On the Dark Side of the Moon

Every time you train for something serious, there comes a time when the amount of effort needed feels like its going to bury you, when the world goes dark and other concerns have to fade away. This week, I'm just going to have to keep on throwing on everything I can training-wise and after next week's taper we'll see what sticks and what doesn't. Until then, well, I'll be exhausted!

On the bike today, random bit of song going through my head, I guess this is where my brain feels like my body is at:

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

Bit of trivia to go with that snippet, did you know that Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon remained on the charts for 741 weeks (over fourteen years!), the longest duration of any album in history??

11.5 hours of training in the last 3 days, I'm going to bed now...

Swim Workout: 9-11

This workout is not an easy one. The 11-length segments are all 275's, which can seem pretty long especially if you're trying to push the pace. Tough. If it starts to feel too hard, you can think back to this day 8 years ago and that ought to take your mind off of your own troubles for awhile.


Warm Up

9 Lengths Swim, 11 Lengths Pull
9 Lengths Kick, 11 Lengths Swim


1000 y


Main Set

2 x (
9 Lengths: 3 x 75 Hard @:10
11 Lengths: Distance Pace

9 Lengths: 3 x 75 Descend @ :15
11 Lengths: Distance Race Pace
)
3000 y

9 Lengths: 3 x 75 IM No Free
11 Lengths: Pull


Cool Down:

9 Lengths: Drill 1, 4, 7
11 Lengths: Progressively slower, cooling down

4000 y

Train Like Hell, Taper, Pray

Maybe I should've titled this post "How to train for a half-Ironman in 3 weeks or less", since that's about what I'm facing right now. I took about a week of relatively easy training to recover from my Oly triathlon in August, then last week was eaten up by our usual pre-Labor Day camping extravaganza at Waldo Lake, and now here I am staring at going 70.3 in three weeks.

You might recall that my Oly triathlon didn't do much to reassure me that I am just brimming over with endurance, and in fact I haven't trained in any traditional endurance fashion in several months. No long runs or rides to build up that ol' base that I usually depend upon. So I had to formulate at least some kind of plan of attack and here it is:

Basically, I can sum it up in a nutshell - throw the book at my body for 3.5 weeks with everything I think I can take training-wise, then taper for 10 days and pray. So far, so good.

Week 1: 3 days easy recovery, 1 tempo bike, 1 interval run, 1 "long bike" of 35 miles (ye gawds my butt hurt after 2 hours in the saddle, must rebuild my bike butt!) and 1 "long run" of 7 miles. Summary: Depressing. My 7-mile run was 4.5 minutes slower than the same run done 4 months ago before abandoning my regular endurance regime. I could cry. Okay, no time for that.

Week 2: Whilst camping I had plenty of time for open water swimming and did at least 2 miles a day. That felt great. No, better than great, totally awesome. Went for a trail run, which always restores my joy in running (maybe I should enter a trail marathon or something someday, I love it so much). After getting back home this weekend did a long bike of 45 miles (almost 3 hours, lots and lots of hills), butt didn't hurt as bad but my neck was real stiff at the end. And a long run of 9 miles, which felt actually pretty reasonably good. Used the mile markers on the trail to make sure I held a slow enough pace, close to 10:00, trying to go for endurance not speed at this point.

Now I'm in Week 3, plan is for intervals and tempos in mid-week, and the weekends should look like this:

Week 3: 55 mile bike, 11 mile run
Week 4: 65 mile bike, 13 mile run
Week 5: Taper like heck, pray that my body can absorb all of this quick base building and snap back with a reasonable 70.3 that doesn't feel like I'm dying out there a couple hours into the race. Not sure if I'm nuts or not, but this is the best plan I could come up with.

The Slowest Runner

Read this great piece written by a friend of mine about finishing her first 5k in last place. She's one of the best writers around, and always manages to find a way to bring out the essential truth in any experience:

The Slowest Runner.

FIVE Real Pullups

Yep, I can do five now!!! I could only do two last week, but that was before the crazy 105 pullup workout (with the help of a band - the rubbery kind, not a marching band, though come to think of it that would've been really helpful too, especially if they were playing the 1812 Overture or something equally compelling). In any case, that must've upped my muscles a ton. Ten is not looking so far away now.

Exactly How Much Life Insurance Does He Have Out On Me Anyway??

I live on a hill. Not a big hill (though it seems that way sometimes at the end of a long hot ride when I'm chugging upwards) but a pretty steep one, with a stop sign at the bottom. So when I start off on my daily ride and go bombing down the hill and grab my brakes a few feet from the stop sign to roll gently to a stop, imagine my surprise when my front wheel locks up and my back wheel rises off of the ground and I almost go endo, ass over teakettle.

Yes, dear considerate hubby decided to install new brakes on my bike "for my safety" but neglected to TELL ME.

Because You Needed a Laugh Today

I think this just might be one of the funniest things I've ever seen on the internet. I absolutely hate this song, and my fave radio station in town has one DJ who seems to pull the @#! thing out of the archives every other day. I almost didn't watch this absolutely frakkin' brilliant Literal Video Version of Total Eclipse of the Heart'cuz I didn't want the song to get stuck in my head. But I'm so glad I did. Everyone needs to fall down laughing once in a while. Enjoy!

IronMom to a Teenager

The best thing about being mom to Mackenzie is his infectious smile and laugh. From when he was a really little baby, he had this great big laugh. I just can't believe my little guy is thirteen today.

So Cool

Boy I missed my regular Crossfit workouts in the taper process! It was fun to get back on the horse today with a workout called "One Minute Pullups". That's 1 pullup in the first minute, 2 in the second, 3 in the 3rd, etc. One of those workouts that seems super easy at first but then gets ridiculously hard. Sometimes its surprising what your limiters turn out to be. Today it was my forearms - not shoulders or arms or back or even my poor blistering hands. Nope, it was the Popeye muscles, those pesky forearms. I bet if I was still riding my old Triumph with the drum brakes I would've had better forearm stamina. I used to have the grip of steel when I was riding that thing everywhere. You couldn't actually stop unless you squeeeezed really hard.

But I digress (so easy to do when you start thinking about old British motorbikes, and isn't mine a beauty??). So anyways, now I'm down to the very last pullup band, the purple one. I can actually do a couple of regular (no band) pullups, but for this workout that wouldn't get me very far so I used the band. Four months ago I tried and COULD NOT DO ONE PULLUP with the purple band. Seriously. Today I did 14 minutes, which adds up to 105 pullups. So today I can only do a couple of regular pullups, what will I be doing in four months?

As for the bike, the kids want me to fix it back up and get a sidecar...

Race Report and CFE Review: Portland Triathlon

First of all, I'd like to state that although I am not superstitious, I lost my lucky triathlon towel this year. It was big and purple and had a cute dolphin with punk rock sunglasses on it and has been to every race with me for 20 years. Well, all but one other. I didn't take it to Ironman Florida because they just have that transition bag system instead of an area. And look what happened there - dislocated toe! Not that I blame anything that happened yesterday on its disappearance, but still...

Second of all, I have to say this up front: PORTLAND TRIATHLON IS AN AWESOME RACE. Seriously, if you're looking for a really fun metropolitan triathlon to do, consider this race. No, just register for it and do it. The course was very challenging (river swim, massively hilly bike course with technical turns) but also very pretty, it was extremely well organized, well marshalled, tons of volunteers, every twist and turn of the course was marked or covered by volunteers or police or both. The run was on a riverside path and crossed two bridges with great views of downtown Portland. You really couldn't pick a better urban race. The post-race BBQ was pretty darn nice to boot, and really, they had FREE BEER and FREE GELATO for athletes. Doesn't get any better than that. My only negative experience with this race is that they failed to close the transition area when they said they would. They shooed all of the athletes out of the transition area and down to the water for the start, but continued to allow latecomers to rack their bikes. This resulted in someone racking their bike RIGHT ON TOP OF my transition area, which made for a pretty infuriating T1 for me. Rest assured that the race directors will be getting an email from me on this point since the rest of the race was such a positive experience.

