Ok, so I just realized that when I wrote my last post that I was a little off, I think....I know of someone else that is doing Ironman Florida and she says she only has 3 more "hard" weeks of training before taper, and I swear I just counted 4 "hard" weeks left and two weeks of taper...which brings me to the D'oh moment. Last week I thought I only had 6 weeks left, but now I think I have 6 weeks left. I officially have no idea how many weeks there lol. I'm pretty sure now is 6 weeks out and I'm loving it! I've had a few longer runs lately and I feel great the entire time.
For those who actually read my blog, you will remember that I went into survival mode and had a cramp-tastic marathon in May for the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. Since then I have been working on figuring out what on eart went wrong, and making sure that it doesn't happen again! I am fairly certain that I have it figured out, at least under control. Lately I've been running 11+ miles and not having any issues. During my route I have a water fountain that is glorious because it is 4 miles from my house, but not glorious because I can't keep moving when I need a drink, duh. This is how I think I've found my problem, when I pause at the drinking fountain I can feel my hamstrings tightening up and getting angry. I then wander around a little bit and don't try stretching too much, and everything is better. I start running again, nice and easy, then work back up to pace, and so far no problems. I can tell that I need more electrolytes during my runs because by the time I get home I love water yes, but I really want something else. I've been drinking my GU Brew Recovery as soon as I'm done as well and so far it seems to be working great! It tastes amazing and I haven't had sore/dead legs the next day. I forgot to drink it after a 10 mile run and went to the UC football game, I couldn't figure out why I was so tired, then it dawned on me that I didn't drink my recovery drink! It could be a coincidence, but it was proof enough for me, so I now swear by it and try my hardest to not skip it after hard workouts.
In other news, there isn't much to report. A couple weeks ago I logged over 166 miles for the week, and didn't break down!! Yeah!! The next week though I picked up crazy random hours and only logged roughly 45 miles for the week. Boo!! It was my own fault for agreeing to randomly work days AND nights instead of just one or the other. Thanks to that brilliance I had the most messed up sleep schedule on the planet, which also effected my time and ability to actually trian. This week I am working 10 more hours than I did last week, BUT they are all roughly the same. I go into work every evening at 7p and my only variable is what time I get off, some days I get off at 11p and others I don't get off until 7a the next morning. This means that during the day I can actually get things accomplished, like cleaning, sleeping, and TRAINING! So far I'm off to a good start. It's only Tuesday and I've already ran 11.5 miles and swam 2700 yards. I know I should be doing more this late in the training, but I'll take what I can get. I'm hoping to get out on my bike tomorrow, or I may break down and get on the trainer for an hour or so, because it's supposed to rain all week. We'll see what happens!
Happy training!
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Sunday, September 16, 2012
6 weeks out! Eek and Awesome!
Well Ironman Florida training is amping up quite nicely. Last time I wrote I talked about bonking and hating my ride, well things are a little different now. Saturday I rode 95 miles with Red and didn't want to kill anything!! We stopped way more than I originally wanted to, but it worked out for the best. I ended up eating about 1,500 calories during the whole bike ride, that's more than some peopel eat all day and I did it in one bike ride. The funny part, I still lost weight. Yep, even with cooler temperatures, setting my watch to remind me to drink every 15 minutes, and Red making sure I was drinking more, I still lost 2 pounds during our excursion. Meh, it happens.
