a girl, I try to keep her in my sights. Three miles in, I see one of our coaches, Vic, on his way back in, looking fast. It's fantastic to see my teammates going so well. Just about to the turn around, I see another teammate Jeff, heading back. I wonder if I can catch him. At the turn around, I get passed by another girl, who is really fast. On the way back, I catch back up to the first girl, and she and I and 3 other cyclists, ride back together. Average speed 20 mph, on the nose.

The run is also out across the bridge, which seems to take forever this time around. I focus on picking people off, this includes my teammate Jeff, and pretty soon, I'm heading back toward the bridge. I get passed by one more girl on the run who's pace I just can't match. Strong sprint home, and it's all done.

My coach asks how it went, and I tell her it was ok, I felt pretty good, but that I got passed both on the bike and on the run, but can't know if they were in my age group or not. We head over and check out the boards for results. Nothing, I'm not on there. Oh, wait, they're posting updated results. There's Lauren, there's Christina, there's... me. Oh. My. God. It says I came first. Wait, go look at that again, am I reading that right? I get Patty to look at it with me. Yes, that's right 1st place in the 30-34 year old age group! Woo hoo! Hugs and high fives all around. Plus we've got more podiums on the team, Vic took first, Robyn took first, Christina took second and Jeff took second. Seriously solid showing. We all hang around for the award ceremony, which is painfully disorganized. Christina and Jeff both receive hideous water bottles instead of medals.

First time on the podium and first place out of 26! Looking at the official results, I had the 4th fastest swim, but passed 2 girls in transition. My bike was the second fastest in the age group, but because of the solid swim and transition, I was already in first coming in off the bike. 5th fastest run, but again, I'd put enough of a gap in, that I maintain my first place position. Oh, and, because this race is so late in the season, it qualifies me for age group national champs next year in Vermont. That was my goal for next season, so I'm gonna have to start thinking about not just going, but having a good showing there.

Pumpkinman Race Report: All that hard work

2010-09-14T20:17:00.006-04:00

Don't know how else to say this. I rocked this race. Not perfect, there's always room for improvement, but still this race far exceeded expectations!

First check out the venue. How gorgeous is that?

[special thanks to Carrie for the picts and to all the BTTers for all the support on the course]

I wasn't much worried about the swim. It was a little seaweedy at first, but you know, extra fiber never hurt. I've been swimming well and enjoying it, so I got in near the front and didn't get too fussed about going fast. Turned out it was a pretty good swim. Second fastest in my age group (of 23), and average of 1:31 per 100. My goal for the season was to swim 1:40s for an olympic distance swim. Crushed it.

This race was unique cause it had a massive hill climb out of the swim to transition. Looks like I liked it:
Then to the bike. This ride was all about conserving. I set a goal of averaging 18 mph. It was tough, there were times, when girls in my age group passed me that I wanted to go faster. I wanted to stay with them. But I stuck to my plan. Let them go and stayed focused on my own race.

I had borrowed my friend Noah's aero bar bottle to stay hydrated. Major advantage of this bottle is that it's refillable while you're riding. On the first loop every time I hit a bump the bottle would splash me. At just about any other race this would have been great. But when it's 60 degrees out, you just want to stay dry. After the first loop, I had drunk the full bottle and I had to pee. Good sign. I found a stretch of road with woods and hopped off the bike for a pit stop. I just couldn't bring myself to pee on my bike. I get to the water stop, and this time when I go to fill the bottle, I knock the valve right into the bottle. I guess I hadn't quite gotten it in right when I filled it that morning, so I stop again and fix out. The last 10 miles, I ease up the pressure and up the cadence. I feel good, if a little cold coming in off the bike, average 18.1mph.

And then I miss my rack... Too many friends cheering me on from the relay section. Oops.

To the run. I focus on one foot in front of the next, I focus on tempo. I start thinking about my friend Simone, doing the Ironman in Australia. Some one referred to her as "metronome" she just doesn't stop. I start singing to myself "Simone, the metronome" and it works pretty well. First two miles at an 8:45 pace. Great. The course is an out and back and out and back route. It was great, I kept seeing friends, high fiving all along the way. At about mile 10, I realized that my secret goal of hitting 5:45 was not just achievable, it was crushable.

Pure race bliss!

In the end, I crossed the finish line 5 hours and 40 minutes after the start. I held solid sub-9 minute miles on the run the whole way. 7th place in my age group.

I've been planning on spending next year focused on getting faster at the shorter distances and moving on from the halves, but with a solid half under my belt, I might just be tempted to do another.

Pumpkinman Race Plan: Third time's the charm

2010-09-06T17:37:00.005-04:00

One week from my 3rd half ironman, and I have to say, I'm not all that excited. My last two races at Timberman and Cranberry were just fantastic. I loved getting back into shorter distances and going fast. Now contemplating the 6 hour event I'm entered into next week, it's hard to get pumped about it. In my first half, I hit the wall on the run and had to drag myself through the finish. At the Patriot this year, I got wicked dehydrated and struggled through most of the run. So now on my third and final half ironman for the season, I'd really like to just make it to the finish with a smile on my face.

The Pumpkinman is a unique race. It's a two loop swim, in a small pond, with a run back onto the beach between loops. Then there's there king of the mountain challenge with 250m sprint uphill to the transition. The bike is a lollipop course, with two loops around the lolli. Finally the run is 2 lap out and back course.

I'm not going to set an overall time goal. Instead, my plan is to swim strong and hold 18mph on the bike (actually 18, not at least 18) for the first 45 miles. The last 10 miles, I'm gonna take it down a bit, maybe 17.5. Goal being to save something in the legs for the run. I think I've got the hydration worked out (hello, camelback) and I tested my nutrition out today on the actual ride course. So here goes nothing. Check back next week for the smiling finish line photo.

Cranberry Race Report: Knocking on the door

2010-08-30T14:22:00.007-04:00

[me, Head Coach Ali, Assistant Coach Christina pre swim]

I did it. I finally broke my PR of 2:43:49. My new PR is now 2:43:05. So 44 seconds improvement, which sounds sorta piddly after 18 months of training. Here's the thing: I went all out on this race. I pushed the swim, I owned the bike and I struggled through the run. I left absolutely nothing left in the tank, so I will take those 44 seconds with pride. (I will also remember that this course is technically 1.2 miles longer on the bike than my previous PR).

The swim was .8 miles around a cute little pond. The start was messy. I got out to start in the front, and still got pretty thoroughly pounded out to the first buoy. Then things eased a bit. Every 12 strokes I'd look to my right and I'd see another girl in my wave and I'd think, "ok, push it on this one and drop her" 12 strokes later, I'd look right again and see her, no further behind me, but importantly no further ahead. This girl paced with me the entire swim. And it was great to have some one right there. I definitely pushed harder because of it.

[yay 7th]

I came out of the water in 7th place in my age group, right behind the girl who paced with me and one other. I got out of transition ahead of those 2, so I was 5th starting out on the bike. As I've said, I rocked this bike. Just focused on picking people off and drinking plenty of fluids. I even held my coach off until the last few miles. I passed two girls in my age group, putting me in 3rd until the very end when I got passed just before the chute. Maybe it was getting passed at the end, but somehow, I just wasn't thinking when I was dismounting. I'm not the most graceful at getting off my bike: generally, I take my feet out of shoes while riding, then put weight on the right shoe, come to a stop, put my left on the ground, and swing the right leg over. Somehow this time around, I attempted a different dismount. I tried putting my weight on the left, and swinging the right leg over before coming to a stop. I didn't fall, but I did lose my left shoe in the process.

[just about to attempt an entirely new dismount]

I passed the girl who passed me at the end of the bike at the beginning of the run. Then it was just trying to hang on. It was a long, hot slog, not all that different from the half ironman run. I got passed about halfway through by another girl in my age group, just pushing me out of the top 3. I grimaced my way through the last 3 miles, but never got passed again.

[out on the run]

Finally, I've gotta give a shout out to the awesome spectators who get up when it's dark out just to come out and cheer. It was great to see other BPC and BTT athletes out, snapping pictures and cheering us on despite the pain, and of course, Paul and his parents coming out for it.

[post race cool down]

Cranberry plan: one more time, with feeling

2010-08-26T11:25:00.004-04:00

Feels like I just wrote up my last race plan, and here I am writing another. Guess that's the way it goes with back to back races. Cranberry is this Sunday, and it's an olympic distance. It's my last oly of the season, and I have to admit, I'm a little trepidatious for several reasons.

Last week's race was awesome, so seems like it will take a lot to rival it.
My last olympic at Mass State wasn't as awesome as I thought it would be, so I don't want to get my hopes up again.
Work's just crazy this week.
Paul's parents are coming to town, so we've been busy prepping.
It rained Monday to Wednesday of this week.
Because of 3, 4, and 5, today was my first training since Saturday's race. This is unheard of for me. I just lost the plot the week. Planning on a quick spin tomorrow morning, and that's probably it in terms of prep.

As a result, I've started obsessing about little details (like how to wear my hair - my hallmark braids aren't working with this new hair cut, so I was soliciting suggestions from my teammates this morning. Solution: two piggie tails on the top of my head, one low pony. Gonna test it out on the ride tomorrow) that my coach points out, won't make me any faster.

In my heart, I want to podium, I want to break my PR, but I worry that using those goals, I set myself up for disappointment again. I don't know how many people will be in my age group (though if I assume 5%, then it should be close to 50). I can't control how hot it's going to be (expected 88 degrees). How can I set these things as my goals when they feel so out of my control?

So here's my plan:

5:00am wake up, oatmeal
5:30am start driving down there (drink a bottle of heed)
6:30am arrive, bodymark, rack
7:05-7:25 warm up run
7:30 replace running shoes in transition
7:45 - 8 warm up swim, gu
8:10 start swimming! Start watch!

In the swim, I want to start near the front of the pack, push to the first buoy, then try to settle into a nice, but hard rhythm. Hopefully a wetsuit will work here, if it's not too warm.

Fast transition, tri shoes, already clipped in, grab helmet and sunnies.

Last week, I got passed on the bike by 5 people (and one whom I passed back and kept behind me). I know my swim is my strongest leg, so in all likelihood, I'm gonna get passed on the bike. I'm embracing this. My goal for the bike is to hang with these tough girls who pass me and use them to push me to go faster. "Keep them in your sights" is my motto. Gu once settled in, One bottle of Heed - drink the whole thing!

Second transition: runners, helmet off, visor on, race belt.

The run is tough too. Those 8 minute miles are elusive, but I will continue to hunt them down. I will use my watch to mark each mile. Ideally, I'd love to pass some of those fast bikers on the run, but that's out of my control. So I'm focusing on 8 minute miles, relaxing my shoulders and enjoying my run.

Finally, a few more piccies from last weekend:

Brenda (ready for her first tri), Andrea and me

into the chute

Timberman race report: Paying dividends

2010-08-24T21:41:00.007-04:00

I came to the Timberman race to have fun, and that I definitely did. But it's also the first sprint that I've done since last year's timberman, so a great chance to see how I've progressed in my training.

I wore my wetsuit on the swim, cause I wanted to practice racing with it. I plan to wear it in both the cranberry this weekend and Pumpkinman in 3 weeks. Also, I knew this race would have wetsuit strippers, and I've never had my wetsuit stripped before. I took a place near the front of the pack. My entire wave was my age group, 82 athletes in all. I started out on some one's toes, but quickly passed her. The water was shallow. Seriously shallow:

Check out all those people walking. After the first 2 buoys, I couldn't see any other red caps ahead of me. I started realizing I could be in first place. Rounding the last buoy, another woman caught me. And she wasn't even wearing a wetsuit. I pushed hard, but I couldn't keep with her. Still I figured that had me in 2nd place. Here I am watching her cross the timing pad ahead of me.
Another woman in my age group (let's call her "the beast") passes me as I enter the wetsuit stripping area. The way this works, is you lay down on your back, and volunteers grab the suit at your waist and fling it off you. Here are some people getting stripped.