Thirdly, as anyone who has been reading this blog this summer might already know, this race was my watershed moment to see how well the much-touted "Crossfit Endurance" training program would stack up. You can visit their website to read all about their program, but their main selling point is that you can train for endurance events much more efficiently by training in shorter and more intense sessions instead of in longer endurance-based slower sessions (like the traditional long bike/long run weekend that most triathletes put in). I've been doing only Crossfit Endurance training for the last four months, and have not put in any longer endurance sessions, not adding in anything that was not in their program. I also followed their prescribed taper for this race. Also, I was curious to find out how adding Crossfit training into my regimen might affect my swim, bike, and running abilities.

So that being said, on with the race report... The swim is in the Willamette river, which was about 70 degrees on race morning, and beautiful in the sunrise I might add. The men's wave went first, exactly 3 minutes in front of us women. I don't care for that arrangement because it means I will have to swim through the obstacle course of the men's wave. In fact, it meant I had to pass all but a few of the male swimmers which was a pain in the ass. 5 minutes between waves would've been a lot better methinks. Maybe I'll add that to my email to the race directors, LOL.

When I started out swimming, it just felt so darned good. I started to wonder if maybe the downstream swim start was throwing me off and I was going to end up with a slow swim time. It was hard to figure out pace because I felt like I was flying along, but also didn't feel like I was putting out a whole lot of effort. Still, I could only see one or two red caps (women) near me and the rest of the women's wave was behind me, so it seemed as if I was doing fine. Unfortunately, my goggles got knocked a little off in the start and they kept fogging up. I had so little visibility that I actually had to stop cold and rinse them out several times, which I've never had to do before. I knew that was slowing my swim time down, but it was that or run into a concrete bridge abutment or one of the 200 male swimmers in my path or something. Turning around at the buoys and heading back upstream didn't seem to slow me down noticeably, and that felt great. Hubby said I looked like a shark cutting through schools of fish, my red cap swimming around the herds of silver caps in front of me. The end of the swim was at a dock and there was a traffic jam of men crawling up the netting that we were supposed to use to haul ourselves out. Also a slight disadvantage to the faster women's swimmers as the fast men didn't have to worry about slower people in front of them. Still, all in all even with the goggles and treading water waiting for my turn to get out, I had a killer swim time: 21:58. 10th fastest overall swimmer (male or female or relay) YAH! I'm going to chalk this one up to Crossfit because my swim times in the pool have been getting noticeably faster with every pull-up-and-push-press-laden Crossfit workout I've been doing.

Into T1, I mentioned before that some lame-ass latecomer racked his bike right on top of my transition area. I couldn't easily get to my stuff, and my bike was totally stuck behind his, which was also wedged against the triathlete to my left, leaving both of us struggling with locked handlebars trying to escape T1. 2:22 for T1 was slower than it needed to be.

Onto the bike, I've been doing some of my CFE intervals on hills to prepare, but looking at the course profile was a bit daunting with that 2100+ feet of elevation gain. Still, it didn't seem all that bad once I got out on the course. Most of it was a long gradual climb, and then there was one steepish bit towards the end. I felt pretty darned good on the first round, which took me 26:19 to finish. That seemed like a good pace, felt very much within my usual Oly comfort zone, and would put me under 1:20 for the bike course which was what I was aiming for. I zoomed down the back side of the hill, and into the U-turn for the 2nd loop. This is a great course for spectators with a 3-loop bike and a 2-loop run, and hubby was cheering loudly right before the turn-around which really got me smiling. The 2nd loop breezed by because now I wasn't worried about it, 26:48 was the pace for that one and I was soon watching hubby cheering again. By the time I hit the 3rd loop, the course was getting more crowded with folks from the sprint race all hitting the bike course.

This last loop on the bike was also when I noticed that now that I was about 90 minutes into the race, I was slowing down considerably. I just couldn't seem to get any steam on that last loop, which for me is unusual. I'm usually an endurance specialist. Not particularly quick in the short run, but generally the longer I go, the better I feel. This race was starting to not play out that way, and I could feel that my snap was going. It was a really odd and new feeling and I didn't think I liked it. More and more women were passing me on the bike (this is unusual, usually it's maybe one or two total!). Last bike loop took me over 30 minutes, way slower than the first two, for a total bike time of 1:23:30.

Still, steaming downhill into that last u-turn was great fun, knowing that the big hills of the bike course were behind me and all I had left to do was the run. Normally, the run in an Oly race is pretty fun for me. It seems like I usually run my best after an hour or so on the bike to warm up, and this run course was flat, scenic, and the temperature was balmy and pleasant. After wrestling my bike onto the rack (strangely, there was now a different bike racked right over my transition area!) I was out of the chute and onto the course. About halfway through mile one, it became apparent that this wasn't going to be the race I had hoped for. I just had nothing left at all. It was the weirdest feeling, like running out of gas in a car. Hubby saw me after the first loop and knew I was just having a really tough time of it. The 2nd loop was more or less a death march, just couldn't get going Not really able to even enjoy the scenery. Final run time: 57 minutes, about 5 - 6 minutes slower than I should've been.

So, bottom line report card on the training protocol I've been following: I think I have gained a lot of strength and power, and I could really feel it on the swim and in the fact that the big hills on the bike seemed pretty easy, despite not putting in a lot of mileage on hills like I've done in years past. I felt that I really came up short in endurance though, and for me at least I feel like I can definitively say that short intense training does not train my body in the same way as endurance training. I don't think I would follow this protocol for anything longer than a sprint triathlon. While it might be a fine way to train for someone with limited time who just wants to complete a race, I don't think it gives enough endurance to be able to be competitive. Case in point, this is the first race shorter than Iron distance that I haven't placed in my age group in many years. It was actually kind of humbling to go through that, and probably good for me in many ways. At the very least, it told me something about the way I've trained this year and the way I've trained in years past. I can take the good parts from this year and move forwards, and chalk the rest up to experience.


Swim: 21:58
T1: 2:22
Bike: 1:23:30
T2: 1:28
Run: :57:03

Total: 2:46:21

The Athlete's Garden

As I said in a previous post, I'm thinking a lot more lately about the ways in which optimal health is all tied together. Health for the community, health for the environment, health for the human body. For instance, if we walk more places, we see more of our neighbors, we shop more locally, we strengthen our local ties, we don't use fossil fuels, we increase the health of our air and our environment and the health of our body.

My Crossfit coach Jeremy passed on this interesting article about food shopping by Robb Wolf. If you're not familiar with Robb Wolf, you'll find he's a very opinionated wealth of information about the type of eating that many Crossfit athletes are embracing - a hybrid merging of Barry Sears' Zone Diet (tailored toward athletes and not toward caloric reduction or dieting) and an athletically-oriented paleolithic diet.

For me, this kind of eating dovetails very nicely with a community-oriented, earth-friendly, locavore kind of lifestyle. After all, a processed protein bar is synthesized from dozens of ingredients trucked to a factory in god-knows-where and merged into a shrink-wrapped blob which is then put into a box of other shrink-wrapped blobs to be trucked to your Costco where you will probably drive with a car to buy it. Not local, not community-strengthening, not environmentally friendly (even if some like Clif bars ARE made out of organic ingredients, they still have all the downsides described above) and not all that good for you either.