On an awesome note I have found a Pandora station that I love, discovered that the Xenia Station has free hot dogs at noon on Saturday, and have made a running route that is rather enjoyable and already has it's own water! My new Pandora runnign station of choice has become Queen, not only does it regularly play Bohemian Rhapsody, one of my all time favorite songs, but it also plays a ton of songs that I never realized help me relax and run better. I was listening to my old stand bys for running with Pandora and was pretty bored with my selections. I realize that they are trying to play similar songs, but once I hear the same selection 3 times in a 3 hour period, I'm shot and annoyed. I switched to Disney even just for a change of pace, but discovered that it only plays bout 10 different song selections. So during mile 2 of an 8 mile run I decided to go for Queen and see what happened. I love it!!! So that will become my new reliable regular running station. If anyone has tried the iheart radio app for their ipod or android let me know if you get better service than I have. I can normally make it through about 5 minutes but then it buffers or something for about 10 minutes until the next song starts, or commercial. I thought the radio would be a good change, but apparently I was a little off. The route I was running when I made this discovery is my new go to route for longer distances. I used to be reluctant to make a route starting from home that was longer than 5 miles, simply because of the lack of water. But now I have a route that has a drinking fountain at mile 4, which works out perfectly for my 8 mile run. I'm usually ready for more water by the time I get home, but it's better than attempting 8 miles with no water. The only downside to my new route is I have to cross 2 overpasses for 75. The one on the north end of my run isn't too terribly busy, but the one closer to my house definitely keeps me on my toes, not every one is looking for a tiny runner when they're getting on and off the highway. So far I've played human frogger and survived, so I'm hoping to keep it up, at least until I find a better route.
Now back to the free food. I love free food. If you say you don't like free food, you're lying. During our ride yesterday Red and I stopped at the Xenia Station to fill up our bottles. While we were wandering in and out of the bathrooms and looking for the drinking fountain a nice lady asked if we would like a hotdog. At first I said no because I thought they wanted money, then Red asked me what time it was because they were free hot dogs after 12:00. It was a quarter til 1 so FREE FOOD! Yes, we turned our 3 minute stop into a 15 minute stop to enjoy some free hot dogs. We hopped back on our bikes after our snack, went the 20 mile round trip to Yellow Springs and back, and had another hot dog when we arrived. I thoroughly enjoyed our new snack. I had no idea that eating hot dogs during a huge bike session would work out, turns out that it was a welcome change in my nutrition! Solid food as opposed to gels and gummy chomps. Also, it was a pleasant surprise!
This week is another solid week of training, where we will definitely go into the triple digits of mileage, but it's going to be fun. I can feel my body getting stronger, and I can run faster for longer periods of time. I'm not thinking "I'm dead, I went out too fast" at the beginning of every run, now I'm at mile 8 or 9 thinking all I need is maybe some water and a gel. I'm getting excited about Ironman more and more every week, but I'm also getting nervous. I'm worried my running mileage won't be enough, or I'll get dropped in the swim, or something stupid. Oddly enough, I'm the most confident about the bike now. It used to be my least favorite thing and my most dreaded weakness of any triathlon, now I think it could potentially be my strength, or at least not my undoing.
Back to work! Happy training!
On an awesome note I have found a Pandora station that I love, discovered that the Xenia Station has free hot dogs at noon on Saturday, and have made a running route that is rather enjoyable and already has it's own water! My new Pandora runnign station of choice has become Queen, not only does it regularly play Bohemian Rhapsody, one of my all time favorite songs, but it also plays a ton of songs that I never realized help me relax and run better. I was listening to my old stand bys for running with Pandora and was pretty bored with my selections. I realize that they are trying to play similar songs, but once I hear the same selection 3 times in a 3 hour period, I'm shot and annoyed. I switched to Disney even just for a change of pace, but discovered that it only plays bout 10 different song selections. So during mile 2 of an 8 mile run I decided to go for Queen and see what happened. I love it!!! So that will become my new reliable regular running station. If anyone has tried the iheart radio app for their ipod or android let me know if you get better service than I have. I can normally make it through about 5 minutes but then it buffers or something for about 10 minutes until the next song starts, or commercial. I thought the radio would be a good change, but apparently I was a little off. The route I was running when I made this discovery is my new go to route for longer distances. I used to be reluctant to make a route starting from home that was longer than 5 miles, simply because of the lack of water. But now I have a route that has a drinking fountain at mile 4, which works out perfectly for my 8 mile run. I'm usually ready for more water by the time I get home, but it's better than attempting 8 miles with no water. The only downside to my new route is I have to cross 2 overpasses for 75. The one on the north end of my run isn't too terribly busy, but the one closer to my house definitely keeps me on my toes, not every one is looking for a tiny runner when they're getting on and off the highway. So far I've played human frogger and survived, so I'm hoping to keep it up, at least until I find a better route.
