Yeah sweet training!

So I'm glad my body got over its "it's too hot" nonsense.  I was able to eek out 86.03 miles this week!  Granted only 14.6 miles of that nonsense were running, but that's not too bad considering the fact that I'm not in marathon training anymore.  The weather has been intensely hot lately which I'm thinking does a number on me, but I discovered that if I hydrate more than your average midget that it's not too bad.  This week I think I honestly drank about 5L of fluid each day because I was going to be sweating so much.

Monday my body was rebelling and doing a good job of convincing me that it was too hot to run, but Tuesday onward my body decided to get with the program.  Tuesday I ran with Red on lunch and felt great!  We have a 4.25 mile loop that we run on his lunch break randomly.  It's kind of nice to be able to have a set mileage and have a running buddy for quick jogs.  Later that night we went for a ride and I road tested the new bike which I have now named Felix.  I've been trying to think of a name for my bike since I was finally able to ride it, and for some reason Felix just sounded cool.  Allegra, my old Felt, is now officially my commuter bike, and Felix is now my road racing bike.  That was the entire purpose of buying Felix, but at first I thought I was going to rotate Felix and Allegra based on what the training ride would be, now Felix is training and Allegra is commute.  Felix is a GREAT hill bike too!  Oregonia hill is about a 1.5 mile climb and though I've been getting a lot better at my climbing I was only able to keep Red in my sights while riding Allegra. My first climb out on Felix and I was able to not only catch Red, but also pass him all three times that we did that hill this week!!  Woot!!  He still has me on flats....for now :D

FELIX!!!

Wednesday I did a tempo run before work, my first time ever trying to honestly make myself run a certain pace all on my own.  I suck at pacing, I've said it once and I will say it again, I suck at pacing.  Red is the human metronome, I am the human spaz.  He'll say "let's run at 9:30, or 10:00, or insert time here, and he can do it.  Me I go "let's run at 10:00 min pace today", and I'll take off at an 8:30 for the first mile and Red normally has to rein me in.  Yep, pacing is not my thing.  Well I'm going to make it my thing this year!  Wednesday I ran 5 miles at what was supposed to be 5 different paces.  Mile 1) 10:00, 2) 9:30, 3) 9:00, 4) 8:30, 5) 8:00.  I was a little too fast on the first mile and ended up at 9:41, meh.  I hit all of the other miles except the 8:00 but that was because my legs were flipping me the patella and telling me to bugger off.  I'm loving my new shoes, Asics Gel Blur 33's.  They're light, comfy, move great with me, not a huge heel, and AWESOME colors!  Mine are neon orange!

New shoes!

I'm hoping that next week I can up my mileage some and be super productive training wise, but I don't see that happening.  I work Sat, Sun, Mon night which means that Tuesday I will be sleeping all day.  That leaves Wed-Saturday to get stuff done.  I'll be super busy this week though with wedding stuff so yeah!!!  Hoping to get my dress fitted, more stuff for the wedding, the an amazing weekend filled with family and friends for my bridal shower!  We'll see how much actual training gets accomplished.  

Happy training!

Heat, and bikes, and running OH MY!

Wow!  Ok, so Ohio jumped all over the summer bandwagon and has decided that 80's is its new comfortable. This isn't too bad if you're biking, and definitely not bad if you're swimming, but if you're running....not so much.  I love the heat so I'll definitely get over it and embrace the heat!  I apparently suck at running in the heat so part of the plan this week is to suck it up and guess what?  Run in the heat!  I need to get over it and just do it because it's not going to get any cooler and I have miles to run!

 In other news I HAVE A NEW BIKE!!  Yeah!  My Felt B16W came in last week and by Thursday afternoon I was able to have it fitted, cut down, and ready to ride!  So guess what?  I went for a ride!

Red and I only went 20 miles because I'm a wimp and didn't realize how different a tri bike would be from my road bike.  Wow, I was in for a rude awakening of how much more narrow my new bike felt compared to my old bike.  My old bike is a Felt FW40, if you can't tell I really like Felt, and it felt awesome!  My FW40, aka Allegra, has been my road bike, tri bike, and commuter bike for the past 3 years and has served me well.  She will continue to serve me well but it was time to upgrade to a new bike.  That's where my B16W comes in!