By contrast, a 4 oz. piece of locally-raised chicken breast coupled with some lettuce, a cucumber, and a few tomatoes from your garden, topped off with yogurt made from milk by some local cows and some blueberries you picked on Saturday, now that's a bit of protein, carbs, and fats that are totally good for you, good for your local community and farmers, and infinitely better for the larger earth around you as well. Now I'll grant you that it's harder to take with you in the back pocket of your cycling jersey. But I've found that I really don't need to have portable protein for anything under about 2 hours of riding or running. A lot of the time that we rely on protein bars it's for a quick before or after exercise snack (at least that's what I used to do) and I'm getting better now at making sure I have some raw almonds and dried fruit available for when I need something less messy than a salad or a handful of strawberries.

While I think Robb Wolf's article about how to shop is great, I'd go one step further. Plant an Athlete's Garden if you can. If you don't have a garden spot, a few buckets or containers will do. Throw in some dirt, some lettuce seeds, a couple of cucumber seeds or a tomato start. If you don't like those options, research what foods you do like and find ones that are easy to grow ih your area. Every climate has plants that tend to do really well there and others that are hard to grow. For instance, after several years I've given up hope of growing a decent melon in my own garden, they just don't do that well here. But I've got 7 blueberry bushes now that are doing just great and my tomatoes are busting off of the vines (I've picked 34 POUNDS so far and they're still producing!). Additionally, if you have any landscaping at all, consider gradually replacing it with foodscaping. There are evergreen berry bushes that make a nice replacement for landscaping shrubs - blueberries, huckleberries, and these nice ground-cover raspberries are just a few. Fruit and nut trees are a great replacement for just-for-show trees as well.

Believe me, I'm the world's worst green thumb, so if I can grow food from plants, anyone can!

One Nice Thing

100 Degrees outside today (went for a bike ride yesterday at 2:00, almost melted), but projected 81 for race day. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

Seven Days Away

It all comes to a head this week at the

Almost six months of Crossfit training, four months of Crossfit Endurance programming and a lot of unanswered questions about how it will all turn out.

Here's my pre-race update:

I'm feeling like my strength and power are greatly increased. I've done some hills on the bike recently that used to seem tough that look like tamed lions now. My leg strength is definitely dramatically increased, and it's really starting to show up in my swim stroke as well. I did an interval workout last week with a friend and easily held alternating 1:15 and 1:20 pace per 100 without too much effort. People have asked me what my secret weapon is, and there's no doubt in my mind that I owe all newfound power to Crossfit. It's definitely a program I would recommend to triathletes looking for all-around total body strength and core conditioning, not to mention to anyone at all looking to get more fit over a broad range of conditions.

Endurance, I'm not so sure about. I am still not feeling like I have a handle on how well I'll be able to last through a 2.5 hour race. I ran a 10k this week at about 85% effort and to be honest it kind of sucked. On the other hand, I usually run better off the bike (emphasis on usually) and usually the longer the race, the better I feel. We'll see if that still holds true.

Taper: I only did two Crossfit workouts last week and none this week, and I'm tapering the Crossfit Endurance workouts this week. I'll do some transition work this week too.

The course:

Hilly.
That's one of three loops on the bike, each of which gains close to 700 feet. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was just a teensy eensy bit worried. Normally, I'm good on flat courses, great on flat windy courses or rolling hills where power works for me and weight doesn't work against me. But the bigger and steeper the hills, the less advantage I have. I don't really know how to predict my times on this course, what with the current on the swim in the river and the hills on the bike.

Looking at times from people I know who have done the course (and who I've done other courses with, so I can get a relative triangulation on what times I might do), I'm going to say I would normally (with my normal training and speed that is) be able to do:

Swim: 23:00 - 25:00 (giving myself a little extra due to current from the river)
T1: 00:2 (Swim and T1 times seem to be long from previous results)
Bike: 1:20 - 1:25 (I'm giving myself 10 - 15 minutes over my usual Oly distance time)
T2: 00:1
Run: :52

Total: 2:38 - 2:45

I have no idea if I'll be on this time, faster than it, or slower than it. It will probably come down to whether my extra power on hills will give me a faster bike time, and whether or not my endurance is compromised and my run time will be slower than usual, or not. My last Oly run time was :50, but I haven't come anywhere near that in workouts in the last few weeks. So it's all up in the air. I'll probably be very nervous this week, so keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well on race day!

Why I Hate Bike Shorts

First of all, you can't fold them. Those stupid big padded parts just make it impossible. They're like those sheets with elastic on the corners. Sure, Martha Stewart can fold them, but for the rest of us mortals they are just one big pain on the closet shelf. Mine are always sliding off the shelf - combination of slick material and unwieldy padded assymetrically-folded piece of clothing.

Secondly of course is that you can't walk around in them. Ever try going into a mini-mart on a long ride wearing some extremely padded shorts? 'Nuff said.

Thirdly, they seem to only come in black. Sometimes this is for a very good reason. But couldn't they just make colored pairs out of thicker material? I do have one well-worn pair of Pearl Izumis in bright purple that have been so beloved they're now threadbare and relegated to the "indoor trainer only" stack. They're like the Velveteen Rabbit of my cycling short collection, at 14 years old and still not totally worn out.

So these days I've fallen in love with tri shorts. You know, the things that have almost no padding at all and seem like they'd be way less comfortable than the ones with the big ol' pad. As it turns out, they're way more comfortable, even on long rides, at least as far as I'm concerned. I bought one pair of Tyrs which never fit right, and one pair of Orcas that I adore and are my current short of choice.

The best thing about bike shorts? They might be the one piece of clothing that looks signifigantly worse on fashion models than it does on us muscular types:



I mean, once you're used to seeing them on cyclists and triathletes' legs, this just looks appalling, no?!

Workin' It Out On the Road

Our family is still up here in Washington, we came up for a family reunion and especially to be with hubby's brother who is still deeply grieving. Although the sadness is there, there's also the joy of seeing family and getting to spend time with people you don't see very often. A real emotional roller coaster this week for sure. Whenever I travel, I try to find ways to slot those workouts in, and especially when things get intense I find that I need that pressure release valve more than ever.

Running is of course the easiest activity on earth for the traveler, so the well-worn running shoes are the first thing to get packed. The family reunion was at a lake, so the swimsuit and goggles were a no-brainer as well. Although the lake was full of waves in the afternoon that kept the kids having fun jumping them and body surfing, the early mornings were like polished glass and so clear I could see the individual leaves on the kelp-like plants growing up from the bottom (is there such a thing as lake kelp? I don't know what that stuff is.)

The bike got thrown on for good measure, though I've only used it once for some CFE-prescribed hill repeats. This morning I payed a visit to a local Crossfit gym as a visitor and got my butt handed to me by the "Deck of Cards" workout (weighted back squats, power cleans, power snatch and push press according to suit, and the number dealt by the card... yes, an entire deck...wow!). I'm hoping I can manage a run tomorrow morning before we head for home tomorrow a.m.

New Workout: Running on Water

This is a great workout for working on your foot speed turnover, but I'll warn you it's pretty advanced. You have to really get your legs moving to stay on top of the water. Just kidding, but I thought this pic that hubby took of me at the river this weekend was funny, it looks like I'm running across the water. In actuality, I'm just about to hit the snow-melt cold water and freeze my a** off!

While camping up near the pass, I had an awesome bike workout - intervals on an empty forest service road that was uphill all the way. I did my rest intervals headed downhill, then turned around and hit the uphill for the hard sets. It was a Crossfit Endurance set:

4min on, 3min off
2min on, 30sec off
1min on, 3min off
2min on, 30 sec off
4min on. Done!

Tough!

Then on Sunday I took a great trail run in my Vibram Five Fingers shoes. There's something about trail running that just makes it so much more fun for me than running on the street. It engages my whole brain and nervous system (otherwise you trip over too many roots) and pulls me right into the moment. It is hot, hot, hot here (and even 1,000 feet higher in elevation at the campground it was still roasting) but I'm making myself try to run when it's hotter and get better acclimated to dealing with the heat, so I went around noon. Another ice-bath in the creek and I was done for the day!