Now back to the free food. I love free food. If you say you don't like free food, you're lying. During our ride yesterday Red and I stopped at the Xenia Station to fill up our bottles. While we were wandering in and out of the bathrooms and looking for the drinking fountain a nice lady asked if we would like a hotdog. At first I said no because I thought they wanted money, then Red asked me what time it was because they were free hot dogs after 12:00. It was a quarter til 1 so FREE FOOD! Yes, we turned our 3 minute stop into a 15 minute stop to enjoy some free hot dogs. We hopped back on our bikes after our snack, went the 20 mile round trip to Yellow Springs and back, and had another hot dog when we arrived. I thoroughly enjoyed our new snack. I had no idea that eating hot dogs during a huge bike session would work out, turns out that it was a welcome change in my nutrition! Solid food as opposed to gels and gummy chomps. Also, it was a pleasant surprise!
This week is another solid week of training, where we will definitely go into the triple digits of mileage, but it's going to be fun. I can feel my body getting stronger, and I can run faster for longer periods of time. I'm not thinking "I'm dead, I went out too fast" at the beginning of every run, now I'm at mile 8 or 9 thinking all I need is maybe some water and a gel. I'm getting excited about Ironman more and more every week, but I'm also getting nervous. I'm worried my running mileage won't be enough, or I'll get dropped in the swim, or something stupid. Oddly enough, I'm the most confident about the bike now. It used to be my least favorite thing and my most dreaded weakness of any triathlon, now I think it could potentially be my strength, or at least not my undoing.
Back to work! Happy training!
Monday, September 10, 2012
Learning curve with nutrition
Anyone that knows me knows that I eat A LOT. My friends in Evansville used to make fun of me because on our way to dinner I would be eating a granola bar or some kind of snack while walking across campus. University of Evansville's ENTIRE campus took up barely one city block, yet I would be eating a snack on the way to dinner, go figure. I still eat a ton, I have a ridiculously high metabolism thanks to all of the running and nonsense that I do on a daily basis, hence the giant caloric intake. This high requirement for calories does pose for a small drawback though. When I'm training I have to carry my own nutrition in my pockets or a running belt. Normally for a half marathon I'll eat 1 or 2 gels, a full I'll eat anywhere from 3-7 depending on the conditions. I've noticed lately that I am MUCH happier when biking when I eat roughly 200+ calories/hour. I used to eat less than that and wanted to kill someone part way through the ride, and usually ended up being a lousy biking partner. This year though I've increased my intake and have noticed that I am not only happier, but biking stronger. I did a 56 mile solo ride a couple of weeks ago, the weather was nice and cool, I went through pretty country roads, enjoyed life, and ended up singing Disney tunes at the top of my lungs the last 15 miles to keep myself entertained. No bonking, no crashing, no nothing. I was a happy midget thoroughly enjoying my bike ride. This past Saturday I did another solo ride and I hated everything. I was hot, I was tired, I was hungry, the path went up hill on roads I didn't particularly care for, cars tried to hit me, and my act of kindness by giving my CO2 cartrige to an older couple with a flat was promptly met by an ill-turned karma of being stung in the butt repeatedly by a trapped bug of some sort. Yep, not a great ride. I strongly believe that probably 90% of my mood could have been better tempered had I taken in more calories and more fluids. When I did my 56 mile ride in cool weather I took in about 800 calories and was as happy as a lark. This past week I called it quits and was mad at the world at 50 miles and finished my should have been 75 mile ride at 66 miles. I would have stopped at 50 but I was still 16 miles from my car. For that great ride I took in just shy of 1000 calories, but the temperature was about 15 degrees warmer, the terrain had a lot more uphill, there was a serious head wind for about 20 miles thanks to the cold front moving in, and my metabolism was already jump started with an 800m swim that morning. After that wonderfulness I have decided to go back to the drawing board and think of ways to not make me a miserable biking companion, not hate everyone around me, and basically be a fat kid on a bike by eating constantly.