This is me pausing on Allegra towards the middle of our 40 mile ride.  Red and I found a nice shaded spot and decided that it would be a fun photo opportunity.

Me riding my new bike!  

As you can see I am definitely not in aero!  I did end up getting in aero later, that's what those white bars and those little squares are for.  I rest my elbows on the squares and my arms/hands just hang out on the bars, which coincidentally is where my shifters are now.  I looked like a weeble-wobble when we first started out because the steering is so much touchier and it just feels so much more narrow overall.  I have to give it to Felt and West Chester Cyclery though because even on my first ride out I wasn't uncomfortable or feel like I was off on my fit.  I just needed to get used to the tri-bike geometry which is slightly different than my road bike.  

Our 10 mile turn around point = photo op!

I love how much smoother my new bike is compared to my road bike and how much more efficient she seems to be!  I can easily sit at 20mph and not feel like I'm dying pushing after a couple of miles.  I can sit on Allegra and do 20mph as well, but I feel like I have to work more to get there, I can have a happy pace of 17-18mph on Allegra for miles though so she's not slow by any means.  I just think that this new bike is more efficient and the geometry change is to help get the most power out of your legs without roasting them so they can stay fresh for th erun of a triathlon, that's why it's a triathlon specific bike.  I can also easily get up to 25mph on my own, I can't maintain it super long right now, but I can at least get to it on flat ground!  Red and I rode 40 miles on Wednesday and I was on Allegra.  I can stick with Red for a good long way going 25 but I had to be drafting to hit those speeds.  We were going almost 27mph at one point when I was on Allegra, again I was drafting so being sucked along, but I still at least hit it!  This time I was all on my lonesome and hit 25mph at mile 19 of a 20 mile ride!  Woot!  Now I just have to become more confident in my handling abilities so I can come off the trail, which is a straight line, and start turning and doing hills.  Hopefully all of this will happen this week!  If I follow the plan for this week there will be 4 runs, 4 swims, and 2 bike rides between now and Saturday.  Then Saturday is ZOO BABIES! At the Cincinnati Zoo! :D

Happy training!!!

There's the wind...

Ok, so for anyone that knows me even a little bit they know I hate the wind.  A light breeze is one thing but wind of noticeable strength is really really really annoying.  Well Red and I went up to Bellefontaine this weekend for my sisters graduation party and decided that we would also get a little training in.  My mom lives in the middle of no where which is AWESOME.  I love it out there.  It's not crowded, noisy, or busy.  It's nice, quiet, you can see the stars at night, and not feel like someone is always watching you because they live so close to you.  I love being at my mom's.  The only downfall is that there is a lot of wind.

For my sisters graduation party we had great weather to play outside or hang out inside.  We played frisbee, sat out on the front porch, and just enjoyed the company of family being together.  Then Sunday was Mother's Day but my mom had to work which meant no Mother's Day breakfast for her.  Red and I took advantage of the fact that she was going to be gone all morning and went for a nice bike ride.  Last year Red had mapped out and trained along a route that's 37 miles when he was training for Ironman Georgia 70.3 and it is a very nice little route.  We decided that we would go out for a nice training ride along a similar route.  My mom's house is a few miles away from Indian Lake so we decided that we would ride from my mom's to the Lake, around the Lake, then back to her house.  Well on the way out things weren't too bad, I thought I was doing a great job keeping about 20-21mph seemingly effortlessly.  Later I realized that I had a very tiny part in that speed capability.  Anyway, we enjoyed the scenery, and the not so busy roads.  Most of our ride was bordered by farm land because that's about the only thing out there.

There are some cute brick houses, some that look like old one room school houses, and fun scenery.

Most of our ride looked a lot like this though.  Fields still waiting to be planted with beans or corn.

Well last year Red stayed on 117 which is a rather busy road with the occasional semi roaring next to you.  Now most people are very considerate when they come up along you and they try to get over some and give you some space.  Other people, not so much.  There have been multiple times that a car has come so close to me that I know I could easy rest my elbow on its side mirror and catch a ride.  I don't mean reach out and touch a car with my hand, I mean just extend my ELBOW and tada! Instant car lift.  Anyway, Red didn't like how busy 117 could be last year so we decided to take a slightly different route this year.  The wind on 117 was also ridiculously brutal, I didn't notice it too terribly much because I was drafting off of Red which was VERY nice!  When we turned off of the main road Red decided he wanted some more company rather than a drafter so I came up next to him for a while to chat.  That wasn't too bad because the wind was coming from the side, well we then had to turn back into the wind in order to get home and that was ROUGH.  We went from a happy 17-20mph to a lucky 15-16mph into the wind.  I was cursing the wind and commenting on how Ironman Florida is going to suck, it is notorious for being windy (a fact I didn't know when I signed up), when we came upon a pleasant surprise!

