Hi! I didn’t blog at all last week- can you please forgive me?

I started my memorial day weekend on Tuesday evening by flying to Iowa to visit Phil’s family. We spent Tuesday through Friday playing on the farm, eating lots of food and spending time with family and friends. Training wise- Phil’s dad helped us out in the pool with our strokes (he is a swim coach!) and Phil showed me that the “Bluffs” in the name of his hometown Council Bluffs means hills with a nice 5 mile run that kicked my ass.

On Friday morning we flew from Iowa to LA to attend a good friends wedding. We danced, drank, laughed, and of course consumed a ton of food. I also made my tan lines worse by falling asleep by the pool and forgetting to take my bathing suit straps down. Then I made it worse one more time by forgetting to put on sunscreen before a long run from Hermosa beach past Manhattan beach on the boardwalk (ps- It was one of my favorite long runs ever!). Needless to say, my one shoulder dress looked so silly for the wedding. Oops.

We arrived home late Sunday evening which left Monday for bike riding, slurpees, errands and grilling.

Next post: Goals for Eagleman. I think they are going to surprise you!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

This weekend was the T-minus 3 week mark until Eagleman- my first Ironman 70.3 race. According to the training schedule I made for myself several weeks ago, this weekend was to be my highest mileage volume on the bike and run before I begin to taper the miles down to have totally refreshed and recovered legs for race day. My legs and I are happy to announce that the miles are logged and the hardest part of the training is over.

This weekend taught me a ton about what to expect and how to plan for Eagleman. The course  is hot, unshaded, windy and totally flat.

Whitney and I set out on a 14 mile run on Saturday morning. 14 miles is the longest I have run since marathon training and it was also the warmest weather (it was 85 and sunny here in DC on Saturday) I have ran in since last summer. We logged 13.75 miles in 2 hours and 8 minutes which means our pace was 9:08 min/mile. I finished all 4 bottles in my fuel belt (2 of water, 2 of EFS), as well as 2 additional bottles that I refilled when we ran past a water fountain. I also had to stop and walk a few times because I was not used to the heat. I know that I was dehydrated going into the run because I did not hydrate properly on Thursday and Friday. I am jaded after training for a marathon- I thought to myself “14 miles wont be bad”- who am I kidding? 14 miles is still a long ass ways! I’ll hydrate properly before Eagleman for sure! I’ll also most likely run the half marathon portion of the race with my fuel belt just so that I can have water whenever I want it instead of waiting for the aid stations.

Saturday night was a hot date with Phil that involved eating a mass amount of food and laying on the couch. It.was.glorious.

Saturday morning I picked up Emily at 7 am and we headed across the Bay Bridge to Queenstown, MD for a 70+ mile ride.

packed and ready for ridin’!

I chose this ride because it was only about an hour away and it was the exact terrain that I will be riding during Eagleman- flat, hot, no shade, lots of wind. (thanks for the info, Ray!) Queenstown is on Maryland’s eastern shore as is Eagleman- but the Eagleman course is 2.5 hours away- a little far for a day trip. After I mapped the ride, the sidebar showed this:

A-MAZING! Eagleman practice!

The course was totally flat. Like as flat as my feet kind of flat. It was also windy. And no matter which direction we turned it was either a headwind or a nasty side wind in which I had to hold onto my aero bars for dear life so that I wouldn’t be blown off the road.

flat open roads

I am so glad Emily was willing to do this ride with me! I learned that riding a long, totally flat course is HARD. It was harder then I expected, actually. You never ever ever get a chance to recover like you would on a downhill. The wind made it impossible to stop pedaling without drastically losing speed. Our little legs pedaled the whole time. I am very glad I got to experience this before Eagleman because I think I would have been in for a rude awakening on race day.

Ps- Smucker’s Uncrustable PB&J sandwiches are the PERFECT ride snack. nom nom nom. Go buy some now.