I like my gels, the Gu chomps aren't bad, and the Stinger waffles are good too, but I'm getting a feeling that they aren't enough. I'm looking into different ways to get more calories in my drink so we'll see what happens. My current bike bottles are normally filled with 1 bottle of water and the other bottle of electrolytes but contain no calories. My new plan is to fill one bottle with electrolytes and the other bottle with gatorade of form, something with calories. I'm also looking at Skratch labs, it's an all natural drink mix with calories that I've been reading about, and also looking at EFS mix stuff. They all do essentially the same thing, just some sit with different people better than others. Ironman Florida is now 7 weeks away, so I guess the time to figure out what works best for me is now instead of later. I'm also considering Red Bull for T2 going into the run for a little caffeine boost. I read in a couple different blogs where people swear by drinking Red Bull coming out of T2 so we'll see. I already love the stuff so what could go wrong? Famous last words huh? This week I have a lot of running and swimming on tap so I can test out my Red Bull theory, then this weekend I have a 90 mile ride on Saturday which should be a PERFECT time to figure out some more nutrition. I'm going to attempt some of the EFS mix, try to take in at least 200 calories/hour of food on top of my drinks, and see what other nonsense I can come up with. I'm considering plantain chips to get a crunchy solid food in there and just to change up the texture since most of my calories are in a liquid or gooey state. I'll let you know how this goes! If it's an epic failure, at least I have 7 weeks to figure it out right? Seven weeks DOES NOT sound that long at all. Here goes nothing! :D
Happy training :D
I like my gels, the Gu chomps aren't bad, and the Stinger waffles are good too, but I'm getting a feeling that they aren't enough. I'm looking into different ways to get more calories in my drink so we'll see what happens. My current bike bottles are normally filled with 1 bottle of water and the other bottle of electrolytes but contain no calories. My new plan is to fill one bottle with electrolytes and the other bottle with gatorade of form, something with calories. I'm also looking at Skratch labs, it's an all natural drink mix with calories that I've been reading about, and also looking at EFS mix stuff. They all do essentially the same thing, just some sit with different people better than others. Ironman Florida is now 7 weeks away, so I guess the time to figure out what works best for me is now instead of later. I'm also considering Red Bull for T2 going into the run for a little caffeine boost. I read in a couple different blogs where people swear by drinking Red Bull coming out of T2 so we'll see. I already love the stuff so what could go wrong? Famous last words huh? This week I have a lot of running and swimming on tap so I can test out my Red Bull theory, then this weekend I have a 90 mile ride on Saturday which should be a PERFECT time to figure out some more nutrition. I'm going to attempt some of the EFS mix, try to take in at least 200 calories/hour of food on top of my drinks, and see what other nonsense I can come up with. I'm considering plantain chips to get a crunchy solid food in there and just to change up the texture since most of my calories are in a liquid or gooey state. I'll let you know how this goes! If it's an epic failure, at least I have 7 weeks to figure it out right? Seven weeks DOES NOT sound that long at all. Here goes nothing! :D
Happy training :D
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
It's Been A While....
So, it's been almost two months since my last post. I think I'm slacking just a tad bit. I have a good excuse though I promise! July was a busy month with all the wedding-ing and honeymoney-ing that I had going on. My bridesmaids were awesome and started trickling in the week before my wedding, then the actual wedding happened, then lots of traveling/hiking/nonsense for about 2 weeks then back to work. I picked up a bunch of hours to make up for the fact that I hadn't worked in nearly 3 weeks and then we had to get back into severe training mode, so that's the long and short as to why this blog has essentially been abandoned for the last couple months.