My volunteers grabbed my suit and pulled, but the suit stayed on, and instead I dragged along the ground. Luckily there was another volunteer to hold onto my hands, and on the second try, off came the wetsuit.

I passed the girl who passed me on the swim in transition. And the beast came out just ahead of me. She was clearly an athlete, clearly very fit and clearly very muscular. None of this bodes well for my bike. But on the first hill, I overtook her. Sweet. I held her off for about a mile before she overtook me again. But, I kept her in my sights. I then got passed by two BTT girls and a girl in a red tri suit. That meant I was in 5th behind the beast. Going down a big hill (and not using my brakes), I got passed by two other girls in my age group. I was not having that. I passed them both back on the next uphill, and I held them off for the next down hill. I ended up playing leapfrog with one of them for the rest of the course. We even caught up with the beast.

[heading out on the run, post beast, that's some serious neck tension]

I came out of transition just behind the two of them. I passed the beast on the run in the chute and passed the other girl in the first 100 paces after that. Sweet. Now I was in 4th. Just as I was thinking maybe I had a shot at the podium, another thought crossed my mind. What about the girls who are awesome runners? What if there are some of those behind me? Just then, one of them passes me. Ugh, ok. First mile 7:52. Not bad. I hit the turn around and starting making my way home. Second mile 6:19, ok that one I just don't believe, it must have been short. On the way home, I get passed by the girl who passed me on the swim. And then I'm turning to go back into the chute. There are a ton of BTTers there and I get lots of cheers, which apparently, I like:

I finished up in 1:21. That's 9 minutes faster than last year. 9 minutes! 2 on the swim, 4 on the bike and 3 on the run. EFF YEAH!

Also, I did keep good track of all the athletes that passed me and that I passed. When I crossed the finish line, I thought I was in 6th. Turns out that there was one lightning fast woman in my division, in fact, I think she won the whole thing. She was so fast that I never saw her. That put me 3rd on the swim, 10th on the bike and 12th on the run and 7th overall. Out of 82!

All of this has me super excited for next season. With this race, I could qualify for Nationals this year. I don't want to go this year, it's not part of my plan. I want to get faster on the bike and the run. It sucks having the swim be your best leg and then getting passed by people for the rest of the race. I want to qualify next year with a podium under my belt and be able to have a decent showing in Vermont at Nationals.

Timberman Sprint Race Plan

2010-08-19T17:35:00.002-04:00

The race is Saturday morning at 7am. I'm doing this one with my old friend and original tri buddy Andrea. (She and I went to Bangkok a few years ago).

The plan for this race is simple:

Have fun!
Go hard!

I think I can do that.

Cycling community

2010-08-17T20:40:00.004-04:00

Last weekend we went on a surprise camping trip to Vermont. I had planned a long ride for Saturday. We were right off the main highway, so I could have taken that out and back, but the cars go rather fast, and there's not that much shoulder. I used my phone to map out a route, and create a cue sheet of smaller country roads. With phone in pocket, off, I went.

About 2 miles into the ride, I see another cyclist pull out ahead of me. I catch up to him and ask him what road we're on (Vermonters aren't all that keen on street signs), turns out I missed my turn, but I explain, I was just out to do a 25 or so mile ride, and he invited me to tag along with him. I love that. Show up in a random place, meet up with a like-minded (and like-speed) cyclist and hang out for a few hours. What a great community of riders. Of course the flip side to this, is that I just enthusiastically followed a complete stranger into the back country of Vermont, but let's keep thinking positive.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about the animosity between motorists and cyclists (and pedestrians too, but that's a different matter). I've read a couple of different articles on it. Blaming the cars for putting cyclists in danger, blaming the cyclists for not following the rules, blaming the rules for being unrealistic, blaming roads in Boston for being designed by cows, not for cars or bikes. I've been trying to figure out where I come out with all these.

Here's what I think. I hate riding on the bike path. It sounds silly, right? It's the bike path, isn't that the best place to ride? No, it's not. The bike path is not just for bikes. It's for pedestrians, strollers, kids on trikes, dogs, skateboarders, and the most odious of non-cyclist roller bladers. I hate riding on the bike path because there are no rules. Yes, generally we keep to the right, but the whole thing is only a few 2.5 yards wide, things are bound to get messy. Particularly on sunny weekends. I hate riding on it, because I can't anticipate what all these people will do. Will they stop, move to the left, listen for me coming up behind them? All in all, constantly being on defense just makes for a stressful (and slower) ride.

What I like about the road, is that I know what to expect. Sure, a car could not see me, or could run a light, or make a turn without signaling, but generally, they are well-behaved and orderly. I still have to ride defensively, but I can be reasonably sure that I can anticipate what they'll do.

If I'm gonna take advantage of the orderliness that comes with riding on the road, I have to uphold it myself. That means following the same rules as the cars.* But in exchange, as drivers, we've gotta accept that bikes are gonna be on the road and that that's the best place for them. Give bikes room when we pass, use our blinkers and just follow the rules (that's right, stopping in the middle of a roundabout to let a biker on, is actually not helpful, now you're doing something unexpected and that causes accidents). At the end of the day, I'm both a driver and a cyclist, I try to show respect for both groups.

* Within reason. This means when rolling (yes, rolling, not throttling) toward a stop sign, if there's no one approaching, then roll through it (note: cars do this too). This means it's ok to ride two abreast when you're not in traffic, but you MUST go single file as soon as a car approaches (cars, a nice little toot on the horn [not laying on it] is appropriate if a bike doesn't go single right away). This does not excuse track stands at lights, weaving between cars or going the wrong way on a one way street. And don't get me started on helmets.

They can't all be good rides

2010-07-29T17:06:00.003-04:00

First, Saturday, I took on another Brick of Doom. That's right: 2.5 mi run, 30 mi bike, 2.5 mi run, 30 mi bike, 2 mi run. Phew. 4.5 hours later, it was done. Special thanks to Jeff from BPC for taking this on after 6 weeks off the bike.

Then on Sunday, Paul and I joined a few other triathletes for our first ride together since the Prouty. Not our most successful ride:

We couldn't find the key to one of the bike racks to lock the bike on.
We couldn't find the key to unlock Paul's bike from the bike rack.
The local bike shop wasn't open to try to get a spare key from.
Paul took his first (and second) tumble while being clipped in (had to happen some time).
Paul's back wheel was not true and was rubbing on his brake.
Paul's waterbottle cage was loose and rattling.
Our 28 mile loop was actually 34. And I missed a turn and took us an additional half mile.
Paul was out of water and ready to be done at 25 miles.

But we made it. The next ride can only get better from here, right?

Mass State Race Report: Managing expectations

2010-07-18T19:13:00.004-04:00

It wasn't quite what I had hoped for. I finished in 2:44. A minute slower than my PR. But, I did finish 5th in my age group (out of 12), and I did have the 2nd fastest swim in my age group. And I did go hard. Here are my highlights:

If I make my oatmeal a little on the soupy side, I can just drink it if I forget a spoon.
I bought new sunscreen for the race. I opted to go with Mission cause it's made by "athletes and scientists." But apparently not industrial designers. I couldn't get the bloody thing to spray, the cap just wouldn't lever enough to depress the internal plunger. Luckily, I discovered this on Saturday, and Paul helped me pry off the outer cap. Other than the can, the sunscreen worked well. I'm a fan of spray, because if you do it in light coats it doesn't smear your race number, obviously a must for the discerning triathlete.
I still find it quaint that races in the US insist on singing the National Anthem before every race. I don't think I ever heard Advance Australia Fair at a single race, but it's a nice touch.
I gotta remember to hit my start button on my watch.
On the first lap of the bike, it became clear that my goal of averaging 19.5 was just not going to happen: there was a head wind on the flat, and the mile long hill killed my momentum in the first few meters. After 12 miles I had a 17.5 average. I reset my expectations, and decided to shoot for a 18 average. Just as I turned into the park to head to transition, I hit 18. Woohoo.
Putting my gu for the run in my bike bento box was not a good plan, I forgot to move it to my pocket.
Sub-one-minute transitions!
My teammate Christina commented on how salty I was after the race. That's right, I was covered in salt crystals.
I need to re-evaluate my goal setting practice. I've never swum 1500 in 25 minutes in open water, I've never run a 50 minute 10K on its own. Why should I think that I could do both of those things for the first time in this race?
I've got an awesome team.

Mass State Race Plan

2010-07-13T16:24:00.002-04:00

This Sunday is the Mass State Triathlon (http://www.maxperformanceonline.com/massstaterace.html). I'm doing the olympic distance race. (Check out the video of the bike on their site).

I haven't really been too focused on training since the Patriot. Still training, but nothing exceptional. Some weeks even taking 2 rest days! Low key rides, nothing longer than 50 miles, nothing faster than 17. Long open water swims with friends. Overall just enjoying the training and not going crazy. This could mean that I'm super well rested for this race, or it could mean that I'll just be slow. Guess we'll find out in a few days.

My goal for this race is to go hard. It's been almost a year since my last olympic distance (since Mooseman didn't really count). Patriot was about pushing, but still reserving something in the tank. This time, I want to go all out and see what I've got.

My 2:43 olympic PR was from Mooloolaba last year, so it's been a while since it's been truly tested. I went into training last fall with a goal of having a 25 minute swim for 1500m, which translates to 1:40s per 100, by the end of this season. Seems like this race is a good chance to test out how close I am to that goal.

On the ride, I'm not entirely sure. It's a mostly flat ride, but has 1 hill (done twice) that's about a mile long and at points it's 4%. I held 18.8 for the first 27 miles of the Patriot, so seems like 19 should be doable. 19.5 is the stretch goal. It would make the ride exactly 1:15.

Finally, for the run, I've always wanted a 50 minute run. That's 8 minute miles. My run at Mooseman was 51:21. I don't really have much of a reason to think that I can go faster than that, but it can't hurt to try, right? Or it will hurt, but it will be temporary.

25+1:15+50 = 2:30 without transitions. So with transitions 2:35? Shaving 8 minutes off my PR seems ambitious. So how about a hierarchy of goals:

1. Go hard!
2. 2:40 overall time.
3. Meeting one or more individual discipline goals
4. 2:35

Doing what we came for

2010-07-10T18:45:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was the Prouty Charity Ride up in New Hampshire. It was Paul's first charity ride. It was also his first ride of the season. In fact, it was his first ride over 10 miles (35!). And it was my second race in New Hampshire in the pouring rain. (Does not bode well for Timberman)

Paul is not a cyclist. Despite his dedication to the Tour de France coverage, he's more of a team sport guy. The non-binary nature of the sport (no single winner/loser) doesn't appeal. On the contrary, that's actually the thing that has drawn me into triathlon. Each race is determined by me: there's no team to support me; no one to let down. If I go a little faster than last time, then that's a victory. If I ride a little further, that's a new challenge to have vanquished.

It's tough to keep perspective when the rest of our team rode 100 miles (after a night a pretty serious drinking [after we went to bed] nonetheless). But I don't think that should overshadow Paul's accomplishment.

This week Paul had been joking that he would only do 10 miles of the race. At 10 miles in, I asked if he wanted to do the 20 mile course, but Paul says no. We're doing what we came here to do.