A one lane covered bridge!  

I think covered bridges are really neat so this made what was turning into a crabby ride a very fun surprising ride!  Red and I road up the hill on the other side of the bridge and decided that we both wanted a picture of the bridge so I rode back down and took a picture of our pleasant surprise!  I was quite happy with this and then realized that we were still about 12 miles away from home.  

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, very very windy, but not too bad.  At some point Red and I decided that since he had let me draft during the middle part of our ride that I would pull on the way home.  I am a very ineffective puller.  First off, I'm tiny therefore I make a terrible person to attempt to draft off of, second off when wind is involved I am stopped in my tracks.  I was lucky if I was going 16mph into the wind, there were multiple points on the way home on 235 that we were going downhill and I was pushing to go 15mph and if I attempted to "coast" I actually started slowing down, going downhill.  Last I checked if you're going downhill you should be able to pick up speed, not slow down.  Meh.  I did impress myself though with my mental gains from a couple years ago.  I used to get very frustrated and want to give up and make Red let me draft the rest of the way home.  This time I didn't ask once for him to let me draft, and even though I was incredibly frustrated I didn't get angry, I started thinking of ways to get stronger.  I can't change the wind, and a bike can only change so much in your power output, but if the power isn't there from the rider there isn't a lot else that can happen.  So now I'm going to start doing more actual lifting exercises for my legs.  Oh, and speaking of new bikes....I am getting a new bike at the end of this week!!!!  I'm so excited!!  I promise pictures of my new bike when it comes in!

Happy Monday!

Post Flying Pig Marathon

Ok, well it is now Wednesday and my legs are finally feeling like my normal legs.  It didn't help my recovery that I worked all night Sunday night and did a 16 hour shift Monday.  I worked from 8p-730a on Sunday, and 3p-730a on Monday into Tuesday morning.  I then slept for the vast majority of Tuesday/Tuesday night, and now I feel MUCH better.

So during a marathon you are running, or at least on your feet, for 26.2 miles.  Those can either be a not bad 26.2 miles, or it can be a "my feet and body hate me I hope you die" 26.2 miles.  As you can tell from my race report my marathon was the latter of the two races.  So now that I'm clean, stretched, fed, and rested I figured I would share some of the carnage with you guys.  It is a normal process for runners to either get black toenails, or to lose toenails during training, racing, and what-have-you-ness.  For the better part of 2 years I didn't have the correct number of toenails, and I was ok with this.  Then, by some miracle, I had all 10 toenails from about February of 2011 until Sunday May 6th, 2012.  Yep.  Right after the marathon one of my toenails decided to jump ship.  Usually it's just getting a little blister and part of the nail comes off and it's not that big of a deal, and there's a little bit of a nail still hanging on leaving promise of a new nail to come back eventually.  Not this time.  Some how I managed to rub my second toe on my left foot so much that a blister formed under the nail and popped the entire thing off the nail bed.  It wasn't very comfortable, so after I got home I thought it wouldn't be too bad to just take it the rest of the way off.  I'm not super positive that was a smart decision.  My toe now looks decidedly naked and feels really weird.

No, that is not peach nail polish, that is my baby naked toe.

I also had a blister the size of a ping pong ball on the inside of my right foot, which I hadn't realized was making my compensate and run on the outside of my foot which cramped it all up for two days.  Now the blister is healing with one of those awesome "blister band aids".

The blister actually didn't completely fit under the band aid, but now that it's healed some it fits under the majority of the band aid.

My poor nail-less, blistered feet lol.  I was going to turn this into a relaxing swim week to try and work my legs some without killing them, but I don't know if I want to get into a pool before my toe had healed over some and my blisters have healed.  I think I'll schedule a massage or something for my feet and try to make it up to them. I use a foam roller on my legs and it makes them happy, so now I need to make my feel happy again.  