Run down of the wedding. AWESOME bridesmaids :D Sam (my seester), Rowena (essentially my seester aka best friend since 6th grade), Danielle (cool roommate from California), and Eliza (cool roommate from Missouri all came reading and rearing to go for our adventures and craziness for the next few days. Danielle and Eliza weren't technically my roommates, but I took over their room so often that I just claim them as my own anyway :P. Meanwhile, I was told I was weird because I went nearly the entire time of the wedding prep and wedding without a melt down. I did, however, have a quick melt down thanks to a certain someone deciding that they needed an invitation on a silver platter handed to them or else they weren't coming to the wedding. They did not get their requested royalty delivered invite, but they did get an invite nonetheless, but threw a tantrum and didn't tell me they weren't coming until I asked them the night of the rehearsal dinner. They then proceeded to tell me they weren't coming because they essentially weren't getting their way and what they felt was their role in the whole event and that I wasn't special and shouldn't get special treatment in my wedding. This person also went on to upset and insult my sister, which made me pleased as punch, so yes. That caused a small melt down, which was understandable. ANYWAY. After all that everything went off without a hitch and it was all beautiful, fun, and splendid. The reception was a ton of fun, great food, and lots and lots and lots of friends! I loved it!
After the wedding shenanigans we met a lot of our out of town guests on Sunday for breakfast then started heading our separate ways. Monday and Tuesday Red still had to work so we didn't leave for our crazy honeymoon until Tuesday afternoon. We flew into Vegas late at night then drove to Zion National Park Wednesday morning. Hung out there a few days, hiked the Narrows, 16 miles in a gorgeous/dangerous canyon, in one day. Went to Bryce for a day and a half, did a 4 hour horseback ride while we were there. I love horses so this was my favorite part, Red hates horses so this was his least favorite part. :D We then wandered on over to the Grand Canyon and stayed at the North Rim, highly recommend, until we hiked Rim2Rim in one day, not recommended. The last 4 miles of Rim2Rim are RIDICULOUS, essentially straight up and is incredibly rough after you've done 20+miles before this climb. We spent the night at the South Rim which was amazing after camping for the better part of two weeks before taking a shuttle back to the North Rim. We were going to stay there again, but our cabin was like a scene from the movie Arachnophobia, so we chose to start our drive back to Vegas a night early. We ended up sleeping for a whopping 6 hours in St. George before continuing on to Vegas for one last night. We saw Ka and the Blue Man Group before heading back to good ol' Ohio, yippee. We landed at 11:00am on Saturday and I had to work 7p-7a both Saturday and Sunday night, no me gusta.
Since then we have been busting out the training and getting back into shape for our Ironman. We are now a terrifying 8 weeks out from D-day and hitting the ground running. The past 4 weeks have been 100+ mile weeks for run-bike-swim, and that looks to be the M.O. for the forseeable future. This Friday I have a 6 hour training day which FORTUNATELY I have picked up a training buddy for the last hour. My friend from work jumped on the idea of cheering/dragging/jogging me through my last 6 miles of running AFTER I bike 75 miles and swim a mile. yep, that's going to be a rough day, but it'll have a refreshing ending of finally having something else to listen to other than my headphones and my body flipping me the patella. I have to say that I actually do enjoy my training and am getting incredibly excited/nervous about my race. This is going to be amazing, challenging, and insane, but tons of fun no matter what way you look at it. My goal is to finish strong and not feel like death when I cross the finish line. Red and I are both hoping to beat each other but will only feel good about beating each other so long as the other one isn't curled up in the fetal position in a ditch. Red is hoping that my short attention span is my undoing, while I hope that well...Red reads my blog so I'll just let him guess :D
Happy training! I'll try to post more frequently and keep everyone updated on the latest and greatest sweatfest known as Ironman training!