Take This Moment

The only time that counts is right now. The plans you have for tomorrow may come, and may not. What we are doing in this moment is what really matters. Hubby's big brother lost his wife this weekend to heart failure. It's impossible to think about - what if the person you love most is here with you today and tomorrow is gone? I can't imagine being in his place, don't want to think about what he's going through and will have to face tomorrow and the day after and the day after. So hug your loved ones close today, and if you can say a prayer for my sister-in-law. She had a big heart and was full of love for her husband, kids, grandkids, and the many animals in her life.

The Great Experiment Update

I'm about halfway to my Oly triathlon on solely Crossfit and Crossfit Endurance training. The hard part is I have no idea how to gauge my progress at this point since everything feels completely different and I'm not doing the same workouts that I've used in the past as baselines. I could be doing a bike ride and have done a CF workout that morning where I was squatting heavy weights and in the bike ride I'm supposed to be doing 2 minute sprints. So I really can't tell within all of that where my overall endurance fitness is at.

I haven't done anything over about an hour until a tempo ride I did earlier this week. I really felt like I fizzled out once I passed the hour marker, but I can't tell whether this was because I had been doing some heavy duty Crossfit leg work earlier or because my endurance past an hour is no longer what it used to be. It's hard to say what I'll feel like once I start the pre-race taper and let my muscles fully recover from everything I've been throwing at them.

On the plus side, I feel like I've really adjusted to the Crossfit side of things well and have been feeling strong there in most of my workouts. I'm "making the board" pretty regularly (scoring in the top 5 women at our gym, which is who goes up on the board for each workout), and in workouts as diverse as the 2,000 meter row (1st on the board at 8:12 - our coach took that cute photo above of one of the little ones watching me go at it) or the "Crossfit Total" which is all heavy lifting (total of your Deadlift, Back Squat, and Shoulder Press, mine was 3rd on the board at 410). So I can see myself improving at a broad variety of exercises, many of which I had never done before a few months ago. Today I even got two full body weight pullups in a row! I couldn't even do half of one when I started, couldn't even budge myself toward the bar. For that alone I am super excited!!!

On the "dunno" side, I have no idea yet how effective the Crossfit Endurance thing is going to be for me. I will be very nervous and very much interested to see how this Oly race will go for me. Nervous because normally I know exactly where I'm at training-wise when I toe the starting line, and this time it's a total crapshoot. I could feel totally strong and just bust the course wide open, or I could just totally choke from lack of long-distance endurance training. Once again, stay tuned....

The Mom Part of the Ironmom

Probably the biggest benefit of being an athlete mom is the net effect it has on the health of your children. I've never required my kids to play any sports, never signed them up for soccer league, never pushed them in any way, yet they see the healthy vibrant lifestyle of my husband and I (and truth be told I'm sure the genetic desire to move one's body is in there somewhere as well) and over the years they have chosen sports of their own to pursue.

Recently, Mackenzie who has traditionally gravitated to solitary activities like kayaking and archery, as well as devoting time to karate, asked me to take him running. So we've gone down to the local track together and he's done laps while I timed and cheered him on, then I do my Crossfit Endurance workout (often laps or sprints or whatnot) and he cheers me on. On alternating days, he has come and swum laps in the pool with me, employing those "genetically gifted" (read: ultra-large) hands and feet of his to good use as paddles. The only problem is that he continually cracks me up by pulling antics like going into buddha-like meditative poses on the bottom of the pool while I'm swimming, thus causing me to crack up and snort water up my nose!

Meanwhile, Asa has taken up what I knew would be the perfect sport for her: water polo! Between her awesome swimming abilities (there are those hands and feet again, after all, plus the trademarked Ironmom shoulders) and her ruthless killer instinct (a character trait that I don't always appreciate mind you), I knew she would love it. And with only 25,000 water polo players in the whole country, it's a sport where you can actually go somewhere if you have some talent, so who knows.

So it was that this last week saw me on the sidelines for the very first time in my 13 years as a mom, cheering on Asa in her first water polo game. Of course at this age level, they spend more time floating around looking confused and trying to figure out where the ball is and where they should be going, but it's all good fun. We got to watch one of the games with the older kids in the program and all I can say is WOW. The level of play improvement in a couple of years is vast, so I think she'll have a fun time growing in this sport if that's what she chooses to pursue.

Cosmic Justice

I wish this happened every single time someone threw a flaming cigarette butt out their window. I'm tired of getting hit by these things on my bicycle! This is one reason that I insist on the kids (and myself) always wearing sunglasses while cycling. And in the summertime, the odds of starting some kind of brush fire or forest fire is also high. Besides, who do they think picks these things up? Even my kids know to pick up after themselves and never litter. Sheesh! Cosmic justice if you ask me...

What's Good For Your Body is Good For the Planet

It's funny how we athletes train so hard, look at all of our metrics, try to improve in ways large and small and yet....when it comes to nutrition there we are unwrapping a blob of processed soy protein isolate, fractionated Palm Kernel oil and even the devil incarnate high fructose corn syrup and wolfing it down. No, not even wolfing it down - I'd put a bet that any self-respecting wolf would turn up its nose at such a concoction (just as our family dog once turned up his nose at my offer of a tofu hot dog - HE knew it wasn't a meat substitute!)

So in my ever-ongoing process of synthesizing the various elements of my life into some sort of a meaningful and coherent whole, it struck me that what is good for the planet (there's that tree-hugging side of me) is best for our bodies (there's that triathlete side) and vice-versa. I'm trying to move in a mostly whole-foods direction for nutrition, which has left me strangely deprived of power bars, drink mixes, and gu-like substances for all of my training so far this summer. I'm trying various combinations of dates, sunflower seeds, coconut, and dark chocolate for training fuel and the rest of the time trying to stick to a loosely paleolithic (plus raw milk and eggs) kind of nutrition plan.


Post-workout re-fueling has been supplied by smoothies consisting of raw goat's milk, our own chicken eggs, and various berries that we've picked locally and frozen.

In so many races I just feel sick of eating sweet stuff (especially when downing a drink mix, even one as mild as the Accelerade that I like to use), so for our upcoming Cascade Lakes Relay in a few weeks, I'm going to try out the Slipstream cycling team's Rice/Egg cakes. Here's a great video with their team chef explaining how (and why) he makes these for the team. Don't those sound great in place of yet another sweet gooey energy bar?? I do have to note though that if he was using eggs like the ones we get from our free-ranging chickens, they would look much nicer and yellower in his pan than those pale versions he's got going there. Just for comparison, here's a store-bought egg (and mind you, this is an organic "free range" storebought egg, not just a regular factory-farmed egg) on the left in the pale yellow, and one of our chicken's eggs on the right in the rich deep gold/orange. Notice how the white parts of the storebought egg have run all over the place while our chicken's egg is standing firm. Yep, even when you get down to splitting hairs like buying your organic eggs from the regular grocery or from someone whose chickens you can see running around the pasture, sourcing it locally matters. It may even be the case that to reach your full athletic potential, a few workouts could be swapped with time in the veggie garden.

What's good for our bodies is good for our planet is good for our communities and our farmers.

Just the Facts Ma'am

My dad was a career law-enforcement officer all the years of my childhood, going from a police officer before I was born to the FBI to a rural county sheriff in Oregon to a US Marshall. So it was no surprise that shows like Dragnet and Columbo are the ones I remember gracing our old cabinet TV in my childhood. I have vague before-bedtime memories of Columbo's flashlight searching through the darkness and Joe Friday's gruff voice through my bedroom walls Although Sergeant Joe Friday never actually said "Just the facts ma'am" ("All we want are the facts." was the actual phrase used), this cultural idiom is more or less one of my triathlon training mantras.