I never felt super hot because of the wind- however, I drank a ton of water and EFS and used all of my Gu (4 gels!). In fact, I drank my whole double aqua cell AND the extra bottle I was carrying on my bike frame. AND we stopped at a gas station at mile 62 to pee and get more water!

yes, we are thirsty!

Even though I didn’t feel overheated, I was definitely using a ton of energy pedaling on the flats into the wind and the sun was indeed beating down on us as there was very little shade the whole ride. I thought the double aquacell would be overkill for Eagleman but from what I learned today, it most certainly isn’t. For the race I will have the double cell filled to the brim and use the bottle exchanges when I run low on water.

Emily and I covered just over 73 miles in 4:24:57 which is an average speed of 16.5 mph. I was pretty happy with this speed given the distance, the conditions, and the fact that I think both of us could have pushed harder. We were able to chit chat for most of the ride (its awesome to ride on roads with no cars and ride side by side!) which tells me that we could have pumped up the speed a little if we wanted to. I do have to admit that I felt pretty shitty between miles 35 and 42ish but I got a second wind and finished the ride strong.

I am ready for Eagleman!

After the ride we obviously stuffed our faces with pizza.

I would also just like to point out my sunscreen fail. I rode in a sleeveless jersey and shorts and it appears that I missed two huge spots on my shoulder blades. FAIL.

Off to hang out with these two goofs for the rest of the evening! I hope everyone had a great weekend!

In case you missed the other Random Friday Fact posts you can find them here and here and here. Ya know, in case you want to know random things about me and my life

1. For the past year I have had Invisalign to straighten my teeth. My teeth were never bad, but I never had braces and I wanted them to be super straight so I opted for Invisalign. I am almost done with my treatment and get these stupid little bumps off my teeth on June 20th. Woop!
2. I am balancing alot right now. More than a full time job, ironman training and normal life things like laundry. 30+ hours a week more, actually. Yes, I am stressed but I’ll survive.
3. I cry easily. If I’m frustrated, I cry. Angry, I cry. Sad, I cry. Happy, I cry. You get the idea…I’m a big baby.
4. I have been working on holding front and side planks and I am happy to say I can hold a front plank for over 3 minutes now but my goal is to get to 5 minutes. Side planks are a different story. I fall after about 1 minute and 45 seconds. Damn you, side planks!
5. I also can’t do planks in my living room because my dog grabs a ball or a toy and squeaks it against my head or my butt. You try holding planks while a fatty pug pushes a toy against your head. It’s hard.
6. I got a pedicure yesterday. I chose hot pink as the polish color just so it would match my bike. I may be an athlete but I can be a girly-girl too!
7. I swam in the “fast” lane last night at the pool. Guess what? It made me swim faster! Move over boys, I am swimming in the fast lane from now on!
8. I don’t get naked in the locker room at the pool. I know, I know. All ladies have the same parts. I get it. I would rather just hide behind my towel or do the really awkward “put your sports bra over your bathing suit before you pull your bathing suit down” thing. No, I don’t have body image issues, I just don’t like the whole locker room to see me sans clothes.
9. Mean people bother me. To the jerk who left a nasty comment on my blog about “a sub 9 minute pace race is nothing to be proud of”- you suck and I hope you become a really slow runner.
10. I have a freckle on my 4th toe of each of my feet. If for some reason you have to identify my body and you can only see my feet, look for the freckles!

have a great weekend!

I wish I could say that this past weekend I did the full 70.3 at Kinetic but I only did the 1.2 mile swim as part of a relay team. I wanted to do the swim to get my feet wet (haha?) before Eagleman on what a 1.2 mile swim feels like in open water since swimming is my weakest leg of triathlon. We all know how crappy my first open water swim was so I really needed a confidence booster. I had no time goal really because I had no idea how long it should take me or if I would have a panic attack and have to doggy paddle the whole thing. I know I needed to make the time cut off of 1 hour and 15 minutes because I did have a relay team that would like to do their part of the race. Man, how embarrassing if I made my team DNF because I freaked out in the water.

