Keeping Myself Busy

I got over my head cold fairly quick. Fairly quickly? Whatever. Went for an easy run last Tuesday and my calf started killing me halfway through - guess it was my body's way of telling me to give it a break. I just can't help myself when it's so nice out. I just want to run!

I did swim twice last week. I really like going to Master's, it has nothing to do with actual training at this point. Marty had us do some crazy sets that had wall pushouts, and treading water with our hands out of the water, and block starts. Nas forced me to dive off the blocks instead of the side of the pool. I'm happy to report that I didn't have any belly flops and never lost my goggles.

Marty flew to Atlantic City on Friday afternoon, and I drove down to Pinehurst to give a technique clinic after the participant meeting for the triathlon that was happening the next day. Saturday I met Alicia at Umstead for a mountain bike ride on the bridle trails. Beautiful day and good conversation.

This is how Tassie spent most of her Saturday:


Kari and I saw The Social Experiment that night. It was definitely an interesting movie, although I'm not sure how I feel about Facebook. It's kind of nice to just keep your head in the sand sometimes.

This morning Tassie was giving me her puppy dog eyes so I took her for a short 30min run. I donned a compression sleeve for my calf and it actually helped. But now I'm one of those weirdos.

Got Me A Head Cold

I should've quarantined Marty last week.

Pic and Video from Last Weekend

I thought this picture came out pretty good of me coming into the finish line. I was thinking of maybe buying it, something we rarely do, because I also like the fact that Marty is in the background.



Marty was actually videoing this, so here's his perspective. And special shout out to Benji for saying my name correctly!

Do you wear a watch?

Do you wear a watch? If you do, you are old. Yup, apparently, watches aren't cool and young people don't wear them.

This watch is sad, but is he sad because I said he was uncool? Or is he sad because he just realized that only old people wear him? Notice I made the watch male since I'm the blogger. Blogger = woman = cool = not making watch a woman. Or more simply, male = uncool = watch.

For what it's worth, I wear a watch. I've worn one since I was a kid and feel completely naked without one. It's used for keeping time, as a stopwatch, as an alarm, and occasionaly as a timer. It has many uses! Unlike a toaster which is a mostly useless appliance since it is large and can only do one thing, but I digress (we do own a toaster, I just think they are stupid).

I first read about this uncool watch phenomenon back in March, while visiting our friend, Kathy. She had a tongue-in-cheek book about how not to act old and this was one of the items on the list. Apparently, most young people use their cell phones as clocks nowadays.

Marty got further confirmation of this coaching the high school cross country team. He wants his kids to wear a watch so they can track their splits during workouts but most don't wear them. He finally relented and told them they had to have some sort of time piece. About half wear watches and the other half.....hold their cell phones! While they're running - they time themselves with their cell phones.

I think that's uncool. Little whippersnappers. Hrrumph.

A Better Race Report

Fall has fallen here in NC. I have no idea if that is a real saying, but you always hear spring has sprung, so thought it might work. After all the rain earlier in the week we now have cool temps in the morning that give way to beautiful sunny afternoons. I love this time of year – it makes me want to run run run!

We had a full weekend – Marty’s Saturday was particularly busy. I did some shopping with Kari where we managed to get a lot of the same clothes…we apparently have very similar taste, although hers is decidedly better so it was good to have feedback. We also had one of my athletes and her husband and their cute puppy staying with us for the weekend since they were all doing one of the Jordan Lake sprints (not the puppy, duh). Tassie was very happy to have a playmate that was not myself or Marty.

In the afternoon I went to packet pickup so I could give a free clinic on race strategy. It went well and then afterwards we had dinner and then into bed. After all, I had a race the next morning! They ran the Men’s sprint on Saturday and the Women’s on Sunday.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I didn’t want to end on my National’s race. I’ve had a lot of time to think about that race and really think I put too much internal pressure on myself – that with the travel and any stress related to it possibly caused me to be more fatigued than I should’ve been. I wasn’t outwardly nervous or anything, and Marty even commented that I seemed very relaxed. I guess I just internalized everything or something. I was talking to a friend of ours who used to live in VA the night after the race and we both lamented about how it was our ‘A’ race and it just didn’t go as planned. He said that whenever he goes to these big races he often gets too nervous and then his legs end up being so tired – I said, that’s exactly how I felt! Anyways, it’s water under the bridge at this point.

Sunday morning came and it was pretty chilly – but more importantly, quite windy! This was a very small race, maybe 150 competitors? We got to park right next to transition and everything was just easy. I knew a lot of people so got to catch up and chat with everyone. There were only two of us racing Open, me and local pro Stacey Richardson, and two Master’s Open (Kerry and Cari) – so there were a wopping 4 of us in the first wave! The water was choppy! We started off and Stacey quickly swam away from me. This past week had already turned into off season, so swimming I was not…I seemed to have lost the fast gear but still had a good swim and came out about 40 seconds behind her. I think we both knew going in that we would both be by ourselves the entire race and just have to time trial everything.