So, I'm pretty excited for Paul's longest ride ever. We held a pace of almost 16 mph, took on a few serious hills and didn't even stop at the 3rd (and final) rest stop. The last hill, by and far the worst, was one that he thought he might have to walk up, but he didn't. He made it. When we passed through the finish line, he first laid his bike on the ground, then laid himself on the ground next to it and said that hill might have been the hardest thing he had ever done, EVER.

Now that's something to be proud of.

Fourth of July

2010-07-06T17:05:00.008-04:00

It's actually been 4 years since I've been in the US for a Fourth of July. Hard to believe, but last year I was in Mexico for Toby and Brooke's wedding (yay!) and the two years before that were in Australia. I can't even remember what I did for my last American Fourth.

This year a friend of mine invited us to her Beacon Hill apartment to watch the fireworks from her balcony. But before all this, Paul and I went to watch the Pops rehearsal on the 3rd out on the Esplanade. It's not entirely fair to call it a "rehearsal" when thousands of people show up, and they do a full run-through with no stopping. We got there an hour early, and they had already filled the oval in front of the hatch shell. But we found a nice spot near storrow that still had views of the big screens and great sound. We brought a picnic and a crossword and just all in all had a great time. Here we are:

Awesome. So we were well-prepped for the actual Fourth festivities. We made the mistake of picking up beer near our house to bring to the party, necessitating lugging it from our house, to the T, off the T up Beacon Hill, passing 4 or 5 liquor stores on the way. Ok, seriously, we will not make this mistake again.

It was a great party, met new people, enjoyed some amazing homemade pizza (why does my crust never come out like that?). And watched the pops on TV, including the patriotic sing-along. Which Paul and I dominated with "to the oceans, white with FOAM!" Yes, that is what was missing from my Fourths these last 4 years. Some one to belt out American songs whose words are burned into my memory from years of chorus.

Then finally the fireworks:
Not a bad view from the balcony, and those weren't even the big ones.

The only real hiccup in the whole performance was trying to get back home. Estimates were that there were over 800,000 people on the Boston side for the fireworks (only 600,000 people actually live in the city of Boston), so getting home was a bit of a nightmare. We walked to Charles/MGH, to find it overrun with people, then crossed the bridge to Kendall - also overrun, continued walking towards Central and finally caught a cab home.

But we did get to experience the surreal feeling of walking down the middle of a busy Boston street that was closed to traffic. Here we are, in the street:

Uncharted waters

2010-06-30T14:41:00.005-04:00

I'm in Canada this week for a conference, Quebec, in fact, here. Needless to say, I was stoked to be going to the great Canadian outdoors, and to get a chance to check out that lake.

Seriously, this was the view from my balcony this morning.

The resort was at the base of Mont Tremblant, a popular ski mountain, so I was a little worried about how cold this lake was going to be. I called the resort last week to see if I should bring a wetsuit. Here's how the conversation went down:

"Hi, I'll be staying with you next week. I was wondering if you knew what temperature the lake was."
"Ha ha ha. No, I don't know"
"Oh, well, have you been in the lake yet? Is it very cold?"
"Employees aren't allowed in the lake"
"Ok, have you seen many guests swim in the lake?"
"No"

Ok, fine, it looks cold, and they have a "semi-olympic pool," so I opted to not bring the wetsuit. But when I got there, the water was super warm, maybe 68-70 degrees. Monday afternoon we had some downtime before dinner, and I ran into some one else from the conference carrying goggles. Good sign. I asked him if he was going to swim, and he said, yes, but that he had already been chastised by the lifeguard to only swim within the ropes. But that the lifeguard took off at 5:30. So we bided our time. Finally around 6, we got our chance.

As we waded out of the shallows, I asked him about his open water swimming. Turns out, he's signed up for his first sprint in August, and he's never done any open water swimming, but he's pretty confident. I briefly go over spotting to keep him swimming in a straight line, and off we go.

Here's our planned route.

The first bit is sorta yucky. As the sand disappears into the depths, the seaweed reaches the surface. Despite all the open water swimming I've done over the last 5 years, I prefer to not see anything in the water when I swim. I resort to closing my eyes.

I clear this bit and get into the real deep, and things are feeling good. I pull up to a few kayakers and look back. My new friend is probably 50m back, and is breast stroking. I wait up for him, and assure the kayakers that we will be fine, we're strong swimmers and no, those dark clouds on the horizon don't look that scary.

When my friend catches up, I check in with him. He says swimming into the dark water had been harder than he expected, but he points out, he's gotta do it at some point. Right, I had forgotten about how scary that is. No matter how comfortable you may be at the deep end, when you're suddenly more than a few strokes from the side of the pool, panic sets in. Steve in a Speedo actually talked about getting his brother-in-law in the water for the first time this week.

We decide to continue on to swim to one of the islands. I suggest he tap my feet. This is a drill we do in practice to prep for races. You swim faster with less effort when you're swimming on some one else's feet: it's like drafting on the bike. And you don't feel alone. And you've got a goal which is keeping on those feet, and that helps keep your mind off of the deep.

Off we go. I check every 30 strokes or so, and he's keeping up well, and we make it as close to the island as I want to get (no seaweed). We tread for a bit, then breaststroke for a bit to catch our breaths. Those dark clouds from before, they've moved closer, they are encroaching on the resort, and in the distance we can hear thunder. I convince him to get moving. This time, he doesn't stay on my feet. This time he needs more rest. So we swim for a bit, we breast stroke a bit. He offers for me to go ahead, but no way am I gonna leave him in the middle of this lake.

We make it back through the seaweed, and we're chatting our way back to the shore, when the storm just opens up. Massive drops, strong gusts. We sprint out of the water, grab my clothes as they're just about to blow away. And jog into the hotel. Phew, safe.

Into the elevator, hit the button, doors close, lights out. Sweet, the power is out. About 30 seconds later, the emergency power kicks in, and the lights come back on. Ok, door open. Door open. Door open? Nothing. My friend tries to pry the doors open, but it's a single door, that closes to one side, and he can't fit his fingers in. Luckily, my fingers are small. I can just get my fingertips around the lip of the door. And I pull. Success. We escape.

It's been a long time since my first openwater swim at Walden all those years ago, when simultaneously Robyn, Andrea and I all stopped, panicked and decided to swim along the shore for safety. I'm impressed with my new friend. He did way better than I did, I'm sure he'll have a great swim.

Patriot Race Report: Learning the hard way

2010-06-20T13:44:00.004-04:00

A little over a year ago, I took on my first half ironman. It was a challenge unlike other tris I have done. This year, I returned to the distance at the Patriot to try to learn from the difficulties last year and have a solid race. Well, I finished, and I learned more about this distance, but I don't think I can say I had a solid race. I finished in 6:08 - 18 minutes slower than last year. But I did come 8th in my age group (out of 26), so that's not too shabby. Still I wasn't out there to podium, I was out to master the distance, and once again, the half got the best of me. Here's what I learned.

Exiting T1

With temperatures in the upper-80s, I knew I'd need to take on more fluids. I'd even planned on stopping to pee, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. I have 2 water bottle cages on my bike, a front one with my sustained energy and a back one with just water. I usually only use my back cage to refill my front one in training, so when I went for my water 2 miles in, I dropped it. Crap. Well there's a water stop at mile 15, I'll just have to make it there. Bad plan. I should have stopped and picked up the bottle. Instead, I was without water for the first 50 minutes of the bike. I kept drinking my sustained energy, but it just wasn't doing it.

Then, of course, when I did finally get to the water stop, the water bottle didn't fit in my cage cause my bike is so tiny. Bad planning. I jammed it in on a diagonal. I wasn't going to go without water for the next 15 miles. I focused on drinking ever mile, to try to get the fluid back into me.

Finishing lap 1

When I got to the next water stop at 30 miles, I still had half of the water bottle and half of my fuel, so I decided I was good, I didn't exchange bottles. Again, bad plan. I ran out of all fluids at around mile 38, still ~7 miles to the next water stop. At this point I start developing a dehydration headache. Ugh. More water at mile 45, but it was too late.

On my way out of the run, stuffing my bike gloves into a pocket

I got into T2, put on shoes and ran to make a portapotty stop. By this point I had had 3 bottles of liquid, but only a thin stream of gu-like pee came out. Dang, my reflection in the mirror revealed swollen lips. Seriously dehydrated. I tried to remedy with some heed at the first mile water stop. But by the time I got to mile 2, I felt worse. I sat down, drank water, heed, had electrolyte pills, a gu. The volunteers offered to give me a ride back to transition. No way. If I'm gonna quit it's gonna be at mile 3. I start walking. After a few yards, I get up to jogging. At mile 3 I start the routine that will take me through the remainder of the day: splash myself with a cup of water, drink a cup of heed, walk a few yards and get to jogging. By mile 5, I actually felt good. More gu, more electrolyte pills and I was even banging out 9 minute miles there for a bit. Mile 10 didn't feel so good, but I made it. Total run time was 2:21.

Ok, so there are the lessons: pick up the bottle you dropped, practice with the exact mechanisms you will use on race day, don't rely on race provisions, explore other water options (bottle on the bars? camelback?).

Despite all this, there were some really good moments of the race yesterday too. I had the 4th fastest swim in my age group. I averaged 18.8 for the first half of the bike and 18.4 overall, giving me the 6th fastest bike in my age group. Once I got the hydration back in control, my run actually felt pretty good. I'm really proud of finishing the race. And finally, (and most importantly) my knee felt fine. Even a day later it's feeling ok. This was probably due to my absolutely amazing pit crew, Paul, who was ready for me with ice and saran wrap immediately after the race.

This morning I woke up still 4 pounds shy of my regular weight, so I've still got some work to do getting hydrated. But I'm now considering signing up for Pumpkinman. One more meeting with the half distance to tackle it.

Patriot plan

2010-06-17T21:19:00.003-04:00

Ok, first. I'm writing this from a hotel at the SFO airport. This is not my ideal race prep, but I came out here to give a proposal, and it went well. So I'm going with it. Plus, for my last half I did a trans-continental flight 2 days before, and that was fine, right? I fly out at 6 tomorrow morning.

Back to the race. Since Mooseman, my knee has not been happy. And it's not been indifferent either. It has been angry. Seriously angry. Like 5 days ago, I was considering pulling out of the race angry. It's the same old thing, super tight IT band pulling knee all out of shape. But it was waking me up in the middle of the night. It was painful to put weight on; it was painful to lift my knee. You get the picture. There's been a flurry of physical therapy-esque activity, and just a few tears, and at this point, I'm pretty confident I will be racing in about 36 hours.

It's supposed to be hot. Like 88 degress hot. Race starts at 7:15, so realistically, I'll be racing through the hottest part of the hottest day of the year. Awesome. Here's my plan:

Swim: Last year I did a 32 minute swim. Sure it was one of the best swims of my life, but I'd love to see a repeat of that. Plus, I've gotten faster over winter training. So lets go with 32 minutes.

Ride: First off, I'm wearing my regular cycling shoes, they're not as fast to put on, but they are seriously more comfortable, so those extra 20 seconds or so in transition seem totally worth it. Ok, so last year, I held a 30km/h pace which works out to 18mph. But that course was flat, dead flat. In this preseason, I've been stressing feeling like I'm not able to get up to that sort of speed this year. I just haven't ridden outside nearly as much as I did in Brisbane. But I've had a couple of good rides a nearly 20mph average at Mooseman, and a 17.8 average on the Patriot course a few weeks ago, so I'm thinking 18 is doable. I'll set my computer to average and just hold onto 18. This course is two loops of 29 miles, so it's a bit longer than Busso, so my time will be a bit longer, but the course is more interesting with a few rollers to get out of the saddle for. I'm looking forward to it.