Whitney (who did the run part of a relay) and I woke up ass early, 4am to be exact, and headed down to Lake Anna for the 7 am race start. Since I was a relay I was the very last wave of athletes to get into the water and because I was frantically looking for my friends to wish them a great race before they tackled the whole thing, I had to rush to get my wetsuit on. Oops.

Have you ever tried to put on a wetsuit? It’s hard. That is my “oh crap I have to be in the water in 5 minutes and I don’t have this stupid thing on yet” face. As for Whitney’s face…I don’t know have an explanation for that one!

I headed down to the water and dunked myself in to get used to the temperature. I also placed myself towards the back of the pack and on the left hand side in an effort to avoid getting kicked in the effing face again. And then I looked out at the course and realized how freaking far 1.2 miles in the water looks. We were swimming half way across the lake! I freaked out a little. I am glad I had this freak out before Eagleman. I didn’t have time to calm myself down before the horn went off and everyone ran down the beach and dove into the water. So, I went with the flow.

I breathed every stroke and sighted every 8 or so strokes. Sighting was kind of hard because it was foggy, so I sighted the pack of swimmers in front of me and hoped they were going in the right direction To my surprise I was feeling strong, not freaking out, and passing a ton of people! Before I knew it I was at the first yellow turn buoy and then the second turn buoy. Whenever I would get nervous I would drill myself on my GRE study words. What? Listen, I have a lot to balance and if I need to study while swimming, then so be it!

I am thrilled to say that I freestyled the whole thing, didn’t stop at all except for a pause in my stroke to make sure I was still going the right way, I had almost no contact with other swimmers (except for the dude I elbowed in the ass…I’m sorry) and I got out of the water feeling strong. oh, and it only took me 39 minutes and 53 seconds. Not the speediest of swimmers, but I’ll take it!

I spent the rest of the day screaming my face off for Emily, Emily, Katie and my other Team Z teammates.

Head over to their blogs to read their race reports…Emily (all the way to the left) PRed by 32 minutes or something crazy like that, Emily (second from left) won the 21-24 age group, me (green jacket) ate hot dogs after the swim and cheered for these girls, and Katie (right) got the finish line of her first 70.3 with a huge smile on her face screaming for dry socks. Way to go, ladies!

1. I love Velveeta shells and cheese…and perogies. Whenever I am on my own for dinner I usually eat 5 perogies and a salad. or almost a whole box of Velveeta. I put more effort into dinner when Phil is around!
2. I shed like crazy. I even have a hair catcher thingy in my shower but it doesn’t catch all of the hair. Phil often has to clean out the drain to make the water drain quicker so he isn’t standing in a foot of water while taking a shower. Sorry babe.
3. I cant eat breakfast when I first wake up in the morning. I usually wait about an hour before I eat…meaning I have to wake up butt ass early before a long run or ride to have time to eat and digest before working out.
4. I sleep with my right arm above my head no matter if I am asleep on my back or my side. I don’t know why, it just happens.
5. I have the best friends in the entire world and I thank my lucky stars every day that I have such wonderful people in my life.

6. I talked with a lisp when I was younger and had to go to speech therapy for a few years.
7. I lived with my freshman year roomate, LJ, all four years of college. Sophomore year we moved into a suite with Rachael and Jenna. Those are the girls pictured above. It’s been 7 years since we have all met and we are all still extremely close.
8. I don’t do laundry often…it usually takes me either running out of sports bras or undies to throw in a load of laundry.
9. At the tri last weekend 2 different people told me they read this blog (hi!) but I did not know who they were which is awesome. People actually read this lil thing!
10. Someone found this blog by googling “hump day activities”…ummm?

Lots on the agenda for this weekend including a swim relay, a long bike ride in which I hopefully do not fall off my bike, and a blogger meet up! Good luck to everyone racing this weekend!

