Open water swims, German Shepherds, and heat!

So yesterday was the first real brick workout of the season that included an open water swim.  I am not a huge fan of open water swims, I suck at sighting, and I don't like not being able to see in the water.  I need to get a lot better at open water swims though because I go from swimming 1:20 100's to 2-3 min 100's.  No me guesta.  I would probably be a lot faster if I could swim in a straight line though.  Red and I went swimming at Caesar's Creek, it's a lake, I didn't name it, and he says "just sight off of me".  Sure!  That sounds like a great idea!  Ok, well I put him and the bouys on my left because I breath on my left.  This worked for about 20 yards when I was like "hmm...I can still see them but they seem to be getting smaller." Yep, that's because I was swimming off at an angle to the right.  Ok, I'll correct a little bit, well then Red is laughing because I apparently swam in front of him, remember he was on my far left, and nearly ran into a bouy which was even farther left.  Red was cracking up watching me swim zig zags all over the swimming area.  We finally turn around and I start heading out and attempt to sight off of Red again.  Yet another fail.  I almost swam onto the beach! So, a long story short I suck at sighting and need A LOT of work!  On a positive note I was able to successfully get my new wet suit on and not feel like I was going to die or feel weird!

After the swim we changed out of the wet suits, humerous, then grabbed our bike stuff and headed out. The route was really really nice and I thoroughly enjoyed it!  Lots of country roads, pretty houses, and rolling hills.  We found a nice ridiculous hill that as soon as I looked at it I had a roll of expletives coming out of my mouth and even more foul thoughts in my head.  Once we were to the top though it wasn't too bad.  The most exciting parts about our ride were when Red threw a water bottle at me and an impromptu sprint from a giant german shepherd.  Ok, Red didn't really throw a water bottle at me, but his bike and water bottle cage did!  We hit a bump and his rear water bottle decided that it wanted to land in my lap/the grass next to me.  We eneded up stopping and getting the water bottle, but I still found it humerous that he thought my cages were too loose and he's the one that lost the bottle.  Later we ran into a group riding for diabetes, at least that's what their jerseys said, and they were pretty cool.  We rounded a corner though and Red was in the lead, therefore he became the prime target of a giant black german shepherd.  The dog's owner was mowing the lawn when Fido decided that he wanted to come bounding after us, maybe charging is a better word.  Bounding sounds like he wanted to play and I'm positive that was the last thing on this dog's mind. 

Yes the dog chasing Red had a muzzle, but the dog was all black and very ticked off!



After that excitement we finished our bike ride and decided to go on our run.  It was about 93 degrees and the route we went had very little in the way of shade.  Initially things weren't too bad but then it was very very hot!  Once I built up my momentum and my legs decided to agree with me then running wasn't too bad.  I was actually enjoying it but then we got to a shaded section and decided to stop for a minute.  Once we stopped there was very little in the way of getting started back up for a while.  It took us 35 minutes to do 3.1 miles. I completely forgot to stop my watch when we were in the shade for a couple of minutes but I'm pretty positive that in the best situation we still averaged 10min/mile.  Meh.  Not great but considering the heat and the fact that we swam and biked beforehand I'll accept it.  I'm hoping that next time we can improve on that though!

Swim: 1/2 mile

Bike: 28.5 miles

Run: 3.1 miles

Happy Training!

I need to learn to schedule better

So....I suck at scheduling my life.  Two weeks ago I only had to work 2 days during the week and I cleaned the house and was fairly productive on that front.  I also did a lot of training and felt like I got a decent amount of stuff accomplished, except none of it was really "top priority".  Yep, I didn't do a whole lot in the realm of wedding planning, training planning, Master's program application, GRE studying, or any quilt projects.  Last week I did a few more things that were slightly more important than cleaning and such, but not a whole lot.  I worked 32 hours as opposed to 24 which was nice, but I just trained a lot and worked.  When did I choose to make wedding appointments, take the GRE, add more training, and study?  The week I work 41 sporadic hours. Yep. Not my best move.

Working 41 hours isn't that bad, it's the timing that kills everything else during the week.  I work third which means that during the day I'm sleeping and I'm awake most the time at night.  On days I don't work I'm usually napping for the next time I work, or frantically trying to get stuff done around the house.  This week my schedule was a little on the retarded side, I made it so I shouldn't complain.  I worked  Thursday, Friday, Saturday, slept most of Sunday, ran errands, slept in Monday, work Monday night (now), then will sleep on Tuesday, go for a bike ride and go to bed early.  I then work on Wednesday where I will have to nap part way through the day, I'm off all of Thursday but I will be sleeping most of it because I worked Wednesday night.  Oh, and I won't sleep all of it because I am taking my flower girl to get her dress in Dayton Thursday at 11am, I get off work at 7:30am, she better behave or else this could be disasterous.  After that I get to go home and sleep until Red gets home and then we're heading to the jeweler to pick out our wedding rings.  Friday I take the GRE at noon then I picked up 7-11 that night where I need to go to bed early because Red and I are getting up at 7am the next day to go to Caesar's Creek for a long S-B-R brick.  I have to make it a fast brick though because I then work all weekend, Sat, Sun, Mon again.  This was definitely not thought through. 