Last time, I had planned on a pee break in T2, but this didn't happen. Not cause I was concerned about time, but because I was way too dehydrated to have to go. This will not be the case on Saturday. I've been training to take in more fluid and despite my coach's recommendations, I'm not going to try to pee on the bike. Like they say, don't race anything you haven't trained, so I'm planning on stopping at the portapotties after the first loop. All in all, this means I'm looking at a 3:15 bike.

Run: This is once again the wild card. I haven't done anything longer than a 10K run going into this, so that's nerve-racking, but I also feel confident that if I keep it controlled, that I can do it. Provided the knee behaves itself. I've got my nutrition and hydration in much better shape than last year (in that I've actually planned them), so if that was truly what held me back last year, then hopefully, I should be ready. 2 hours on the run is the goal.

0:32 + 3:15 + 2:00 = 5:47 + 0:05 (transition) + 0:03 (bathroom break) = 5:55.

Honestly, I will be happy to finish this race. I will be thrilled to come in sub-6. If I come in 5:55, it will be an amazing day. Given what an awesome day I've had today, anything seems possible.

More lessons from the other side of racing

2010-06-09T10:56:00.009-04:00

First, a follow up on the earlier Mooseman post: I came in 27/64 in my age group. Ok, not great. There's some stiff competition in these parts. Here are a few more shots from the official race picts:

Looking aggressive on the bike, though that helmet looks really far back.

I think I like Matt's picture (from the first post) better for what it's worth.

And finally, oh yeah, I caught that guy. Final time was 1:44.

Moving on. On Sunday, Natalia and I volunteered for the Mooseman 70.3. We weren't thrilled going into it: it rained ALL day, but we went, and once there, we really enjoyed it. We were stationed in the transition area along with roughly 30 high school volunteers. Now I appreciate that the school has this program, but honestly, these kids were just in the way. None of them had ever done a tri or had any idea what would be helpful to the athletes. Most were put to work standing out of the way and cheering on the athletes as they ran through. Talia and I stationed ourselves in the middle of the transition area. We helped people locate their racks, sprung into action when a rack collapsed, untangled jerseys and were scandalized by some people's lack of modesty. Again, several lessons to take to my next tri:

Never try to put on anything that is not loosely fitted in transition. You're wet. At this race, these items were wet, they just won't be easy to get into. Vests work well. Arm warmers should be swum in or avoided (or possibly rolled, so they're easy to unroll - though I didn't see any one attempt this)
Don't try to get food into your pockets in transition. Do this beforehand. If you're putting on a vest, have them stashed. Use a bento box or swim with them.
Know where the porta-potties are. We saw one athlete, run back over the mats and out to the spectator loos. I don't know what happened to his time, but it couldn't have been good.
If you're going to sit down to put on shoes, have a place to do it. We saw one 3-legged camping stool and several buckets and milk crates used for this purpose.
Flip or cover your shoes to prevent rain from pooling in them.
Practice entering and exiting transition. I was surprised at how many pros didn't know where their racks were. It's not enough to just generally know where the exit is, actually practice.

Finally, although other race management folks got to ride around in this, we never got to, and I'm still bummed.

Mooseman Race Report or rolling with the punches

2010-06-07T15:45:00.009-04:00

Which is safer riding or walking my bike through a thunderstorm? Well, the tires are rubber, so I'm not grounded when I'm riding, but I am soaked to the bone, so that probably doesn't matter. The frame is carbon, so it shouldn't be attracting the lightning right?

These are my thoughts as I pedaled my way to transition on Saturday morning for the Mooseman Olympic distance. The race did not go according to anyone's plans. We awoke to massive thunderstorms at 5am. At 7am they canceled the swim and postponed the race til 9, and I pedaled back to our little cabin. At this point, I felt very much on the fence as to whether or not I should bother with this race. The ride was cut down to 17 miles because a portion of the course had been washed out, and no swim at all meant my ability to practice my race routine was pretty much out the window. There's a part of me that wants to throw in the towel, promise myself I'll go for a ride later that day and go back to bed. And plenty of people did just that. But here I was, all ready to race with nowhere to go. I thought about my friend Natalia. You remember her, right? Well she's been struggling since the half marathon with injury. Her foot hurts to put weight on, the inside of her shin has been acting up, then on Friday the outside started to ache too, and she was just bummed. And rightfully so, being injured sucks. But despite this, she rallied to come out to Mooseman with the plan of making it a swim-bike for training purposes (she even left her sneaks at home, so she wouldn't be tempted.) I thought about Talia, and then I thought I've got two weeks til this half ironman, and giving up on things is not going to get me across the finish line.

Back out to the course we go! Screw my nutrition, let's use this race to get mentally prepped. Out on the bike things feel pretty good. I'm even holding a much faster pace than in practice. I make it up devil hill, passing two guys walking their bikes, and I pass my friend Audrey on the way to the turn on 3A. Feeling good. Then she passes me back. Hmm, this will never do. I know she will clobber me on the run, so I need to put in a good effort on the bike. I pass her back. OK, sweet, no wait, here she comes again. Goddammit, Audrey. I actually say this to her as I pass her one final time. Then I focus on racing, looking over my shoulder every now and then to see if she's making another move. I pull into transition cleanly.

After some brief confusion over some one else's bike being in my rack ("just put your bike anywhere," yells a volunteer - yes, that's what got us in this mess in the first place). I'm out on the run. My goal here is to mentally prep for the half. It's just about half of the distance of the run I'll face in two weeks, so let's treat it like that one. I go out thinking about, just turning my legs over, keeping good form, not pushing it. I start picking people off. I also start using the techniques I learned at the marathon to get water, and it works terrific. Audrey passes me on her way back, and I realize she passed me in transition. Boo. But I keep in mind this is about mental prep. At mile 5, I feel pretty good. Bit of a cramp in my right calf, but otherwise feeling good. It's time to ramp up this cruisey pace. I think about my tuesday night track practices. It's just four more laps. Go! I pick people off. A friend snaps this great picture as I run by the BTT tent.

I feel great. I look great (check out that left elbow, Ali - it is so far back!) I pass one guy, who had the gall to pass me back in the winding paths around transition that lead to the finish. On the last turn, I pull up next to him and say "Come on!", but he looks back and says "Go!" So I do, I pass him and sprint, yes, all out sprint to the finish. Damn. That felt great. I ran a 51 minute 10K. That's pretty close to my all time PR. This is making me think that my goal of breaking 50 minutes may be attainable this season if I do a 10K alone. Sweet.

The following day, Natalia and I volunteer in transition for the half ironman. I'll post more details later, but here's the super awesome t-shirt I got from the ironman tent. I mean really - it's math AND triathlon, has there ever been a more perfect t for me?

Race planning

2010-06-03T10:14:00.001-04:00

It's here. The Mooseman Olympic distance is tomorrow. I'm using this race as a run through for the Patriot Half in two weeks. This means I'll be doing things a bit differently to the way I would normally race an Olympic, like wearing real bike shoes instead of tri shoes, bike gloves, eating solid food. My transitions may be a little longer, but I think the practice should be worth it. I've got plenty of other Olympic distances to really race on.

Here's the plan:

5am wake up, eat half a cup of oatmeal, drink a spark, braid hair
5:30 head to the course, register, rack, sunscreen, etc
7am warm up
7:30 first gu
7:46 start swim
Transition to bike - sunnies, gloves, socks, shoes, helmet, bike, clif bar and additional gu in bento box, NUUN water bottle
Eat half of clif bar after devil's hill
Eat gu at turn for Cass Mill Rd
Transition to run - runners, number belt, visor, one gu in pocket
Eat gu on way out
Drink water from aid station
Finish race like a rockstar!

I'm still a little nervous about the nutrition, but this the time to test it out, work out any last minute kinks. Any suggestions?

Operation Cheering Section

2010-05-30T14:27:00.002-04:00

Sunday was my day off from training, but it was race day for three of my friends. They were running the Run To Remember, a half marathon that winds its way through the city, across the river and up to Harvard and back. And this was Natalia's first half marathon ever!

Armed with these posters I hit the course:

OK, perhaps a bit of explanation is necessary for the first one, since several runners commented (and one demonstrated) that gorillas are not really the best animal to emulate when running. Natalia is mega strong, and one morning in the pool our coach, trying to encourage her to use all that muscle, yells out "Natalia, Swim like a gorilla!" I took this one out to Harvard, just before the turn around to cheer her on.

This one was much more easily recognized with many runners actually intoning it in Dory's voice. And this time I surprised Natalia, by hopping on the T and showing up in downtown crossing to cheer some more. It was funny how holding up a sign for the runners makes you an automatic tour guide for the race to any one else walking down the street. Also, I think making signs is the way to go, it's way easier than yelling.

And here she is at the halfway point, too fast for the camera. It was great fun to see her out there, achieving her goal.

Nerves

2010-05-30T06:20:00.004-04:00

Once again, I find myself 3 weeks out from a half ironman, and once again, I feel underprepared.

Yesterday I went to do some course recon over at the Patriot course itself. The course is fantastic. Pretty flat with some undulations to keep you feeling fast. A few nasty pavement spots, but overall pretty good. It's clearly not as straightforward a course as Mooseman, but we seemed to navigate it ok. It's two loops of 29 miles each, so 2 miles longer than the regulation HIM. If they took this distance off of the run, I would be totally happy with that, but obviously they don't.

Despite my misgivings coming out of winter training, my biking is feeling REALLY good now, and I feel like the bike in this half is going to be fun, not boring. The terrain allows you to get that racing feeling. I'm not feeling like I have to hold back to stick to a race plan. Also, there's something about riding for 58 miles that is way easier than riding 90K. I replaced my chain and cassette two weeks ago and the bike is riding like new. Plus the last few long rides I've done have involved very little drafting, so I'm feeling prepped for this ride by myself.

I won't go as fast as my last half, but that's to be expected cause the courses are so different. Yesterday we held an average of 17.6 mph. Busso worked out to about 18mph. I'd be really happy to hold around 17.

But then there's the run. I did a 45 minute run off the bike yesterday. And it didn't hurt as much as the 30 minutes last week, but it still felt hard, and that's not even half of the distance that I actually have to do. I haven't done any long runs. Everything has been focused on not aggravating injury. It feels a lot like Noosa two years ago, when my shins were so bad I pretty much didn't run before the race, and it killed me mentally. I need to come up with some sort of mantra to get me through it.

Predictions for this year:

30 minute swim (that's 2 min faster than last year which seems fast, but I'm feeling more confident in pushing it in the swim)
3:20 bike (20 minutes slower, but it is 2 miles longer and not deadflat)
2 hour run (no idea if this is reasonable)

That puts me at 5:50 before transitions. Add 10 minutes for transitions (this year I really need to hydrate better). And we're looking at a 6 hour half. It's a little disappointing to think this year's half will be a good deal slower than last years, despite feeling fitter, but I need to set reasonable expectations.