I started the week with sore legs due to the hills I ran up and down at Peasantman. (and maybe the 85 miles of biking)

This week is a high volume/ high intensity week consisting of 3 runs, 3 swims, 3 rides and 2 strength sessions.

I had a hard time pushing through this morning’s cycling speed workout because my legs would start to burn as soon as I started my 2 minute sprints. Usually my legs don’t start to burn until atleast a minute in.

What is a girl to do!? Any advice on how to ease the sore legs and be able to finish the week without giving up intensity or distance?

Saturday morning started off with a bright and early bike ride on the W&OD trail. I wont get into details but I dropped my chain, my left aerobar came loose and I took a huge fall off my bike (I’m fine, just a bruised hip, hand and scraped bar tape on my bike). Not a great ride. Either way, I still managed to get 52 miles in before 11 am.

After the ride I headed to Lake Anna National Park about 1.5 hours south of DC for the Peasantman Triathlon. I was excited to spend some time with my friends from college. Kira, Tahra, Christina, Bill and myself headed to the park on Saturday afternoon to attend an open water swim clinic and then a good ol’ fashioned BBQ with other area triathletes.

The open water clinic was really helpful. Wave One set up a 500 meter course in the lake and before letting us loose to swim the course they talked about open water tactics and tips. I learned quite a bit. It was nice to be able to get into the water in a no pressure environment and practice sighting the buoys and get used to open water swimming.

ready for swimmin’!

After our swim practice in the lake we headed to our campsite to pitch the tent and freshen up before the BBQ.

 After the BBQ we hung around our camp site for a while and had the most hilarious conversations imaginable- like what the pole on our campsite with hooks was for (we eventually googled it, but not before laughing so hard about the possibilities). My face and abs hurt from laughing so hard. At 10pm we all crawled into the 6-person tent for a snuggle fest good night’s rest before the 9 am race start.

I slept pretty well for sleeping on the ground! And Bill kept the snoring to a minimum so that was nice

Race morning came quickly but I felt well rested. We ate breakfast off of awesome plates at the camp site and then headed down to the lake for the race.

I was hoping for a confidence booster after the disaster tri a few weekends ago.  I started in the second wave (out of 2 waves) of the Olympic distance triathletes. It was an on beach start which was really fun! I enjoyed running into the water and diving belly flopping to begin the swim. I did forget to put my goggles down but quickly remembered when my face hit the water. Woops! I felt really strong on the swim. The water was a great temperature. I stayed away from any feet that got too close to my face. I was able to sight all of the buoys easily. I felt comfortable and confident. I did the 1500 meter swim in about 27 minutes. (I am going off what my watch says, not the official times because they are not posted yet!)

The bike was a great course – it had a ton of twists and turns and 2 nice hill climbs. It was 2 loops around the state park, weaving in and out of all of the campgrounds. I pushed it when I felt I could and slowed down around all the turns. I also took a wrong turn and added 1.7 miles to my total distance. So instead of going the 22, I did almost 24. My bike time was 1:20 which is right at a 17mph pace. I could have pushed it harder on the bike, but I didn’t want to end up in a mud puddle on the side of the road so I held back a little

The run was HARD! It was up a steep hill, down a steep hill, up another steep hill, down the steep hill…TWICE. 4 hill climbs in 6 miles. phew! My legs were burrrrrrrning. My legs never loosened up the whole run. Maybe it was the 85 miles I rode within the 24 hours before trying to run? Who knows. I went at a snails pace up the hills and slightly faster down the hills. My total 10k time was 58 minutes which really needs some work. I blame the hills!

I finished the tri in 2:48 (according to my watch) which I am extremely happy with. Upon crossing the finish line we got an awesome glass and a cupcake!

It was a wonderful weekend with friends and a great training opportunity. It definitely gave me some confidence in my abilities.