Run down of the wedding. AWESOME bridesmaids :D Sam (my seester), Rowena (essentially my seester aka best friend since 6th grade), Danielle (cool roommate from California), and Eliza (cool roommate from Missouri all came reading and rearing to go for our adventures and craziness for the next few days. Danielle and Eliza weren't technically my roommates, but I took over their room so often that I just claim them as my own anyway :P. Meanwhile, I was told I was weird because I went nearly the entire time of the wedding prep and wedding without a melt down. I did, however, have a quick melt down thanks to a certain someone deciding that they needed an invitation on a silver platter handed to them or else they weren't coming to the wedding. They did not get their requested royalty delivered invite, but they did get an invite nonetheless, but threw a tantrum and didn't tell me they weren't coming until I asked them the night of the rehearsal dinner. They then proceeded to tell me they weren't coming because they essentially weren't getting their way and what they felt was their role in the whole event and that I wasn't special and shouldn't get special treatment in my wedding. This person also went on to upset and insult my sister, which made me pleased as punch, so yes. That caused a small melt down, which was understandable. ANYWAY. After all that everything went off without a hitch and it was all beautiful, fun, and splendid. The reception was a ton of fun, great food, and lots and lots and lots of friends! I loved it!
After the wedding shenanigans we met a lot of our out of town guests on Sunday for breakfast then started heading our separate ways. Monday and Tuesday Red still had to work so we didn't leave for our crazy honeymoon until Tuesday afternoon. We flew into Vegas late at night then drove to Zion National Park Wednesday morning. Hung out there a few days, hiked the Narrows, 16 miles in a gorgeous/dangerous canyon, in one day. Went to Bryce for a day and a half, did a 4 hour horseback ride while we were there. I love horses so this was my favorite part, Red hates horses so this was his least favorite part. :D We then wandered on over to the Grand Canyon and stayed at the North Rim, highly recommend, until we hiked Rim2Rim in one day, not recommended. The last 4 miles of Rim2Rim are RIDICULOUS, essentially straight up and is incredibly rough after you've done 20+miles before this climb. We spent the night at the South Rim which was amazing after camping for the better part of two weeks before taking a shuttle back to the North Rim. We were going to stay there again, but our cabin was like a scene from the movie Arachnophobia, so we chose to start our drive back to Vegas a night early. We ended up sleeping for a whopping 6 hours in St. George before continuing on to Vegas for one last night. We saw Ka and the Blue Man Group before heading back to good ol' Ohio, yippee. We landed at 11:00am on Saturday and I had to work 7p-7a both Saturday and Sunday night, no me gusta.
Since then we have been busting out the training and getting back into shape for our Ironman. We are now a terrifying 8 weeks out from D-day and hitting the ground running. The past 4 weeks have been 100+ mile weeks for run-bike-swim, and that looks to be the M.O. for the forseeable future. This Friday I have a 6 hour training day which FORTUNATELY I have picked up a training buddy for the last hour. My friend from work jumped on the idea of cheering/dragging/jogging me through my last 6 miles of running AFTER I bike 75 miles and swim a mile. yep, that's going to be a rough day, but it'll have a refreshing ending of finally having something else to listen to other than my headphones and my body flipping me the patella. I have to say that I actually do enjoy my training and am getting incredibly excited/nervous about my race. This is going to be amazing, challenging, and insane, but tons of fun no matter what way you look at it. My goal is to finish strong and not feel like death when I cross the finish line. Red and I are both hoping to beat each other but will only feel good about beating each other so long as the other one isn't curled up in the fetal position in a ditch. Red is hoping that my short attention span is my undoing, while I hope that well...Red reads my blog so I'll just let him guess :D
Happy training! I'll try to post more frequently and keep everyone updated on the latest and greatest sweatfest known as Ironman training!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)