So it is that I couldn't resist going out yesterday and trying another 10k time trial to see if my iron regimen is having an effect. I've had the general feeling that it is for sure as my workouts have improved greatly this week but I'm the kind of triathlon geek that wants the cold hard facts (Ma'am)

Two weeks ago, in a red-blood-cell deficient oxygen debt, my 10k mile splits were:
8:45 pace, 8:50, 9:07, 9:20, 9:43, and 9:58. Total: 55:37 or a 9:16 average


Yesterday I went 8:49, 8:51, 8:53, 8:51, 8:50, 8:45 for a 10k of 54:35 or an 8:47 average. Not yet into my normal zone for this year but signifigantly better than two weeks ago! And best of all I felt like I was cruising at a steady hard aerobic pace, not falling apart at the seams like two weeks ago. Yippeee!

Kick Your Ass Up and Down the Pool With This One

One thing I'm really loving about doing the Crossfit Endurance (CFE) workouts is that its got me thinking of new and different ways to approach swimming sessions. I have to say that many of the CFE workouts just don't translate all that well to the pool. Like the 20:10 workout for instance. You're supposed to sprint for exactly 20 seconds, then stop and rest for 10 seconds. You can imagine how well that goes over in the lap lane of a public pool. Sure, go all out, passing everyone right and left, then stop dead still and watch everyone pile up behind you like a traffic accident in rush hour. That would really make you the most popular person in the lane, right? Luckily, a 50m takes me just about 20 seconds exactly so I just rest at the ends, but it leaves me wondering what other folks whose lap times don't coincide so neatly do in their lap lanes.

Nevertheless, I've been thinking more on how to translate intensity in new and different ways into my Master's Swim workouts. After all, there's only so many ways you can slice and dice lap swimming before it gets repetitive. The set I wrote up for this morning's Masters workout ended up being a really good one:

6 x (25
50
75) all on the :60, no rounders.

These are ALL hard. So you do a hard 25 on the :60, then a hard 50, then a hard 75. You can pick a different interval than :60, but it should be one that you can BARELY complete the 75 on with maybe a couple of seconds rest, then you're back into the 25. Don't let the 25 become a cruise, you've got to hit it just as hard as the 75. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. It's a toughie!

Hemo Back At Work

I'm happy to report that all of my little bone marrow factories are once again in production and I can feel more of those lovely little red blood cells circulating around carrying oxygen to brain and muscles. Does anyone else remember this terrific film that they showed in 6th grade science class, Hemo the Magnificent?? I think of this whenever I have to worry about my body's blood-cell-making capabilities... I think I might just have to order a copy to show my kids, it's really a classic and the best explanation for the circulatory system I ever remember having seen...

In any case, I'm feeling much friskier and I'll have to try another time trial in a week or so to see if things are really back on track. In three weeks we're going to run the Cascade Lakes Relay again, and since the legs of that race take us runners up to 7,000 feet or so, I'll need a few oxygen-carrying blood cells on my side!

Kaizen

At the end of every karate class, our sensei says "Kaizen!" and we clap three times. The translation according to our dojo is "Constant, Never-ending Improvement". Wikipedia gives it as "a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life."

There is power simply in the saying of a word, especially saying it so emphatically, like an exclamation point at the end of every karate workout. It's a reminder that when we go out the door, our commitment does not end. And not just our commitment to the practice of karate, kaizen is a principle that can be applied to every aspect of life. Of course, kaizen appeals to the engineer in my brain: "Is there a more efficient way to hang and fold my laundry?" I try hanging the t-shirts together so that I can fold them all at one time, matching the socks up as I pin them out. I think about kaizen when I prepare food - is this the best most nourishing thing I can give my body right now? Give my kids' bodies? And of course kaizen goes hand in hand with triathlon training. How can I make my hand position more efficient in my swimming stroke? Increase my running foot turnover? Make my bike position just slightly more aero? And it's tailor-made for the Crossfit approach. Crossfit is nothing if not the practice of kaizen.

Even my work encompasses kaizen. One thing I love about coaching, in fact, is the notion that all of the people who come to me are there because they are in search of improvement, and I love helping them achieve that goal. No matter where they are in ability, they are each striving to make themselves better. It's really a brave act, when you think about it (especially as an adult) to come and seek out a teacher, to try to improve. There are many who never do. I see the same swimmers in the pool year in and year out who never change their stroke, never vary a nanosecond in their lap times. Perhaps they are practicing something else, something more zen, more appreciative of the present moment, I don't know. But I do know that the people who are seeking kaizen are the ones that really appeal to me.

And of course, all of us who have taken the parenting leap benefit from the notion of kaizen. I hope I never get to the point where I believe I am a "good enough" parent. I rarely read the "mommy blogosphere" for this reason, it seems that there has been a swing or shift, almost a rebellion against the notion of trying to become a better parent. Instead, mommy bloggers in droves are embracing and even elevating their moments of mediocrity, laughing about investing in their kids' counseling funds, and handing themselves a "bad parenting award" as if that's a good thing. I'm sure much of this is in response to the perfect-parenting notions of the early internet days, the "I breastfed my cloth-diapered organically born-at-home baby longer than you did" competition that seemed rampant for awhile. But somewhere in between the two is more than enough room for some kaizen, I think. I don't need to be a perfect parent, but I never want to stop striving to become a better one.

Student, athlete, employee, parent, spouse, friend, even blogger - the concept of kaizen can bring all aspects of life into sharper focus. Hmmm, now how do I blog better..... all suggestions are welcome...

KAIZEN!

Yah, I'm Thinking That's It

My Crossfit workout today SUCKED... wind that is. I was gasping like a fish out of water, seeing dark spots in front of my eyes. Things that are normally relatively easy like wallballs were killing me. I was getting kind of pissed with myself to be honest 'cuz I hate it when I can't seem to do what I know I can do.

And a few other things have fallen into place, like the fact that I've had RLS (restless leg syndrome, for those of you never plagued with this horrible feeling like electric ants are crawling all over your legs when you're trying to sleep) and the fact that I've been munching on ice like crazy (though I could excuse that with the fact that it's in the 90's here for the first time this summer). Those are both good indicators for me that the ol' red blood cell count is way low. It's like living at 10,000 feet elevation, anything you try to do is twenty times harder.

So in the end, my little temper tantrum with myself being over and all, it's a good thing, because it means that most likely everything else is on target and once this gets cleared up I'll still be on track for a good race or two this year. Stay tuned....

Made of Iron, But Not the Kind You're Thinking Of

Looking back on my 10k TT debacle this week, I'm also looking at another possibility: my old friend Anemia might be back in town. Just realized that I ran out of iron tablets a few weeks ago and it's been on my to-do list to pick up some more. The way anemia works is it sneaks up on you. One day you're running 10 miles and before you know it a week or two later you're gasping for breath when you walk up the stairs. Luckily, there's a pretty easy fix, and since I started taking iron tabs again last night, hopefully I'll know whether or not that's a contributing factor soon enough.

I know some people get anemia in pretty mild forms, in fact it's common in women and very common in athletic women. For some reason, I seem to have a real problem making red blood cells, and have since I was a kid. Various tests have been run over the years with no conclusions about my faulty blood cell factory (no I don't have leukemia, no I don't have nutritional deficiencies, etc. etc.) In fact, it was serious, life-threatening anemia that derailed my first Ironman attempt and had my doctor threatening me with a blood transfusion (not to mention threatening to take a baseball bat to my bicycle if I even got on the thing again until my hematocrit came back up).

From as early as eight years old, I had pica, a condition in which you crave eating strange things (dirt, chalk, ice, paper) and which is frequently caused by anemia. While I was a vegetarian later in life, my family definitely wasn't that way when I was growing up. I remember once when my dad was the grand marshall of the rodeo, one of the bucking bulls threw his back out and they had to shoot him. So we had 400 pounds of "Black Magic" or "Hell's Fury" or whatever the bull's name was in our freezer that year. Needless to say, I wasn't anemic for lack of eating red meat. But I got in trouble frequently at school for eating chalk and paper, and at home I ate so much ice that my dad dismantled the ice maker in our refridgerator. Of course, no one knew that my strange eating habits were really the result of a medical condition, which was very curable.