Mooseman Recon or "I'll see you at the top"

2010-05-24T15:31:00.005-04:00

My first race of the season is just 2 weeks away: the Mooseman Olympic distance. This weekend my team went up to Bristol, NH for the day to try out the race course. I rode the Olympic course twice to get in a nice 54 mile ride and followed that up with a painful (though not in the usual spots- shins felt ok) 30 minute run. Here's what I learned:

This course is awesome. Rollers immediately, followed by the "Rhythm Section" (relatively flat, but bumpy roads), then undulating newly paved highway, and finally more rollers.
There is one BIG hill aka "Devil Hill" but it's short, so yeah, you've gotta go in your granny gear, but it's only for a minute or two
Trying to find landmarks to identify hills that I'll need to downshift on was hard. OK, after the cabin with the boat in the front yard, or how about the summer camp, or maybe the boulders. Oh hell. In the end I think I'll just downshift when the hills look big.
I don't go fast downhill. My coach joked that I needed to put on a little more weight, but honestly, it's not the weight, it's the brakes that slow me down. I just get nervous. Repeatedly on Saturday, I'd get dropped as people sped past me on the downhill, only to catch back up on the uphill. I guess that's a good thing.
As the morning progressed more riders showed up which gave the course much more of a race feel with people to pass/ be passed by. I felt good going into the last 20 miles, so I pushed it and averaged 17.1 for both loops. Nice.
I'm now wondering about my half ironman (in 4 weeks). If the course is not truly dead flat, like Busso, and is more similar to this course, maybe I will be able to really "race" on the bike and not just hold pace. The question is how hard can I go on the bike and still finish the run.

M.O.M.'s 5K 2010: Race Report

2010-05-17T17:31:00.004-04:00

I would have done this report much sooner, but I've been waiting for picts to be posted. Unfortunately, it looks like this race didn't have a photographer. I've found these, but there don't seem to be any of me. So you'll just have to imagine what I look like. ;)

I love Mother's Day races. I try to do one every year (or cheer one on if I've, say, just done a half ironman). It just seems like such a great way to celebrate moms. I've never run a 5K with my mom (though I would LOVE to), but since I don't usually get to see my mom on mother's day, I enjoy having that small time to myself to think about my mom.

I started the tradition many years ago (maybe 8 actually) with the M.O.M.'s run in Davis Square. This race is organized by my local massage therapist, and it's always got a great feel to it, very family-friendly, lots of people hanging out for the raffle, Red Bones BBQ and free beer after the race.

This year was a gorgeous day, sunny and bright, but ridiculously windy and around 50 degrees. This makes for a mentally tough race. I got to the start (roughly 4 minutes walk from my house) with about 30 minutes to spare and got my number and bag. I waited til about 10 minutes til the start to go out to warm up. I didn't want to get warm and then cold again. I went for a very short warm up (maybe half a mile) focused on having good form.

Ok, I was feeling ready. I haven't run a 5K since the PR I set in March. I wanted a good time, but I wasn't expecting a new PR. I had done a 3 hour brick the previous day, so I wouldn't say my legs were exactly fresh, and I had 4 hours of riding to pull off after this race. I decided to just run to feel good, and if I felt good, to push it.

There's no chips for the race, so I trust my watch time, more so than the official time. It took a bit of time to get the pack moving to cross the start line. Almost immediately, my left shoe came untied. Ugh, why couldn't it have come undone during the warm up. Isn't that what it's for? To stop or not to stop? Well at this point, I still had 3 miles to go. Seemed like the 10 seconds I would lose to tie it, would be much better than taking a spill. So I took a look up at the people just ahead of me to get a sense of where I was in the pack, and I pulled to the side to retie.

To my surprise, it didn't take much time to catch back up. I saw Brenda who trains with my team and had recently finished the Boston Marathon. In fact I think this was her first run since then, and it was the day after her birthday, so the reality is, she's a much faster runner than I am, but given circumstances I caught her. We chatted a little bit, then pushed eachother. And finally, I dropped her.

The course was a bit different to years prior. We run up highland and back down summer. This means that there are essentially two hills instead of the one (up summer, down elm) of previous years. I made the turn onto vinal for the first downhill, and it felt great, but I got passed back by another girl I had just passed. This would never do. As we turned onto Summer, just passed the halfway mark, I passed her back.

I set my sights on a few people ahead of me for the uphill, but they were pretty consistent. A few runners I closed in on, but then could never catch. That hill on Summer was pretty lonely. Just coming over the top I finally passed one of them. Now we were into the last half mile, and I just wanted to be done. But I was also running into the wind now. I tried to put on the last of what I had left and caught two more people on the way to the finish line, but came in with an official time of 24:03.

It was a little disappointing to see the clock tick over to the 24th minute since my last race was solidly in the 23s. But my watch had me timed at 23:52, which I think was more accurate. And that gave me 14 seconds slower than my last race. Now if we account for the tying of the shoe, and the hills (the last race was nearly dead flat), it actually seems like a race I was pretty on par with. I came in 6 out of 63 in my age group (12 seconds behind 5th place, 17 out of 4th, and nearly a minute out of 3rd), 82nd overall out of 360. A little better than I'd fared at the last race (6/68 and 121/460).

Overall, a very promising race. Hopefully, with a little luck on the injury front, I'll be able to keep pulling down this sort of race.

Old injuries are new again

2010-05-12T11:27:00.001-04:00

My second season doing triathlon I started getting pain on the outside of my knee. I tried stretching and icing it, I started wearing a compression brace, and I cut back my training. But nothing seemed to work. Then one night, after some vigorous stretching, I awoke in the middle of the night to find my knee roughly the size of a cantaloupe (or rock melon, if that's your preference).

I went to the doc. They x-rayed it, they mri-ed it, and the verdict was to take some prescription NSAIDs and leave it alone for 6 weeks. It still hadn't recovered, so I went to 6 weeks of PT, which I was also not very impressed with. We did some very gentle exercises to strengthen the inside of my knee, and after 12 weeks, it seemed to have calmed down.

I know a lot more about the injury now, and I realize it was actually ITB syndrome which was putting pressure on my knee and causing it to rub. And with all the shin issues my running created over the last two years, I haven't really had to deal with it again.

Until about 4 weeks ago. I noticed after strength training that my ITB was tight, but after a few days of foam rolling it subsided. The following week it was back again, but this time, the following day I had the pain in my knee again. Bugger. More rolling.

And this is where I should probably establish that I am up for just about any sort of crazy treatment that the internet can throw at me. Since I started triathloning, I've submitted myself to being stabbed (accupuncture), having giant hickies (cupping), table-clutchingly painful massage directly into the injury, and essentially finding my funny-bone in my legs (fascial stretching from a man I usually refer to as "the witch doctor"). I've also tried nasal irrigation, but that's not related to my running injuries (though I really believe it works). Basically, if some one promised to make my leg injuries subside through massaging my aura or sitting in post-race porta potties on a warm day, I would do it (and probably pay $90 for the pleasure).

My coach suggested I go see the team chiropractor. So on a Thursday after another session of strength training, I went to see him for the first time. He does a combination of Active Release Therapy, which is targeted massage meant to break up the adhesions in and between muscles, and Graston Treatment, which is essentially ironing out the muscle with a butter knife. The Graston results in some pretty serious bruising. The first treatment goes well. I go back the following Tuesday after a strength workout of my own and before a track practice. My knee felt good going in, but on Wednesday I've got pain in the top outer part of my calf and stiffness on the inside of my knee. Thursday I go back to strength, and back to the chiro. This time we do some pretty serious work to the inside of my knee and it's the most painful treatment I've had and by Thursday night my knee is seriously stiff, like I can't bend it all the way. That night I was supposed to do a run, but upon putting on shorts I discovered my knee was swelling up again.

This is bad, and I start to panic a bit. I've only got 6 weeks til the half. Now is the time to be doing my best volume work. I can't have a swollen knee. I run my knee through the GameReady (a compression and icing machine, which Paul bought for his shoulder and is awesome), and it definitely helps some of the swelling. The following morning I go to swimming and the knee is still a little swollen, but it's better. I talk to my coach about it, she assures me that some localized swelling is normal after an intensive treatment. And this helps quell the fears.

By Saturday morning things are feeling better. Every now and then I take a step that just feels like my knee is not quite in the joint the right way, but for the most part it's better. I go ahead and do a brick with 2:20 of biking and 40 min of running, and things feel pretty good. Sunday I run my mother's day 5K and follow up with a 58 mile ride (in some serious wind).

I had a bit more Graston yesterday on the ITB, and on the inside of the knee as well. Still a little swelling, but I rode this morning and things seems to be ok.

But that's just it. I can't really tell what's been the culprit here. Is it the strength training that's causing the dramas in my knee, the increased volume or the treatment? And if it is the treatment, is the cure worse than the disease, or will it result in improvements in the long term.

I'm traveling this weekend, so I will only be able to get in a long run while I'm away, which I hope will give the knee the rest it needs to recover from all the stuff I've been throwing at it.

Best (and Healthiest) Stew Ever!

2010-05-11T13:44:00.002-04:00

I like making one big meal on a week night and having a few days worth of leftovers to bring in for lunch. Besides chili, I didn't have much in my repertoire that met this criterion. Enter the Best and Healthiest Stew Ever.

Last summer when we were part of the farm share, we got a ton of kale at the beginning of the summer, so after I confirmed with my gardener sister that the leafy substance was indeed kale, I got to work exploring kale recipes. There are several variations of a kale, white bean and sausage tuscan soup online. I started with this one. But, well, all that sausage made for a pretty greasy soup.

I substituted ground turkey for the sausage. Now that makes it way less greasy, but also significantly less tasty, and that would never do. A little more googling on spices that go into various sausages, and I settled on adding fennel seeds, rosemary, cumin and ground sage along with fresh garlic to recreate some of the flavor. I also found that getting "italian" ground turkey (i.e., turkey with red pepper flake and oregano ground into it) helped make up for the lack of sausage and reduced the need for a bouillon cube.

The other thing that seemed absolutely necessary was the Parmesan rind. Apparently, you can buy a whole tub of rinds at the grocery store (though you have to freeze them right away otherwise they mold). The rind just seems to make the whole thing a bunch richer.

Here's the new recipe:
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1lb Italian ground turkey
Ground sage, fennel seeds, rosemary, cumin (I measured these out the first time, but now I just guess)
1 can of cannellini beans
1 can of water (from the beans)
2 pieces of parmesan rind
1 C of chopped carrots
1 bunch of kale, chopped

Sautee onion and garlic til translucent over medium heat, add turkey and spices, brown until turkey is cooked through. Add cannellini beans and an additional can of water. Add parmesan rind. Toss in carrots. Let stew for 20 minutes. Add in kale, stew another 10 to 20 minutes. Remove rind. Enjoy with a little fresh grated parmesan.

Water, water everywhere

2010-05-03T11:15:00.002-04:00

Living in Australia, even in the rainy parts, you become much more aware of your water consumption. Shower timers are common. I was scolded by friends for leaving the tap running while washing the dishes. Washing of cars or watering of lawns with anything other than rain water is a huge no-no. It's like living on a boat. But, back in Boston, I've gotten reacquainted with my laissez-faire water usage attitude.

I had friends from oz in town this weekend, and I bragged to them about being able to take as long a shower as they liked. Not an hour later and announcements start coming that there's a massive water main break in Boston, that we're on the back-up water supply, and that we're to conserve and boil water before drinking. The irony is clear, and my immediate reaction is thirst.

I take for granted having safe drinking water. An emergency like this makes you aware of the modern conveniences that you don't even think about. Now most residents of the greater Boston area know that Cambridge is on an entirely separate water source (and has been unaffected by the break). Many local restaurants just closed rather than risk using contaminated water; others charged restaurants for the bottled water they served instead. It's pretty amazing the ripple effect (pun intended) this has had on the community.

In our house, our largest pot is the dutch oven. Unfortunately, it's a well-seasoned pot, that we use frequently for chili. Our drinking water has hints of cumin, capsicum and cinnamon.

Lessons from the other side of racing

2010-04-20T11:14:00.004-04:00

I took the day off yesterday to hand out water at the mile 18 hydration station of the Boston Marathon. It was a fantastic experience, inspiring to watch both the elite and the age groupers compete. I did come away with several lessons both for myself as an athlete and also for race organization.