Happy running!

Flying Pig Marathon Race Report

As promised, here is my race report!

My morning for the Flying Pig Marathon started at 4:30am.  The race started at 6:30am but I needed time to get dressed, eat breakfast, double check my stuff for my bib, gels, inhaler, and headphones, then make the 40 minute drive to downtown, park, and find our corrals.  It also took a little bit longer to get ready because we were coordinating when Red's mom and sister Tam would see us on the course to cheer and also try to get them in multiple spots to see Red, Me, and his other sister Sarah.  Originally we had finish times that would have spread us out by an hour between the three of us.  My dream time was 4 hours or less, Red was hoping for something between 4:20-4:30, and Sara was aiming for 5 hours.  Red came the closest with getting his marathon time at 4:46.  Meanwhile, the start of the morning was uneventful which was nice.  We quickly found parking and made our way to the corrals and commenced standing in line waiting for port-o-pots.

The race started at 6:30 and it took us about 8 minutes to get to the starting line from our corral.  The weather was decidedly warmer than in years past and I tried to make a plan of drinking more Gatorade earlier in the race than normal.  The last 3 times I have done the Flying Pig I had only ran the Half Marathon and it was normally raining, cold, or both.  This Sunday it was hot, humid, and had some of the clearest bluest skies ever.  Normally I love a nice clear blue sky, but not when we are running on a stretch of highway for 6 miles with no shade and no one really cheering.  Red and I started out the race with the idea that he was going to pace me at about a 10 minute mile to loosen up my legs and keep me from going out too fast.  I have a horrible habit of flying out of the start and weaving in and out of people like it's my job, it normally then bites me later in the race and kills whatever time I had gained earlier.  Well this time I had a plan and I tried very very hard to stick to it.  I stayed right with Red, my human metronome, and didn't try to make him reel me in every little bit, and things worked well for the first few miles.  I pointed out that since it was so warm that we should be drinking more Gatorade since we were sweating like crazy.  The fact that I pointed that out at mile 5 should have been a strong indication that I should also replenish my body with water, my brain didn't make the connection at the time but afterward it could have had a stronger impact on my race than I realized.  We took our gels at mile 4.5 and migrated onward both feeling great and enjoying the weather, the volunteers, and just running in general.  Finally around mile 10 or so I was getting "froggy" as one friend put it, and started pulling away from Red.  We had talked about him pacing me for the first 9 miles, so to pull away at mile 10 would have been ok except I had just told him I wanted to run the entire first half with him.  Hmmm...well he told me to go ahead and go on since I was running down hill so fast and he didn't want to push it that much that soon.  So I went ahead and was feeling great!  Then I realized that we were decidedly not done with the hills yet and Red caught back up to me.  We continued to play leap frog until about mile 15 where I would break away on the down hill portions, then he would catch up on the up hill portions.  I love running downhill, but Red is champion when it comes to climbing up hill!  Finally we reached a hill around mile 15 where I caught back up to him and he told me to go on because he needed to take 30 seconds and walk, that was fine.  I continued on and looked at my watch and realized that it could be possible for me to still hit my 4 hour mark if I picked it up a notch or two.

Up until that point we were set at a great pace to come in around a 4:30 or so marathon, which was not what i had planned.  I had the great idea that at mile 15 after taking a gel and dumping water on my head, that picking up the pace would totally work and I could cruise in at around 4 hours or at least get a new PR. I'm not sure what number of mistake this was but it was a terrible idea.  I couldn't figure out how to make myself go too much faster though without losing motivation so I decided that I needed to change something.  For nearly every race I have the same play list on my ipod.  It's not the exact same, but quite similar.  I am greatly motivated by music so I decided that if I wanted to change my pace I needed to motivate and change my music so I switched to Pandora on my phone.  That worked!  It helped me move forward and pick up my pace and bounce along just happily listening to something different.  Well now that I had fueled my spirit I really should have fueled my body so it could keep up with my positive thinking and positive attitude.