Once I arrived home Phil and I celebrated our races by grilling burgers, drinking beers and telling stories about our weekend. Phil had a cycling race today and he came in 1st on his team, 7th overall. Oh, and his max speed on the bike today was 44 mph. sheesh, I was happy with my max speed being 28 mph today!

1. Dont leave me a voicemail. I wont listen to it. I’ll see your missed call and call you back. When I call you back don’t ask me if I listened to your voicemail because I didn’t.
2. Do not call it a steak and cheese sandwhich in front of me. It’s a cheesesteak.
3. Phil is 15 inches taller than me. I am 5’0 and he is 6’3.
4. I hate when people use “your” and “you’re” incorrectly. Grrr.
5. I sung Nsync songs to myself while swimming last night. I still know all the words.
6. Speaking of Nsync, I used to be obsessed. Don’t judge.
7. Speaking of boy bands- I met the Backstreet Boys at an event when I was a senior in college. Proof:

8. While studying abroad in Australia I took a flying trapeze class. I was awesome at it. Successfully did a catch on my first try. Proof:

9. I dont like salmon. In fact, I hate salmon.
10. I used to get really bad nosebleeds randomly. Like really bad. Like I have been taken to the hospital twice for it kind of bad. I had both nostrils cauterized so I dont get them randomly anymore but I do get them when I get kicked in the face during a swim.

1. I had my VO2 max test last night. This is basically a test that measures how much oxygen your body processes while working out. It also tells you the heart rate zones you should be training in. I will get more in depth with details in a separate post. I did learn that I am a stronger cyclist than I thought!
   The way the test is conducted is by breathing into a very tight fitting mask and the tester increases the effort every minute until you can’t go any more. Let’s just say I left a nice puddle of sweat under my bike. Here is picture from the beginning of the test when it was “easy”. I’ll save the really gross pictures of me for the next post.

2. I am really enjoying being on twitter! I am able to chit chat with other triathlete bloggers around the country as well as the usual blogger suspects that I have already met in person. I have made lots of Internet friends and even turned some of those friends into real life friends. Yay blogger friends!
3. Katie wrote a fabulous #3 on her Three Things Thursday post- click her name to go and check it out. I want to echo what Katie said. While I have been active my whole life, I am totally new to triathlon and don’t have too much going for me except my motivation and drive. I was not a competitive swimmer starting at age 3. Hell, I just learned how to swim this past November and I still find swimming more than 500 meters at a time difficult. I never ran more than a mile until I was in college and never did any sports that involved running. The fastest mile I ever ran was at the end of last weekends 10 miler and I threw up at the end. I am an average cyclist who almost falls over every single time I have to unclip my feet at a stop sign. This is my journey and I need to be proud of that…9 minute miles and all

It’s Wednesday, people! You know what that means? That means it’s almost Friday, which is the weekend, which is going to be AWESOME. Let me share with you several things I am excited about this morning:

1. My Vo2 max test is tonight! (Dont know what that is? That’s ok, I’ll explain it tomorrow)
2. Thursday is Cinco de Mayo which means stuffing my face with fajitas after a swim session.
3. Friday night dinner with the ladies to celebrate Whitney’s birthday.
4. Saturday early-ass-morning - 60 mile ride with Emily and Emily.
5. Saturday afternoon - driving down to Lake Anna for an open water swim clinic and pre-tri BBQ.
6. Saturday night will be spent camping with several of my favorite people.
7. Sunday will be the Peasantman training tri- which I thought was self-timed but to my surprise we actually get timing chips! So now when I screw up the multisport mode on my Garmin, it won’t matter!
8. The tri is going to be the most amazing ever because the athlete’s guide contains this sentence “All finishers will recieve a medal, a special gift and a cupcake at the finish line”.
9. You get a cupcake at the finish line!!

This weekend is going to be a really great training weekend and a ton of fun! Happy hump day

What do you have going on this weekend? Will it involve a cupcake at a finish line? Because mine will.