As a runner:

Connect with your water volunteer - make eye contact, nod or even point to show them that you're coming in. We had one guy who essentially just knocked cups out of 7 or 8 volunteers' hands as he ran by, he just wasn't trying. If you surprise the volunteer, you're much more likely to lose the cup entirely.
If you're going to walk through a water stop, then pull behind the volunteers if you can. Especially, if you're keeping up a good clip when you're running, other runners will be trying to run through and grab some water. Walkers blocking the cups make for some serious traffic jams.
If you're not going to drink the whole cup, pour it out first, then chuck the cup.
Thank the volunteers, they love it! So many runners were so grateful when they passed through it was really awesome.

Race organizers:

The single most important change they could have made was to have different colored cups for water and gatorade. Sure the gatorade cups said "Gatorade" and the water cups said "Poland Springs" but they were both green. I mean come on, how many athletes are going to read the side of the cup to determine the contents, not to mention international runners who may have no idea what "Poland Springs" is.
After that, having gatorade on one side of the street and water on the other would also make sense. Our water stop had tables on the right side of the street followed by tables on the left. Consistently telling people you will always have gatorade on the right followed by water on the left would be easy to implement and would eliminate confusion.
Signs on the giant trashcans that we fill the water cups with would be a welcome addition. It's hard to blame people for trying to throw their trash in the trash cans. A "no trash" sign, or just roping them off would help keep runners and spectators from contaminating them with rubbish.

Finally, watching the marathon did make me think a bit more about "racing" versus "participating." The world of marathoners has grown substantially over the last 30 years. Boston allows people to finish within 6 hours of starting. Does it undermine the people who actually train and actually push themselves to finish to allow those who walk the majority of it? Every one still gets the same medal.

PS. Best spectator sign read: "Go Everyone!"

Brick of Doom

2010-04-11T17:33:00.004-04:00

It's hard to do a good, long workout without biking. I can do a 90 minute swim set, (when uninjured,) I can run for two hours straight, but ask me to do a long ride, and we're in a different realm: three or four hours seems completely reasonable for a long ride.

But it is impossible to do this indoors. I guess it's not actually impossible, it's just not very much fun. On a trainer there's no coasting, there's no rush of wind, and there's no change of scenery. The weather has finally colluded with me to get the bike out and go long.

Last weekend I tackled a 45 mile easy ride with a few friends and brunch in the middle. Today was my coach's Brick of Doom. A brick is a combination of two disciplines used for training triathletes on the transition. Technically, I think it's called a brick cause you line up the disciplines like bricks, but some say it's because your legs feel like bricks when you try to run on them after a long ride.

The Brick of Doom is so-called (by me, no one else calls it that, but I'm hoping it catches on) because it's long and repetitive: three runs separated by two rides. Today's workout was supposed to be 30 minute intervals of running and 75 minute intervals of riding. I'm still on the slow and steady increase of running to avoid injury this season, so I only should run 45 minutes total, so I cut the run intervals down to 15 minutes, but kept the rides. My half ironman is coming up June 19th, and I'll do this workout several more times extending the distances. The Brick of Doom is hopefully my secret weapon for finishing that race strong.

I convinced some very nice friends to join me for this endeavor early this morning. We completed a 20 mile loop from Concord, out around Carlisle, through the Great Brook Farm State Park and back through Acton in 1:17 for our first loop and 1:14 for the second one. 40 miles total: the half ironman is 56 miles of biking, so it's getting close.

It feels fantastic to finish one of these long workouts first thing in the morning. The whole rest of your day can do no wrong. After a quick shower, Paul and I went out for brunch with some friends, then I came home and had a very serious nap.

And then there's the exhaustion in my legs. My legs ache in a way they haven't in months. There is nothing more rewarding.

Deviled Eggs

2010-03-29T21:08:00.003-04:00

Last week we had potluck, but without a full kitchen, it was a bit more of a picnic. I decided to make deviled eggs. I can't remember making them since I was a kid, so I found a recipe online:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chipotle-Deviled-Eggs-236167

I remembered having some crunch to in the ones from my childhood from pickle (maybe that's a southern thing?), but I didn't want to add pickle to the chipotle eggs. Instead I opted for adding some scallion. I made a half dozen eggs a few days ahead to test out the recipe. I used 1.5t of chipotle (about one pepper) and 1.5t of the whites of scallion, finely minced.

These were pretty tasty (we ate all 6 eggs that night), but decided it could easily use more chipotle, more crunch and some more zing. For the crunch I added a bit more scallion and didn't mince quite so finely. For the zing, I added fresh lime juice.

The final recipe:
18 eggs
2T of chipotle
2T of scallion minced
~1C of mayo
juice from 2 small limes
Cilantro leaves to garnish

Hardboil the eggs. Split the eggs, scoop the yolks and mash them (before adding the mayo- learned that the hard way), mix with chipotle, scallion, mayo, and lime juice. Scoop back into the egg whites (scoops looked better than squirting it in from a plastic bag). Garnish with cilantro leaves (or greens from scallion, if you don't like cilantro - like me).

An Ras Mor: Race Report

2010-03-16T17:49:00.004-04:00

Boston loves its St. Patrick's Day. It also loves its running. The two combined have resulted in various fun runs complete with runners dressed like leprechauns and followed by green beer. One of the largest in the area is held in Davis Square (my neighborhood).

A few months ago, I saw a friend comment on FB about a race, An Ras Mor (they all have Gaelic names) in Central Square (3 squares from Davis). I assumed, that was the race I remembered and that it must have moved cause Central is larger than Davis. I signed up Paul and me.
A few days later I realized my mistake. The race at home was Ras Na hEireann. It was still being run, just outside my door. And although it would have been temporally possible to run both races, my shins would not have been up for it. So I opted to just do the An Ras Mor and pass on the other one.
An update on my shins: My shin splints started acting up again in January after a week of particularly agressive mileage. I cut running for a week. Got new shoes (it was really past time). Started seeing a "Neuro-Fascial Therapist" aka "the Witch Doctor", and started running for 10 minutes at a go, always after warming up on the bike, adding 15% per week and never running two days in a row. It's actually been easier to stick with this routine than I thought. I've also signed up for a 2 hour running form seminar next week. The witch doctor has given me a handful of stretches (that feel like neural stretches, not muscular ones) that I do daily. I also see him regularly, and he does some pretty serious massage on my calves and feet. I'm pain free, but I still feel like I'm not 100%. I can usually feel what I can only describe as tension in my left shin. I've discontinued strength training for my calves since the current hypothesis revolves around imbalance between calf and shin, quad and hammie and so on. I continue to run, a little bit at a time.

This week, I was up to running 26 minutes in one effort. Which is good since 5Ks typically take me around 25. In fact, I haven't run a 5K in what feels like forever. I can't even remember running one in Brisbane. The last one I can remember was in Cairns. I ran somewhere around a 24:30. I wasn't expecting to run that fast this time around since my run training in the last 2 years has been so hit and miss.
Back to the race. Saturday is race packet pick up day. It's categorically miserable out: mid-30s and it's been raining for what feels like years. Roads are flooding. Oh and it's windy. Paul and I went to pick up our race packets, and I ran into my old massage therapist from years back. I've been meaning to look him up again. He truly has magic hands, so seeing him seems like an omen. I have to do this race (oh, plus he was one of the organizers, and I'd feel bad pulling out now). Paul, however, doesn't feel this way. He decides if it continues to be miserable, he would prefer to stay warm and dry on Sunday morning.

It turns out this would be a good thing for both of us. Had Paul come, we would have run together, holding a 9 minute-mile pace. Since he didn't, I could run at my pace, which I hoped would be closer to an 8 minute-mile (~25 minutes total). The weather persisted, and despite having brought dry clothes for the post race festivities (i.e., beer), there was no place to stash the bag. I ended up having to leave it outside, up against a building that shielded it, somewhat. from direct rain. I was shivering and soaked before the race even started, and just anxious to get moving.
When the gun finally sounded, it was a relief. The race itself ran from the Asgard up Mass Ave toward Harvard and back again. If you're familiar with Central square, it was actually a really nice course. There are so many landmarks to work with. The first mile came and went, and I swear the pacer said I was running 7:45. That felt great, a sub-8 for the first mile, I was sure I'd slow down as I got tired, so good to get that first one in.
In these sorts of races, I feel like the first mile is just sorting people out, you're jockeying for position, passing, getting passed, there's a lot of movement. Then things just settle down. You find the group of people who are your pace, and you guys for the most part hang together (unless there's a hill to sort out the strong from the weak). So a mile in, I felt like I had found my pack, but I was wrong. I'd see some one ahead of me and think, "ok, just hang on to that person," but a minute later, I'd find myself passing them. Then I'd pick the next person. It didn't occur to me until well into mile 2 that I hadn't found my pack, in fact I had just continued picking people off every step of the way. There was no pacer at mile 2, but my watch read 15:something which meant that I was still better than my 8 minute-mile pace. Then it was all about determination. The road had a gentle slope down to the finish, and I could easily follow the landmarks. First the Plough and Stars bar, then City Hall, next the T stop, then the Middle East restaurant, the fire station and that was it. When I turned the corner for the last 0.1 miles, I could see the finish clock. I was going to finish sub 24. It was amazing. I've definitely never run a sub 24.

Coming around that last turn.

My official time was 23:38. That means my pace was 7:37, smashing 8 minute miles. I was elated, but cold. I found my bag, which had managed to keep my clothes dry. I changed my shirt and wrapped up in my winter coat. I didn't bother to change pants and shoes, cause I didn't want to find a bathroom to change in. I didn't want to wait around to enjoy the beer in the rain. I was happy enough with my race.

I hope that this is an indication of good things to come from all the hours of winter training I've put in and carefully managing my shins. The Witch Doctor claims that doing his stretches will improve my speed drastically. I'm still skeptical, but I suppose if I keep having good times, I might be convinced.

Cooking from the pantry, not the recipe

2010-03-14T18:31:00.003-04:00

I enjoy cooking. It didn't always used to be that way, but during college, my tastebuds finally started to expand what I liked, just like my mom always said. Perhaps leading the way was beer, but that was quickly supplemented with things like vegetables, fruits, herbs and later seafood(!) Even with as much love as I still harbor for cheese, I shudder to think of how many grilled cheese sandwiches I ate that first year at college.

Along with a taste for these new foods came a desire to learn how to make more than a packet of ramen and access to a kitchen. I started experimenting. At first there were some disasters (I still can't eat cilantro), but slowly the disaster to delicious ratio decreased. I'm still not great at following recipes.

Paul and I have changed our diets around a lot. We eat A TON of protein, and we eat it 5 times a day. We try to eat fish, scallops, turkey. We eat more red meat than we probably should, but it is tough to get protein in every meal without eating it. I've even been dabbling in chicken, something that bucked the trend and I stopped eating a few years ago.

Yesterday I decided to make steaks for me and Paul. But we eat a lot of protein, pretty much straight up without much else going on. I decided I was going to make mushrooms and deglaze the pan to make a sauce for the steaks. I wasn't exactly sure what to deglaze the pan with. I know that some recipes use wine, but we didn't have any wine. I didn't feel like looking for more inspiration from the internet, but I did have some beer left over in the bottom of a growler.

Beer, wine, they're pretty close. I like beer. Ok. Steaks done, mushrooms done, pour in the beer. Smells good... but tastes awful. The beer is super bitter. I cook it down some more, add some more seasoning. It just never gets any better. Perfectly good mushrooms completely ruined by beer. Who would have thought?