I had pretty much only been drinking Gatorade and wearing the water, I should have tried to drink more water instead of wearing it.  I realized around mile 16 or 17 that my stomach was grumpy and I became scared of what to put into it since I still had 10 miles left in the race.  About mile 17 is when my race started to come undone.  My stomach was upset, I knew I had a bad blister on the inside of my right foot and it was making me run funny, and my legs were getting tight.  By mile 18 I needed to slow down and let the 4:30 pace group pass me, which irritated me for quite a while.  I had been using them as my carrot to stay in front of them but meh.  After the 4:30 pace group passed me I decided that I just needed to stretch a bit then I would keep them in my sights.  This worked for the next 3 miles or so but then it was all down hill from there.  Mile 20 I was really struggling to keep the pace group in my sight and by mile 21 my idea of staying anywhere near them evaporated.  My legs were seizing and I was hot, really hot, I just didn't know it at the time.  I was wearing as much water as I could at every water station, I had stopped drinking so much Gatorade because I thought it was the source of my grumpy stomach, and was really focusing on keeping my legs moving because they just got worse the more I slowed down.  By mile 22 Red had closed the 5 minute gap we had between us and surprised me by running next to me all of the sudden.  I had no idea he was next to me until I just started looking around and looked right at him.  It was quite nice to see him smiling and asking how I was doing because from miles 17-25 there really weren't that many people cheering or much of anything to look at, so seeing his smiling face was a great pick-me-up.  He asked how I was doing and I pointed out that I had started running 3/4 of a mile then walking about 1/4 mile and that was my goal for the rest of the race.  He said he knew I was walking since he caught me, but our walk breaks were opposite of each other and I was walking slower than he was during the breaks.  We hung out for the next couple of miles and he tried to help me stretch out my angry seizing legs and we just enjoyed jogging/walking/shuffling until about mile 24.  I took a gel at 23 or so and started to feel better, but I knew that I was just holding Red back.  Normally if I'm hurting he stays with me during races, or I stay with him when he's hurting.  Whenever he starts to slow down during a race he tells me to move on, etc. etc. etc, well this time it was my turn to tell him to migrate onward.  My IT band was almost completely seized up, my hamstrings were ticked off beyond compare, and I was bonking hard and taking two gels back to back was only scratching the surface.

The ticked off band.

Red was still doing great, he wasn't sprinting away, but he wasn't cramping or feeling bleh, so I told him to go ahead at mile 24 because I was only able to jog about 100 - 200 yards without having to stop and work on my IT band.  So the next two miles I ran by myself again and finally crossed the finish line in 4:51, almost an hour over what I wanted to be.  After I crossed the finish my legs were shaking like crazy, I was so tired I wanted to cry but I couldn't, and another one of the many awesome volunteers came over to check on me.  Something I learned at the finish of a race is to not tell the medic/volunteers that you want to sit down.  If you do then you get a one way ticket to the med tent.  Nuts. The medic volunteers were awesome though so I was not grumpy or upset at all about them wheeling me away.  Since it was so hot they were being extra cautious about anyone that said they had cramping, felt cold, or just didn't feel well.  I was taken to a cot where I was told to lay down and let someone stretch me while I was also told to drink two more bottles of watered down gatorade, as if I hadn't drank enough of that already.  Apparently I needed it though because the only way you get out of the med tent is if you can 1) walk without cramping and 2) go pee.

I downed the first Gatorade like it was nothing while one of the most awesome people on the planet, a complete stranger, stretched my legs to try and get the tightness our of my ticked off muscles.  She was a physical therapist from Children's Hospital who volunteered to help people out on her Sunday off.  I also had two nurses who kept talking to me, checking my vitals, and insisting that I drink...a lot.  I wasn't nearly as bad off as the other people in the tent, but I certainly appreciated their help all the same!  I was finally released and was able to walk like a fairly normal post-marathon human being.  I learned some lessons during this race and as beat up and cranky as I was during/after the race I am already attempting to plan when I will run my next marathon so I can attempt to get some kind of redemption for the Flying Pig Marathon.  To know some of the things I learned during my marathon check them our here, from my last blog.

Happy running!

Lessons Learned in Flying Pig Marathon

Ok, so I ran the Pig today and to say things didn't go as planned would be the understatement of the year.  I had goals of being under 4 hours, maybe pushing super hard and hitting 3:45!  That went way out the window.  I came in at a blistering 4:51:20, not exactly what I had planned.  I will write the race report later this week but right now I thought I would share a few things that I learned during this marathon.