Ok, well that was my little rant.  On a more positive note I am getting much faster on my bike! I went for a ride with Red and his friend from work Super Steve and I took a turn pulling and kept the pace at 22mph for the whole 2.5 miles!  I know it may not sound like a lot, but I'm proud to be able to pull at all let alone be able to do it at 22mph on my own!  Yesterday Red and I went to the trail with the intention of doing a 50 mile ride.  Well I was grumpy because I was hot and wanted to play at the water park at Kings Island, I'm 4'11" I'm allowed to act like a small child and never grow up, and Red had already done a long work out earlier that morning, so when it came time for my work out I was no longer interested.  Top it off with working the past 3 nights and I was done.  I ended up getting cranky and turning my 50 mile ride into a 10 mile time trial, and actually it wasn't that bad!  I ended up averaging 18.3 all on my little lonesome and that includes the stops at the roads which were every 2 miles, literally, so I'm not upset at that time at all. I know I can do better than that though because I was fighting my Qdoba the whole way because I was silly and thought that it would digest in the 30 minutes from Qdoba to starting the ride at the trail.  Silly midget.  Meh, I was still happy for my average and am ready to attempt to beat it the next time I'm grumpy.  Tomorrow is supposed to be a 40 mile bike whenever I wake up and Red gets off work.  At this moment I'm considering turning it into a mini brick with a 2 mile run after the bike just to shake things up a bit.  We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Happy training!

Holy Keurig Batman!

Ok, well now you know I have a Keurig!  I am 100% positive that my productivity is going up about 100-fold throughout the house BUT my ADD has gone through the roof...SHINY!! Meanwhile.  So this past weekend was more training, as usual, but I was at my mom's house and it was also my Bridal Shower this weekend!  My sister is 5 years younger than me, not too many of her friends are getting married right now so she hasn't been to many (read as any) bridal showers.  She put together a very nice shower with awesome food, fun games, and as always, lots of entertainment.  My sister is HILARIOUS!  She's also incredibly crafty and driven.  When Red finally proposed Sam (sister) didn't give me an option and claimed Maid of Honor right then and there, that was fine I just found it funny how aggressively she took hold of the title and how awesome she has been with it.  I hate planning, Sam is a planning fiend, when I get frustrated with all of this wedding nonsense she is the first one to step up and start looking, reassuring, helping, anything I need.  Well she coordinated a Bridal Shower that involved some rather opposing groups and people who never knew each other.  Everyone got a long peachy, every one was laughing the whole time, and we had some awesome cupcakes and cake that Sam made and decorated.  

Sample of her decorating skills :D

Meanwhile, while my family was organizing the gathering of two families, some ex wives and current girlfriends, friends from out of town, and general shower nonsense, I wasn't supposed to help, or at least that's what I was told.  So the morning of my shower instead of rushing around like they were trying to get everything done, I went for a nice long run around my mom's house.  Her road is open hilly country road, it's quite nice because it's so different from Cincinnati.  I really do not like Cincy, it's far too busy for me and way too crowded.  But either way, going back to my mom's in the middle of no where is a very nice change in scenery!

Part of my stretch of road :D

It makes me happy to run up and down mom's road, around the country blocks, and such.  When most people think of "around the block" they think of sidewalks, lots of houses, and what not. Around here "around the block" is at least 5 miles and 99.9% is farmland scattered with a few houses.  It's glorious!  

The coolest part about running at my mom's is coming home to my Zo pup and playing fetch with her on 5 acres.  She loves all of the extra room to run and just hang out!

The single coolest dog on the planet!  I don't care how cool you think your dog is because you're wrong, mine is the absolute best.  Totally biased but totally right. She had been looking at the camera right before I took the pic but of course moved.

Well after all of this tomfoolery was over I finally showered and was allowed to help set up some of my shower.  Mom, grandma, and Sam had most of it done, but they finally let me help!  Everyone showed up to my shower and the laughs and fun times began!  I received a lot of cool gifts, far more than I ever anticipated getting for a shower, and loved everything and everyone!  I'm getting stuff put away slowly yet surely and my new Keurig and I are becoming the best of friends.  I now have roughly 100 K-cup things of a variety of flavors and I fully intend to try every single one as soon as possible.  I am positive this is why my new resting heart rate is over 100bpm but that's ok, just means I get stuff done faster!  :D  Ok, back to being productive and getting ready to work out today!  I ran yesterday and plan on biking this evening.  I would like to get in the pool sometime but for some reason going to the pool seems to take so much more effort than getting ready to bike or run.  Later!

Happy training!

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!