The trouble with the trouble with living in sin

2010-03-08T15:17:00.003-05:00

Obviously, it's been a while. Posting to Shelby Apples was way easier than this blog because (1) I had all those funny Aussies to remark upon and (2) cause there are real troubles with living in sin that I don't want to post about. But I do miss blogging, even if it's only for myself. So, I've decided to redouble my efforts and focus on the aspects of attempting domesticity.

This week, Paul and I attempt to be crafty.

Paul's playing on a local volleyball team, and the tournament they were playing in this week required that every member of the team wear a numbered jersey. Numbers need to be at least 4" on the front and 6" on the back. It's Friday afternoon, and the tournament was Saturday morning. All of the other guys on the team had some old shirt that met the requirements, but not Paul. So, we decided we'd just make one.

First to Target to find a dry-fit shirt. I had my own doubts about attempting to iron on iron-on numbers to this type of shirt, but couldn't argue with not wanting to play in a cotton t. Then to Michaels, a store that pretty much epitomizes everything that we are not, from the rows of silk flowers to the carts of scrapbook stuff: Everything is ornate, and most of it already resembles junk. They have iron-on numbers, but the largest ones are 5". They have an empty rack of 8" numbers.

Plan A isn't working out so well. We ask a very unhelpful shopboy (and who can blame him really, he works at Michaels) if there are any other numbers. No love. We call another Michaels to see if they have 8" numbers in stock. Nope. Hmm.

Plan B: let's paint them on. There's an array of paints here next to the iron-on letters, and after sifting through about a dozen rows of bottles we find some non-puffy, non-glittery white spray paint. It claims to be a screen printer in a bottle. Brilliant. We can do this. Of course it's the only can of white they have. So we grab a yellow can too for good measure. Now to find a stencil.

Of course those don't come in greater than 3" numbers. No matter, we can make stencils, just need to print out the number and an exacto. A helpful shopboy suggests we get some thicker paper from the scrapbooking aisle to make the stencil. OK. We're good: paint, exacto, paper, stencil spray adhesive. We optimistically head home to start in on our project.

We choose a font, get the size right, go to print and only the front number prints. Now we're out of toner. Plan C: free hand the stencil. So glad we chose number '1'. We test out the paint on a piece of cardboard, it sprays. We're good. We spray the shirt and the paint manages to both dribble onto the t shirt and spray our dining table. Quick clean up, and we try again (this time with the whole t-shirt haloed with trashbags. It's still dribbly. In the end, we use paper towels to spread the paint around. It looks pretty haphazard. But it will do.

Paul was allowed to play in his homemade jersey. For the next tournament, they'll have their professionally printed jerseys, so this was both the maiden voyage and farewell to the homemade jersey. And hopefully, our last foray into craftiness for a long time.

Australia makes news in the US

2009-11-03T15:22:00.002-05:00

Very rarely does news from Australia make the journey all the way to our fair shores. But the New Vegemite debate has been deemed worthy of a NY Times Article. Basically, Kraft announced a new vegemite spread which is a mix of vegemite and cream cheese (sounds delicious already). The asked people to give suggestions for a name and eventually landed on iSnack 2.0 (now that puts a bad taste in my mouth). The public was outraged, Kraft ran an online poll and renamed the new spread cheesymite.

Now this is all interesting from a marketing perspective, but I'm more interested in it from the pride Australians take in Vegemite. I'll be the first to admit that it's an aquired taste. Resembling in sight, smell and taste salty leftover beer, it took me a while to grow to love it. But Australians are passionate about it. It's a national icon. It has a song.

I love that when I googled for the song the second link was a clip from Good News Week (one of my favorite programs in oz) in which the entire audience breaks out into the Vegemite song. That's how into it Australians are. Do we, as Americans, have something similar? The Oscar Mayer song? And as my officemate points out, why don't kids know how to spell bologna if this song is so popular.

Crash shatters triathlete's dream

2009-10-15T10:50:00.002-04:00

http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2009/10/12/69351_local-news.html

I used to train with Keri. When I got hit by a car, she let me borrow her bike, so I could still compete at Mooloolaba. I know the exact spot where she got hit.

She is probably the most dedicated triathlete I have known. Her coach would send her 13 work outs a week and tell her she could skip one. But she never would. She never wanted to take the easy way. She saw that as a slippery slope. If you skip one work out, then you've given yourself permission to skip another.

They're apparently keeping her in the coma until her back is healed enough for it to be moved. The whole situation is just horrible, and I can't stop thinking about it.

Race Report: BAA Half Marathon

2009-10-13T10:43:00.002-04:00

In keeping with my "who needs training" philosophy, I ran the BAA Half Marathon this past weekend without running longer than a 10K practice run. My final time was 1:53:09, so almost spot on with my first half marathon. Though in actuality this one was about 2.5 minutes slower, since I didn't stop to pee 4K in.

The extension of my "who needs training " attitude leads to forgetfulness for the race itself. Sunday morning I forgot to change out the laces in my shoes. This sounds funny, but for tri's a wear elastic laces, and the previous weekend I had had issues with the right one loosening. I was able to force them closed, so it wasn't that big of a deal in the end. I also managed to forget my pre-race water bottle, my post-race snack and my sunnies. To be fair, it's tough to remember sunnies when it's still night outside when you leave the house, but I really did look at my visor and think, I need to bring that, then promptly left without it.

One thing I didn't forget was my ipod. Other races have rules against ipods, and this one does too: you can't win the race wearing an ipod. Since there's a very low risk of that I opted for the tunes. Getting to the start line, I pop in the headphones and hit play. Mmm, great song... that is not on my ipod. Turns out I had grabbed Paul's ipod (they are exactly the same model - why did I get him a different color?) So it was sorta like having Paul run along with me. Biggest surprise on the playlist: the Devil went down to Georgia. Loved it.

The race started near fenway and wound it's way along the parks of Boston's Emerald Necklace to the Franklin Park Zoo. We even did a small loop through the zoo. I didn't see any animals there, but I did note that we ran along the "outback trail," which made me smile.

What does one think about for two hours of running? I do math. I know, not a huge surprise, right? But I find that my poor ability to do math in my head is severely hampered when I'm running. This means that math can distract me for quite a while. So, I manage my watch, compute splits, convert to metric, convert back. (There is something that makes 10 miles seem so much closer to 13.1 miles than 16K does to 21K.) And though I was ready to be done running around mile 9, I maintained a really consistent pace between 8:25 and 8:30 minute miles.

Finally, two days after the half marathon my knees hurt. In fact going into the race my left knee was hurting (I blame sitting at my desk so much with this broadband paper). But coming out of the race it was the IT band connections to the knee that really killed me. Now that's settled down, left knee is still sore, but I'm pretty happy about that. Why? Cause my shins don't hurt. I ran 21K and not even a twinge. I don't think I'll ever be 100% shin splint-free, but I think having some really long recovery has made a lot of difference.

The US through Austrlian eyes

2009-10-13T10:26:00.004-04:00

Well, it's been a while. Life's been busy. A very large report I worked on is being published on broadband.gov today for public comment. It's very exciting, but it's been taking up almost all of my spare cycles. In addition to that, my friend Lauren from Australia was visiting and I took some time off to hang out with her. And other than that, my life just doesn't seem that exciting: work, the occasional training session, football on the weekends, repeat.

It was fantastic to see Loz again. We did some shopping, visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History (which had a giant whale skeleton from Queensland), sampled some authentic (or as close as you can come) Mexican food, watched a football game (well, ok, she took a nap through the third quarter), enjoyed some Karaoke (thank you, Boston, for verifying that the appropriate response to the lyric "Sweet, Caroline" is "Bah, Bah, Baaaaaaaaaah"), checked out the Topsfield Fair (the US's oldest fair - not all that different to Australian Shows - sans show bangs), and took a walking tour of Back Bay.

I still wish we had fit in jackolantern making, but somehow it just didn't happen. Overall though we tried to do more "authentic" American experiences than tourist ones. Still my favorite moments were ones where something American would surprise her. For example, at lunch one day burst out, "Oh, look, there's a squirrel out the window!"

Race Report: Lobsterman

2009-09-20T09:11:00.003-04:00

A few highlights and observations from yesterday's race:

1. There was no reason to get there so early. The race started at 9:30am, because that's when the tide would be in the bay. (When we got there most of the swim was just mud). But the park opened at 5am, and they encouraged people to get there as early as possible because there's only one road into the park. We got there at 7:15. I was the first bike on my rack, and then we got to hang out for 2 hours.

2. People in New England are big sissies. This was the first race I've ever done where a wetsuit was required to do the swim. The water temperature was in the low 60s. There were people there with not only wetsuits, but gloves, footies and beanies. I felt a little silly in my armless wetsuit, but once we got swimming, I felt fine in it. Not cold at all.

3. Riding the bike course before the race would have been nice. It was a VERY hilly course. With two hills that required I drop into my absolute lowest gears. Knowing about them and where they'd be might have saved some trial and error with the gears.

4. On the run, this girl caught me at mile 1. I had passed her twice on the bike and held her off. She said I'd been dragging her on the bike and that she hoped her legs would hold out for the run. And I'm thinking "Great, I drag you for 25 miles only to have you drop me at the beginning of the run." I try to keep with her, but it's no use. I don't have it in my legs. Oh, well. Then mile 3 comes up, and all the sudden, I've caught her again. This time she says, "I think you'll have to drag me on the run too". Ok, so long as she doesn't make a move in the last 200 meters. In the end I finished the race less than a minute ahead of her, but I felt strong knowing I had held her off and I hadn't dragged on any one.

5. I've got good transitions. I had the 3rd fastest transitions in my age group. Transitions won me 3 places in the standings. I should really thank my coach back in Brisbane for that. Although I still never mastered the flying mount, those fast changes meant that I finished 6th in my age group out of 37. How's that for not training?!

6. No race can compare to the post-race feast which was at Timberman. Lobsterman did have a lobster bake (for $25!). But the competitor food was just bagels and fruit. All I really needed in the end, but I think I may have been spoiled by Timberman.

Race Report: Timberman

2009-08-25T10:21:00.002-04:00

The Timberman race was ranked the best sprint race in the US by Triathlete magazine. Thus, it was sold out months in advance. Luckily, knowing a few insiders, I was able to fill in for a friend of mine at the race. So my bib said "Sionan" on it, but otherwise, I raced as me.

The race was a slightly shorter swim (1/3 mi), slightly longer bike (16 mi), and slightly shorter run (3 mi) than an traditional sprint. The weather was warm, but a stormy. I was surprised to see how many people were wearing wetsuits. The water in Lake Winnipesaukee was around 75 degrees, but well over half of the competitors wore wetsuits. I figured for such a short distance, the advantages of the wetsuit would be overcome by the struggle with taking it off. However, they did have wetsuit strippers available, and I was a little jealous that I didn't get to utilize them.

Next came my first gumby moment of the morning. I chucked my sunglasses on my towel, cause it was starting to rain when I emerged from the water. I threw my helmet on and got moving. Out on the bike, I remembered that I had had a gu in my helmet, but I hadn't seen it when I put the helmet on, so I figured it must have fallen out somewhere. Low and behold taking off the helmet, I found my gu, still there. Nice one.

My run felt pretty good. Getting to the first mile marker, I checked my watch, 8:44. I had felt a little faster than that, but ok, I'm not in shape. A few minutes later I checked the watch again, 8:46. Ah, gumby moment number 2: my watch was displaying time of day, not lap time. Sweet, I had actually run much closer to an 8 minute first mile. The last mile, the next person to try to catch was much further ahead of me, I focused and got determined to take her down. Turning into the shoot, I passed her, and sprinted to catch the next two people ahead of me. Overall time was sub 24 minutes, which I was thrilled with, but after the fact I discovered it was not quite 5K, so my overall pace was 7:58, still not too shabby for me.