Once in college, I unknowingly compounded my problems by becoming an athlete, and then a vegetarian. What followed was 20 years of serious battles with anemia in which my blood count would get so low that my doctors couldn't believe I was still standing in front of them (not to mention training for triathlons, climbing mountains, etc.). I'm just stubborn that way I guess. The red blood cell count of a dying cancer victim and I can't be dissuaded from my plans. Eventually after my docs endless pleading and the fact that I could no longer tolerate the massive amounts of iron I needed to take just to stay on the low end of normal, I gave up my vegetarianism. That was just a few years ago and though it took awhile to adjust to eating meat again, I think that's what allowed me to train and complete the Ironman finally (and no, the pun of that name wasn't lost on me at the time!)

So now, I really only have to take one small iron tab a day to stay in the boundaries of low-normal. It's not too much to stay on top of, except that for some reason my brain thinks I can slack off on this and still be okay. Until I'm not. Right now I'd place money on the fact that I'm not. Maybe that's not the only reason I had such a crappo run this week, but I'd bet that it's a big contributing factor. So if you've made it this far in this blog post, keep your fingers crossed for me. And if you know anyone who ever confesses to feeling urges to eat strange things like freezer ice or paper straw wrappers, maybe you'll know why!

Discouraged

So yesterday's run was supposed to be a 10k time trial. I did my warmups and planned on doing 6 laps + 200m around the 1 mile bark loop trail. Starting off, I took it a little easy at an 8:45 pace, which felt okay. My 2nd loop was about an 8:50, but the 3rd was a 9:07. After that, my legs had nothing left in them at all. Last 3 miles were 9:20, 9:43, and 9:58. Total: 55:37 or a 9:16 average, but it felt like HELL. Just a bit over a month ago, I cheerfully ran an "easy slow" 9 miles at a 9:22 pace and felt great. My last 10k in an Oly triathlon was 50:29 (8:24 pace), and that's after over an hour of biking and some swimming thrown in, not just a running time trial. WTH??

So I'm left wondering what the heck is wrong. I slept well, ate well, I feel healthy and rested. Why is my endurance shot to hell? I'm in my 5th week of the Crossfit Endurance plan, and I was hoping that I would at least be on par with what I was doing beforehand.

I've got a couple of theories going, but only time will tell which is right:

1) It was a fluke, we all have bad days and heaven knows, I've had bad workouts before

2) My body is still adjusting to the much higher intensity of the Crossfit Endurance workouts. Given another month or two, I will have adapted better and will be way faster

3) Intense workouts are great, but my body is really built for endurance, it's what it does best. So I'm short-circuting my natural abilities by focusing on faster work, and that's why I'm now slower.

4) All this short fast stuff has just shot my endurance to hell and my Oly triathlon in August is going to be a death slog of epic proportions.

Needless to say, I'm hopeful that it's #1 or #2. I've committed to this CFE plan until my Oly triathlon on August 23. If I'm wrong, that means I've only got about 3 weeks afterward to try to regain some endurance before my half-Iron in September. It's a gamble. Stay tuned and we'll see how it turns out...

Swim Workout: Long IMs and Short Intervals

It was a pool day (our Master's group alternates Saturdays at the lake with Saturdays in the pool), so this was the workout I put up for today. The "Long IM" set is done with medium intensity in freestyle and focus on your stroke sets. The sprint 25s are done with an absolute 10 second rest and are all out.


Warmup: 300 Free 100 Kick 200 Drill 100 Kick 100 Stroke 100 Kick
2 x 150 Pull Build


Main Sets:
150 Free
150 Long IM (Fly Free Back Free Breast Free)
100 Free
150 Long IM
50 Free
150 Long IM
50 EZ


3 x
(10 x 25 Hard, @ 10. sec rest
50 EZ)


Cool Down: 2 X 150 Pull, focus on using reaching forward, engaging lats
200 Swim, keep the lats engaged

3400 yards

I Told You The Lake Was Beautiful

Back in the Land of Low Tech

I'm at my mom's, with a dial-up connection after a week in the hinterlands of no-tech, low-tech seems almost fast. Funny how speed is all relative. I didn't do a ton of actual workouts this week. I brought my jumprope and a mat and did some bodyweight exercises when the killer mosquitoes weren't trying to eat me alive. Did you know that when you start sweating, it sends some kind of pheromonal signal to the entire mosquito population of the lake/wetlands you're camped next to and they arrive en masse and take battle formations over your body? I seriously look like I've got a case of the measles. I did get three runs in, and one amazing swim (wait until you see the photos I took of the lake, it seriously is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I've swum in a lot of beautiful places), and Mackenzie and I took the kayaks out for four days, plus hiking around the Lava Beds National Monument, in caves, around Captain Jack's Sronghold.

All in all, we had enough activity to keep me feeling great, enough downtime to devour three novels (can't remember when the last time I did that was!) Mackenzie worked his way through the first several of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. We brought my guitar, which Mackenzie is learning to play and we bought a couple of cowboy hats just because that's the kind of corny folks we are. Our camp rule was that you had to be wearing your cowboy hat to play the guitar by the campfire. Plus, it kept my head from burning. I forgot to bring my running hat though and I'm here to tell you that cowboy hats don't work well for running. At all.

Today I get to see Asa in the play she's been rehearsing all week (the Missoula Children's Theatre production of Jack and the Beanstalk) and then we're headed for home.

Training On the Road

Lots going on around here. My new Crossfit Endurance training has been going great, it feels very different to do so much shorter stuff, and no real long distance. This week has been crazy in so many ways. If you read my Blue Skies blog, you know that my daughter Asa's cat died of antifreeze poisoning. We're taking off in an hour to take Asa down to my mom's house for a week of a theatre camp, and Mackenzie and I are going camping, hiking, and kayaking for a week. So I'll be no-tech for at least a week, just doing my training and enjoying the great outdoors. It will honestly be nice to get away and maybe the pain of losing such a sweet pet will lessen a little bit being away from home.

Hope you all have a terrific week. Blue Skies from me.

Committing To A New Plan

So those of you intrepid readers who actually attempt to follow my meandering thoughts here probably fall into one of two categories. One who are already experiencing, or who are interested in the concept of the new workout experience in my life that is Crossfit. And the others, perhaps dedicated triathletes or other endurance athletes who really could care less to hear about lifting big hunks of iron or throwing medicine balls at walls.

If you're in the second group, you can tune me out about now, because I'm about to throw even more of my training eggs into the Crossfit basket. I'm embarking on full-scale Crossfit Endurance training, replacing any of my LSD (no, even though I live in the hippy holdout capitol of the universe, that doesn't refer to a mind-altering drug, it's Long Slow Distance training) with much more focused, targeted, shorter, more intense triathlon workouts. The reasoning behind this? As the Crossfit Endurance (CFE) website claims:

Studies demonstrate that the adaptations caused by anaerobic training are similar to high volume endurance training, however, this adaptation comes at much lower training volumes

As a very busy homeschooling mom, I'm extremely intrigued by the concept of training for endurance and ultra-endurance events on a much lower time commitment in terms of training hours. I'm willing to up the intensity of the hours I put in if it means more time with the family. But does it work? That's the big question of course. So since I have a good long-standing baseline of my triathlon times in various distances, I'm giving it a go for this summer's Olympic distance triathlon. With several months of CFE training under my belt, as well as my regular Crossfit workouts, I should be able to tell whether I'm: A) At par with my regular performance, B) Blowing my regular performance expectations away on a shortened schedule or C) Whether there really is no substitute for putting in the miles.