The bike was windy, and it took me awhile to get warmed up. I knew Stacey would put more time into me here as she is a powerful cyclist. My only chance would be to hopefully grab back some time on the run so our distance apart wasn’t TOO embarrassing. I felt great on the run! Like myself again! And the run was extremely challenging – it was similar to the Duke Half course, but we went right after the big hill which was ANOTHER hilly road. It’s all off road back there but I like that. Anyways, it may have been a tad short because my watch read 18:59 upon finishing (19:00 if you go by their timing, which I’m not!). Stacey ended up beating me by just over a minute, so that’s a total win for me! :) And most important – it was very fun and I’m happy to end on this note. Here are results. Also, thanks to Angela and Tim for coming out there to cheer for everyone!






Dang, I look huge compared to tiny Stacey!

Master’s Showdown…One More Time
My nemesis, Erik, who has been featured on this blog before when talking about the open water swims, was doing his first triathlon the day before at the men’s event. Now, it’s extremely hard to compare times from different days – who knows if they set the buoys out the same distance, weather conditions (the race director said that the women had it choppier), and swimming attire (I wore a wetsuit, he didn’t) but seriously here our swim times. This is getting creepy!


So whatever, I totally won this round!

Sunday afternoon we had an Oktoberfest party with our Master's team at the very cool house of John-the-Late (who has a complex now and has not been late to a practice in a couple of weeks). Such a fun group of people and great way to end the weekend.

Message in a Bloggle

My good friend Kari wrote a much funnier blog post about our USAT Nationals weekend, complete with silly antics and inside jokes that most won't get. It's much better than my 'poo my race sucked poo' post.

Originally, I was going to be done with the season after the race this past weekend. Marty's high school cross country team is running in the Great American cross country festival which is a big, competitive cross country meet right here in our town. They have a 'community race' to start the day, which is a nice way to let all of us old folks run in a cross country meet. I figured I would do that - how fun would it be to do a real cross country meet?

But instead, I decided that I don't want to end my season with my race last weekend and have decided to do the Jordan Lake Women's Only triathlon on Sunday. I had a free entry into it and it will be low key, nice weather and it's local --- and it's a sprint!

I've still kind of started my off season though, so we'll see how the race goes on close to no training. I think it will be fine. And fun :)

I leave you with a close-up of a pretty fluffy Tassie and one of her favorite toys, Hedgehog.

USAT Nationals Race Report

Unfortunately, this is not the race report I had hoped to write! The day just didn't go well. I felt a bit crappy the week heading into the race, but it's the taper and you don't always feel very good. Warming up I felt tight and ugh, but again, I didn't think about it too much because that doesn't indicate how the race is going to go.

The swim felt fine - I totally couldn't hang with the front group and swam by myself the entire time. I felt like I was going hard but not too hard, but my time ended up being pretty bad compared to where I should've been. But running out of the water into transition I was so winded!

The first lap of the bike was horrible. So horrible in fact, I contemplated stopping many times, which is so not like me when I'm racing. My legs just weren't there. Of course, I'm glad I didn't stop and am proud that I got my head out of my ass and my legs warmed up for the second lap. I ended up going 1:05:40 on a legit 40K which isn't terrible, particularly since my legs didn't show up until half way. Fitness-wise I would've expected to be a minute or maybe a little more faster.

The run was hot. And a bit hilly in sections. My plan was to stay controlled the first 5K and then lay it all out there. Even though my bike wasn't all that good, I still go into every run thinking I can do it fast. I caught a few girls in my age group within the first mile and was feeling pretty good. Even after the steep hill I was okay, but shortly after while doing all those zig-zags through the streets I started hurting more than normal. It seemed like every girl I would see in the distance and then work to catch was in the 25-29 age group - where are all the girls in my age group? (huh, they were way ahead!) I did end up catching one girl really close to the finish line (never, never quit - even when it seems hopeless ;) My run split was nothing to write home about, but after looking at the splits of everyone it wasn't all that bad - and again I really feel like I could've maybe been 2 min faster on a normal day for me.

So overall - I was a little 'off' on all 3. But at a race like this a little off is a big deal. I think I ended up 8th in my age group (another listing at the awards said 7th, so not real sure what happened), and 24th female overall in 2:16:04.

I am definitely disappointed with myself and my performance. It's a tough pill to swallow. I trained hard and really tried to do everything possible to put myself in a good position to do well there. It just wasn't in the cards.

The race itself was pretty good - a challenging course and pretty good shwag to all participants. Tuscaloosa is definitely not a city I would ever choose to go back to and that's not just because I went to Auburn (War Damn Eagle). For a small town it has horrible traffic and it's just one ugly chain/strip mall after another.

The awards ceremony was nice although unless you were a big winner you didn't get anything except a little plaque. And seriously - water, hot protein gatorade and burritos is not the best post race food. Can I get a coke, please?

The best part of the weekend was traveling with my friends and hanging out with Marty and Tassie. I love my girls and had such a great time with them - they make it all worth it. This is getting long and I'm tired so maybe my next post will be about speeding down the highway, running through the airport and the sacrificial cupcake.