1. If the race course is within an hour of my house and I know it is a hard course, I should probably try to run the actual course, or as close to it as I can, at least one time.  I did run with Mojo running and we did a little bit of the course, but there were a few "hills" I was not aware of.  There was at least one, maybe closer to three, where I saw them in the distance and some not so nice words came out of my mouth because I didn't know those walls existed.
2. Do not drive from Cincinnati, to Bellefontaine, to Bowling Green, then back to Cincinnati, all within 24 hours the day before a race.  Horrible idea.
3. Drink lots of water the day before a race.  I used to be great at this but lately I have severely slacked.  The last two races that I've done I know I needed more water.  It didn't help that today was crazy hot, but I still didn't drink nearly enough yesterday and paid for it dearly today.
4. Drink water at every aid station and dump water on my head during hot races, just dumping water on my head for 5 miles doesn't cut it.
5. EAT!!! I had 6 gels for the race today, I dropped one around mile 2 so I really only had 5 but still.  I ate one at 4.5, one around 10, and another around 15.  Seems like I should eat another between 18-20 right?  Wrong.  I didn't eat one until mile 25 because I thought my stomach was going to revolt, turned out it was grumpy because I was hungry and eating the gel made it feel slightly better, so I ate the other one at the next water stop a half mile later.
6. Pacing.  This isn't something I learned to do, but it's something I again realize that I need to learn to do.  I get fatastic ideas in my head about what I think I can pull off and use awesome positive talk to make myself run faster for a couple miles, then I die for the rest of the race.  I need to learn to pace the entire time!
7. The Flying Pig has a wonderfully organized race and they really do their best to take care of the runners.  They knew it was going to be hot and that people would be suffering, so they staffed the event more than adequately with volunteer medics, volunteers, and water.  I know everyone was grateful for all of their help, support, and services!

So those are just a few things that I learned.  Happy running!

Healing, Pictures, and Mohawks :D

So I have found a couple of blogs I really like and I was thinking how I enjoy their new posts when I realized that I haven't been posting hardly at all!  I have managed to screw up how to put pictures in my posts but I think it's remedied, at least I'm hoping so, because I still haven't put up the Tough Mudder photos that I took of me and Red on the bus to and from the "challenge".  

Pre Tough Mudder, nice and clean, dry, and WARM :D

Post Tough Mudder.  Decidedly not clean though.  We changed our clothes in order to fend off hypothermia since our other clothes were soaking wet, muddy, and FREEZING.  I really do not like to be cold so getting warm was a must.  Oh, and you'll notice we are both branded on our foreheads, they claim it's so they can identify our bodies afterwards but it's mostly because your face is just about the only thing that isn't caked in mud when you finish. 

Red also was a good sport and shaved his head into a mohawk for the challenge!  Bic razors was doing a fund raiser type deal where for every person that shaved their head, got a mohawk, or some other ridiculous designed-non-traditional-I'm-not-sure-I-can-go-to-work-haircut Bic would donate money to the Wounded Warrior Project.  When we heard that announcement I simply goaded Red into shaving his head by standing next to him going "Do it! Do it! Do it!", so he did. When we got home though he trimmed the top down so it was less fluffy cabbage patch kid, but it's still cool!

Slightly less fluffy, but nice side view of my new favorite hair style for him!

So it is taking Red's hair a little while to grow back out, I'm not complaining though, but it also took us quite a while to heal from the "challenge".  Red actually went to a doctor considering an MRI for his knees after he plummeted 8 feet landing straight legged from the "Berlin Wall", and I was beautifully bruised.  It looked like I was beat repeatedly with a baseball bat on my legs, arms, and a couple places on my sides.  I don't remember hitting my sides but meh.

This is about a week and a half Post Tough Mudder.  First off, I don't normally bruise, second off, I usually heal quickly.  Ouch.  

So I promised a better "Race Report" for the Tough Mudder, well Red beat me to it and I like all of his pictures that he found.  Take a seat and enjoy reading some of our "obstacles"/torture devices that we participated in!  We have decided that we will most likely do another Tough Mudder BUT it will definitely be in the summer, some place warm, and I will figure out a way to deal with not getting hypothermia so the race will be more enjoyable!  Enjoy!

Read Red's Tough Mudder Race Report here.