Based on the results of my Olympic triathlon, I'll decide whether to add back in some distance work for my September Half-Ironman.

So far I am on Week One of the total commitment to the CFE schedule. So instead of my usual Sunday Long Run (I'm sure you're all familiar with that one), I headed to the marked mile loop to do short time trials at high intensity. I have to say, the feeling afterwards with only 40 minutes of running was similar to last week's 10 miler, so maybe there's something in it after all.

Stay Tuned as the Experiment Continues.....

Swim Workout: Rotating Intervals of Doom

I like to put a good swim workout title like that up on the board, just to get the blood flowing in all of the Master's swimmers. When the first thing out of their mouth is "oh shit" when they look at the board, maybe that's a good thing? Then again, our Master's group could sometimes be renamed as the "Swim, Bitch, and Sandbag Club" and I'm threatening to order swimsuits with that embroidered on the butt. Sometimes I feel like half Den Mother and half coach.

In any case, I think this workout is a fun one. Not too complicated and the yards go by fast. The key is to keep the non-fast intervals at a medium pace, not a slow one and you'll be working your endurance as well as your speed. In the main set, you switch up which one of the intervals is your hard one (first one is the 25, next one is the 50, and so on) and do the same with the 2nd part of the main set (first the 125 is hard, then next time through it's the 100, and so on).

Warmup: 350 Swim 250 Pull
4 x 100 Swim/Kick/Drill/Swim by 25s

Main Set:

4 x (25-50-75-100) – Rotate Hard, rest are medium @10 sec. rest

50 Active Recovery

4 x (125-100-75-50) – Rotate Hard, rest are medium @15 sec. rest



Pull 2 x 200 - Build

4 x 50 All Out/Cruise by 25s @ 1:15

100 Cool Down

4150 yards

There's Not Much Better

There aren't many things better than getting to swim outside in the sunshine. Unless your daughter decides to come with you and swim laps, that is. We had a great time in one of the first truly hot days of the year. It's cool when your kids get old enough to do these things together. When they were younger, finding time to work out was about finding babysitters or using jogging strollers. Now we just do it together. Love it.

You Know You've Done a Hard Workout When...

Your hubby phones and your arm muscles literally can barely lift the phone to your ear, and then the whole time you're talking your arm is shaking like a leaf trying to hold it there. Guess it's time to find the charger for my bluetooth headset if I'm going to keep doing workouts like this...

Crossfit Update #4 and The Inadvertant Monster Hill

As I've maybe mentioned before, one of the things I like about Crossfit is the ability to measure and track your progress over time. So when I saw that yesterday's workout was going to be "Grace" (many of the Crossfit workouts have women's names), I was excited because I did Grace in mid-March and knew what my stats were. Grace consists of 30 reps of the Clean and Jerk at a weight you can manage to complete that, and it's done for time. Coach Jeremy puts a slide on the wall showing our stats from the last time we did this workout - in Crossfit, all stats are written on the whiteboard in the room, and then photographed by the coach. Additionally, many gyms use Beyond The Whiteboard to track stats online, with graphs and other cool features. In March, I was able to lift 60 pounds and it took me 8:47 to complete. Yesterday, two months later, I could lift 70 pounds and it took me 4:28. Ten more pounds in half the time! Yet I remember back in March being completely tapped out trying to complete it in 8:47. Now that's amazingly cool! Can't wait to see what I can do next time. I'm reasonably sure this newfound core, arm, and shoulder strength is behind some of my swimming gains lately.

On the other hand, in the afternoon I went for a bike ride and headed out on a new road I'd never explored before. It was really lovely, one of those roads you want to just keep going on and never turn around. I was hoping to find out that it looped around to one of my favorite rides. After a couple of miles, it started climbing what looked like a small ridge. My legs were a bit toasted from the morning's Crossfit, but no worries I just took it easy and spun up the hill. Then it started climbing some more. No problem, I still wanted to take it light on the spent quads, so since there was no traffic I zigzagged across the hill. Then the grade REALLy went up and I was standing on the pedals AND zigzagging and my quads were screaming but by that time I could see the top of the hill above me and no way was I going to give up at that point.

When I finally puffed out on top, I realized that I had inadvertantly climbed up the back side of one of the most killer hills around these parts. Ha ha, joke's on me. So much for a nice light afternoon ride. Still all told, my legs felt okay and didn't even hurt too much at today's Crossfit workout where we got to squat with big heavy weights. Yeah, that's me on the right saying "oh my achin' hamstrings!":

Ride of Silence Reminder

Just a reminder that the annual Ride of Silence is this Wednesday all across the U.S. and in many other countries as well. You can find rides in your area at: http://www.rideofsilence.org/

DATE: May 20, 2009
TIME: 7:00 pm
WHERE: Hundreds of locations world wide
Join cyclists worldwide in a silent slow-paced ride (max. 12 mph/20 kph) in honor of those who have been injured or killed while cycling on public roadways.

Race Report: Lebanon Sprint Triathlon

Remembering last year's heat-fest, with similar projected temps for this year, I decided to take proactive action and bring along a little neck cooler. By the way, many of the links with directions to make these also mention that soldiers serving in desert regions need them, so if you're a person who likes to sew, make a few extra and help keep some soldiers cool! They really work, and I had a much, much more enjoyable run this year than last.

But I'm getting ahead of myself in the race report. This is a small local race that nevertheless draws a really fast crowd, including a lot of the local university's triathlon team, so it's fun and competitive at the same time. I felt pretty good about my training going into the race, I've been averaging about 8 hours a week of tri-specific training, and 5 - 7 hours a week of extra stuff like Crossfit and Karate. I thought I had a good taper this week (more on that later, hah!), although the weather was so beautiful (after so much rain!) that I inadvertantly rode a little bit further on Thursday's supposedly "easy, short" ride than I should've (the beautiful road beckoned and I answered).

The race started at 8:00, but since it had a pool swim, my wave wasn't until 10:00, I had plenty of time to ramble around. After racking my bike, I got settled in to warming up, and satisfied Section 1.0 of Robin's Race Code, which goes something like this:

1.0 Always find at least one first-timer and encourage them
2.0 Give verbal encouragement to everyone on the course that you have breath for
3.0 Thank every volunteer and police officer on the course
4.0 Congratulate fellow athletes (especially first-timers) after the race

I got to chat with Tri-newbie Will, a first-timer who had a great time in his inaugural triathlon. Also, my daughter's piano teacher Becky was doing her first race with her husband and son also in their first triathlon, and they all finished with smiles to go around. Since there were so many heats, I had plenty of time to cheer the folks in the earlier waves. My own cheering section was absent since Asa had another dance performance back at home and Wayne was on costuming and transport duty.


Here's my goals, from an email to my Crossfit coach:

Last year I did the same race in 1:14:23. Splits were:

7:30 Swim
36:30 Bike
27:45 Run
2:40 Transitions (total T1 & T2)


Ideally this year I'd like to be:

<7:10 Swim
36:30 Bike
<27:00 Run
2:30 Transitions (total T1 & T2)
For somewhere around 1:13

Onto the race: My wave of the pool swim was the fastest swimmers. I was 2nd in my lane, the guy who was in front of me had estimated 6:40 for his swim, I estimated 6:55 for mine. He was a big guy so I was hoping for a great draft! No such luck, he petered out quick and kindly let me pass in the first couple of laps. I had to lap the girl who was swimming behind me as well, and felt strong and smooth in my swimming. As I climbed out of the water and glanced at my watch, I was really really happy to see 6:44. Then I remembered that I started my watch when the first wave went, which gave me a time of 6:39. Niiiiiiice..... As far as I could tell, there were only a couple of guys who got out of the pool before me.