So best sprint in the US? Well it was superbly organized. Tons of volunteers. But the real kicker was the post race food: the typical fruit and bagels, then salad, pasta, antipasto, cold cuts, clam chowder, yogurt, ice cream, soda, margaritas, beers! And I got a nice insulated water bottle and mini towel! My first towel from a tri! And so appropriate that the sprint gives you a tiny towel.

Special thanks to Andrea for helping me get into the race, putting me up for the race, letting me drive her car and entertaining me on the drive. And to Sionan for giving me her number.

The beginning

2009-08-17T10:19:00.005-04:00

In preparation for Paul's big 3-0, we're getting fit. Paul's going a bit more hardcore than I am, but I think we're both excited to get into "the best shape of our lives."

To start this journey we, like any good nerds, needed a good quantitative baseline. After some thorough internet research, Paul made appointments at the Bod Pod. Tucked away, in the one of the largest sports clubs I've ever seen in Weymouth, MA (about 30 minutes drive without traffic, an hour the day we went - Thanks, Country Music Festival!), was the space-age looking device:
Using some combination of air pressure and Jetsonian design, the Bod Pod determines your precise body fat. The whole process took about 2 minutes after the traffic and using the phrase "bod pod" about 30 different times in the gym itself ("Excuse me, we have an appointment for the bod pod," "are you here for the bod pod," "which way to the bod pod?"). We stripped down to bathing suits, and sat still in the egg-shaped machine. Then it printed out our results.

Both of us were in the "moderately lean" category. My body fat percentage was 23.1%. My weight 122lbs. I'm now very curious as to what my stats were when I first returned to the US. I certainly haven't been training or eating as well as I was in oz. I was a little surprised that I weighed so little, as I feel like I've put on more weight, but my weight in oz was consistently 122lbs.

My body fat percentage goals aren't as clear as Paul's. I'd like to get into the "lean" category which is 18-22%. I think being at 20% or so would be nice, but I don't really have much reason for that other than just seems like a nice round number.

My real goals are for the Olympic distance race in September and the half marathon in October. I'd love to do a Mooloolaba time at the Lobsterman, and a sub 1:50 in the half mara. I've engaged an Aussie friend of mine to help me write up a program. I'll be doing less cardio than I did in oz, and more weights, so it will be interesting to see how my performance fairs.

We're going back to the Bod Pod in 6 weeks and again in 12 to mark our progress. For now, it's just the beginning

And we're back...

2009-08-13T21:38:00.004-04:00

... With new fonts, new colors and a new title.

I'm no longer living in oz, so it seemed the right time to rebrand. Instead I'm living in... Boston. But more importantly, I'm living with Paul. Our new place is right in Davis Square in Somerville in a turn of the century school house. We adore it.

Also, I'm a year older now. So we celebrated last weekend with a lovely dinner party. Here is the slide show demonstrating both my new age and my new apartment:

Hopefully, I'll have more triathlons to report in the coming weeks and new adventures in Boston.

Skewed incentives

2009-06-29T09:53:00.002-04:00

One of the questions I've been asking myself in this new job is "How effective is Herdict at monitoring in real time filtering on the web?" This morning I walked into the office and one of the interns asked me if I had heard about Guatemala. I had not. At the risk of over simplifying a complex situation, it seems that the Guatemalan president has been implicated in a corrupt banking scheme in the country. Guatemala recently arrested a man for his twitter comment which undermined trust in the banking system.

Yesterday it seems that Guatemala blocked WordPress, a popular blogging platform. In the past month we have received no reports from Guatemala, then yesterday that jumped to nearly 40, almost all of which are pertaining to WordPress.

This was very exciting news for me, because it means that even in a small country, where we haven't seen much past activity, when filtering does occur, it's being reported. But then, should I really be excited when a country tries to stifle free speech on the internet? Feels like I have some skewed incentives.

An official post will be available here

What I'm working on

2009-06-17T11:03:00.001-04:00

I've just started my new job:

On the road again

2009-06-08T10:12:00.003-04:00

We're now halfway through our 2 week road trip, and hanging out in Asheville, NC.

We started out last week with 3 nights in Cincinnati. We visited Paul's Uncle and my brother and sister-in-law there. We also ran for 30 minutes, up hill, in 90 degree weather, got lost in one of Cincinnati's "up and coming" neighborhoods, visited the Findlay markets and went to see the movie The Brothers Bloom (which was excellent).

From Cinci, we drove down to Chattanooga. We had been planning Nashville, but our scheduling didn't work out and we were going to miss Paul's Aunt and Uncle there, so we opted for Chattanooga which was more direct to Atlanta. We stayed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel, in one of the antique train cars for the night. I went to this hotel when I was a kid with my dad. I remembered it vividly. It is exactly the same, if showing it's age a bit more since it hasn't had any upgrades since 1989. Still seems like a fantastic spot for the kids, but maybe less so for the adults.

We left Chattanooga early to head down to Columbus, GA before stopping in Atlanta for the night. My ex-step-sister (yes, that's right) lives in Columbus with her family, so we went to visit her and meet her 2 year old for a few hours before driving back up to Atlanta on Friday night. My friends in Atlanta that we were staying with had a wedding to go to that night, so we were on our own for dinner. We drove around hunting for Decatur square, but ended up stopping in a blues and ribs joint. These were the best ribs I've had in recent memory. They were huge! We couldn't eat half of them. So if you're ever in Atlanta and have a hankering for ribs, check out Maddy's. We stuck around for the live blues that night, which was a high school band. It was really cute, their families were all there to support them, and the lead guitarist was really good.

At 9pm, we decided, we'd fit in one more tourist attraction for the locals, the Stone Mountain Laserlight Show. Here's another event that I went to many times as a child, that I haven't seen in 20 years. It was just as popular as I remember it, with picnic blankets knitting a quilt along the lawn. They've done a few updates to the show, it now includes a tribute to 911, and it no longer includes "Proud to be an American". Despite these changes, the show has stuck to its roots. The main event is still 80s style animation and highlights Georgia's role in the civil war and music history. We thoroughly enjoyed this.

We spent the next day catching up with friends, grilling out and playing incredibly complicated board games. Then headed North up to my old home town for lunch with a friend from junior high school and a tour of my old haunts. It's been 12 years since I've really lived there. And the town just feels like a town now, like any other, it doesn't hold all the significance it once did, and it actually seemed, like a nice place.

Last night we got into Asheville, after taking the back roads up through the beginnings of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is incredibly green here.

Pittsburgh has been cut from the itinerary with the plan being to go direct to DC, with an extra day here and an extra one there.

All in all, a fantastic way to spend two weeks when you're homeless and unemployed.

2009-05-31T10:35:00.003-04:00

Our new lease in Boston starts 15 June, but Paul's sublet his apartment in South Bend on 1 June, so we're officially homeless starting tomorrow. What better to do when homeless than to take a roadtrip. We thought about going somewhere exotic, but after two years overseas, I'm ready to see old friends and take a few trips down memory lanes.

The stops on the tour are: Cincinnati, Nashville, Atlanta, Asheville, Pittsburgh, DC, New York (probably). Plan is two nights in each destination, though we're not totally wedded to it. If you're anywhere along the way, we'd love to see you. We take off tomorrow.

In other news, I need to decide what to do about the blog. I think I'd like to continue it, at the very least to keep me true to my training, but I think I need a new name. It's certainly no longer my "continuing journey through Australia". And the title no longer fits either. Thoughts and suggestions?

Obama

2009-05-20T11:08:00.002-04:00

President Obama gave the commencement address at Notre Dame last weekend, and I was one of the lucky few who go to go and see him speak. Obama's invitation to speak at Notre Dame has been a hotly debated topic, as many Catholics feel strongly about Obama's views on abortion. There were many protesters with graphic posters on the route to the campus, but the address went off very well.

Before the speech, I wondered what balance he would strike between the traditional commencement speech ("you are the future, go forth, but don't forget what you've learned in these hallowed halls") versus a more political campaigny speech. In the end I was impressed that he actually addressed the abortion debate head on. He talked about the need for both sides of the debate to treat each other with respect and to seek out common ground. He also pointed out the role that the then President of Notre Dame played in the civil rights movement, and the common ground that was fostered then. The speech itself, was inspirational. The text can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/17/obama-notre-dame-speech-f_n_204387.html

But the most inspiring thing I found was the way the crowd behaved. There were protesters who made their way into the ceremony and attempted to disrupt the speech. They were each quickly escorted out by security. The response of the crowd was phenomenal. The first few times it happened it was met by Ssshhhh's, but on the third time the crowd broke into a Notre Dame cheer. The crowd didn't break into an Obama cheer. They cried out "We are ND". Essentially saying that this is our community, and we will not allow this sort of disrespect in our house.

It was a proud moment for me. One where I felt like an American again, not just an ex-pat, and a great way to come home.

Better be home soon

2009-05-13T19:15:00.002-04:00

I've spent 688 days in Australia.

So let's go back to the predictions I made all those days ago:

The sweaters were definitely the biggest waste of space, except for when I spent those few weeks in Melbourne, then they were awesome. But I was definitely bemoaning finding space for them again as I packed to come back.

I came with 9 pairs of shoes. I'm leaving with 9. However, I think there are only 2 pairs of overlap. I also go rid of another 8 pair in the packing. I'm not sure what this says about me. Maybe that I'm a girl?

I've also visited 5 out the 6 states and 1 of 2 territories.

I've taken countless pictures and read countless books. And so far (24 hours to go) have not been the victim of any venomous attack.

Looking back, my expectations for a 6 month jaunt down under bear very little resemblance to actually living here. My adventures here have been scary and lonely, thought-provoking and encouraging, rapturous and victorious. I well and truly can't imagine my life now without the amazing friends I've made along the way. How beautious mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it!

Lauren, one of my best friends here, said to me that now that I've lived here I will always be homesick no matter where I am. Missing Australia while in the US and missing the US while I'm here. I hope so.

Four bags and a box

2009-05-12T17:16:00.001-04:00

I've finished packing:

Random cheering

2009-05-09T20:37:00.002-04:00

After the phenomenal support from complete strangers last week, I got to thinking about the art of cheering. I, myself, have been guilty of going to a race with a few competitors to support and, by and a large, ignoring the remainder of the competitors in the field. I always feel a bit awkward on the sidelines silently searching for my friends as random people go past, but I also feel awkward about cheering on strangers. As a competitor, I don't feel as weird running past people who aren't cheering for me, but I really appreciate it when they do.

This morning was the Mother's Day Classic. I really like the tradition of fun runs on Mother's Day. I have participated in one for the last 8 or so years. I think it's a great way to celebrate your mom, by getting the family out to be active together. And though I've never run with my mom, I do always tear up at some point during the festivities in her honor.

I'm not running at the moment. In fact, I'm not anything. I'm resting for the next month. But since it's Mother's Day, I decided to go out and support the people participating this morning. There was a 4.5K run, an 8K run, an 8K walk and a 4.5K walk. I got there just before the first 8K runner finished. At first it was a bit awkward to be the only person cheering on every one. I started with some polite clapping, then worked my way into a few "woo"s. Then I decided I was too close to the finish line. I moved out to the last corner. From there I just let loose! Calling out people's numbers, telling them to finish strong. It was great. I had one guy come up and ask if I was cheering on any one in particular. He thought it was cool. In fact I got two other couples to randomly cheer as well just by my example. It was heaps of fun, and I got lots of big smiles, espeically from the little old ladies.