T1 was about 1:20, so far so good. Out onto the bike course. This course is so pretty, I really love it. All intersections well monitored by local police (thanked them as I zoomed past, taking care of RRC 2.0) Out into rolling countryside with beautiful pastoral views. Normally the bike is kind of a no-brainer for me, I just pedal away like mad and enjoy. It wasn't going so smooth this time. Big-time quadriceps cramping going on. Has never happend to me before, very confusing. So I had to back my gear off a notch and take a bit faster cadence, dropping my speed slightly. A little bit of worry about what this means for my run, but other than that I just tried to enjoy the course. Out and back course means I get to see everybody else. Confirm no women from my wave in front of me, two guys from my wave smoke past me but that's it! A couple of women about 3 - 4 minutes behind me, must try to put some more room behind me. Although quad cramps a mystery, I cruise into T2 in 37:30, a bit slower than I wanted to be but at least legs feel okay.

T2 is just under 1:00, I remember to take my neck cooler with me and I'm off on the run. Quads feel wooden, but miraculously start to feel better. Still don't know what's up there. Had a nice run, but my left foot starts to hurt, look down and see I'm running kind of funny I think still due to the quad cramping, I'm turning my left foot slightly out. It will probably hurt tomorrow but it's only 3 miles so I just carry on. Only one woman passes me, but she's on a relay team, so no women from the my wave have passed me, yay! Forget to get my run split on the watch, but cruise in with a total time of 1:12:39. Doing the math gives me a run time of 26:09, which is an 8:25 run split. Not too bad for this early in the season.

After I got home, I took a look at my training log to see if I could pin down the mystery quad cramps, and I think I have the culprit. Although I tapered off well on all of my workouts (no Crossfit last week, reduced volume in tri workouts, etc.), because the weather got nice I was doing all of my running around town on my commuter bike instead of the car, and I used the tandem to take Asa to her dance and theatre rehearsals. So though my tri training tapered off, my bike volume actually DOUBLED last week. Commuter miles and especially tandem miles are very quad-heavy because there's a lot of stopping and starting with heavier loads (plus I live on a hill, so doing the hill every time I come home). That's not a good way to taper! I'm making a mental note to taper not only my tri training but to make sure I don't overdo the bike commuting before a race. I rolled out the quads last night and they feel just fine this morning, no knots just a little tired.

All in all I'm happy because I beat my time from last year AND my goal time for this race. Not a PR, but a good time for an early season sprint!

Annual Mother's Day Swim, Sans Wetsuit

Seems like I'm making it a bit of a yearly tradition to go to a lake on Mother's Day and swim, and this year we had the extra incentive of wanting to launch Mackenzie's Christmas present kayak for the first time. My mom came up for the weekend and brought her kayak, and the two of them had a grand time on the water together. Somehow in all of the fussing around trying to get the kayaks loaded, I forgot my wetsuit.

Well, let's just say that I swam anyways but that water was C-O-L-D!!! Probably mid-60's if I had to hazard a guess. I had an immediate vagal reflex reaction (which means water was definitely below 70 degrees) where I just suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe and had to take a few breaststrokes just to work through it and get my heartrate back to normal. For those of you who haven't experienced this, if you do a swim or race in cold enough water and feel a panicky can't breathe kind of feeling immediately, just stop and let yourself adjust. You can often circumvent this response by making sure you get your face wet with cold water first. I did move past the reflex and then it was cold but tolerable and I probably swam for about 15 - 20 minutes before I got chilled enough that I had to stop. Oh, and I forgot about one other fun thing that happens when you swim without a wetsuit in lakes that are frequented by geese... swimmer's itch! It's driving me mad today.


Since the beginning of my Mother's Day weekend was fairly horrible, it was nice to end it on a good note doing what I love the most. Well, actually it ended with a yummy salmon BBQ when we got home, courtesy of my grill-meister hubby. So all's well that ends well.

Tabata Swim

If you've never heard of the Tabata Protocol, here's a great little article from Men's Fitness Magazine that explains the basics and a little bit of the history. Crossfit utilizes Tabata intervals in their workouts, and originally the Tabata Protocol was developed for speed skaters, but very few triathletes I know have ever heard of them. I did find an article on Active.com's triathlon section on utilizing Tabata intervals with a bike trainer, which is a good way to ease into trying Tabata, if such a grueling workout could ever be "eased" into. Though it only lasts 4 minutes, the puke-factor is really high with this workout. It's Intense, with the capital "I".

The Tabata basics: 6 - 8 intervals consisting of 20 seconds going ALL OUT followed by only 10 seconds of rest. Yeah, it's a killer. But Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., a researcher at Japan's National Institute of Fitness and Sports studied the effects of this workout and discovered that not only are those 4 little minutes of extreme workout effort and minimal rest better than traditional intervals (with their 1:3 workout-to-rest ratio), it's better than aerobic conditioning itself at improving your aerobic condition.

I decided to try to have a little fun with Tabata intervals in the pool and my Master's swimmers this week. Whenever I decide to unleash something new and different on them, I always try it out myself first (see, I'm not totally heartless), so I did this workout myself last week, and with my Master's folks on Saturday. Tabata intervals lend themselves pretty easily to most sports, everything from bodyweight exercises to punching bag workouts to running on the track can be done Tabata-style. But swimming is a little different because it's hard to stop quickly and you have to keep turning around. With 4 - 5 swimmers in a lane, logistics were the hardest thing to overcome in planning this workout.

What I decided to do was just have each swimmer start in a different part of the lane, and have everybody circle-swim. I was the whistle-blower for the 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off routine. Now with swimming, I wouldn't try this workout unless your technique is already good. The main reason is that speed and endurance in swimming, unlike almost every other exercise you might do, is about 90% good technique. So swimming Tabatas with poor technique might improve your aerobic conditioning, but it also might make you slower in the pool. If you're already a reasonably good swimmer though, give this one a go.

In the warmup of this workout, and the earlier intervals, focus hard on good, good, good form. That way when you get to the Tabatas, you're set up to keep form and add power.

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Tabata Swim

Warmup: 8 x 100 Odd Free, Even Choice
4 x 75 25 Drill, 50 Swim
2 x 100 Powerup
50 Swim Golf

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6 x 200 Desc. x 3 Int. = 1st 200 + 15 s.
6 x 100 Desc. x 3 Int = 1st 100 + 1- s.


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Tabata Swim x 8
Tabata Kick x 8
Tabata Pull x 8
Tabata Swim x 8


150 Cool

4150 Yards

Unburying the Abs Update

Back in December, I posted this about trying to work on my core and staying accountable for healthy food choices. Since then, there's been some ups and downs. I never did manage to go sugar-free for very long (the siren song of dark chocolate proved too strong), but on the whole I've moved from eating pretty darn healthy to eating much healthier.

Most of my focus has been on getting my carbs from nutrient-dense fruits and veggies instead of from nutrient-sparse grains and trying to eat more protein, which keeps my blood sugar stable and keeps me from feeling spacey every few hours. It has the added benefit of reducing packaged foods (which tend to be mostly grain-based) and bringing my eating ever-more-local, which is always a goal of mine. All of our meat, eggs, milk, and most of our fruits and veggies are bought locally, and in the summer all of the veggies come from the garden, so this also saves money, packaging, food waste, etc. As with so many things, what is good for the body is also good for the environment, local farmers and merchants, and the community as a whole.

Also, I committed to working out my core every day, via a challenge over at TriFuel. I haven't been as religious about it as some over there, but making it part of my routine has really helped. Between adding Crossfit and keeping my karate training going, now at a brown-belt level, I'm working my core muscles more anyways. My back feels a TON better than it did over the winter, totally recovered and stronger than it was before.

With all of this, I started noticing that everything was fitting looser, and lo and behold I've lost about 4 pounds, and about 2% body fat. Not something you really notice on a day to day basis, but it all adds up. So I took an updated photo and wow, I could really see the difference.

Photo #1 is from December 2008, Photo #2 is from April 2009.