And so the Waiting Begins....

So IMWI is just about upon us. The taper is beginning, the worry is setting in. I ask myself did I do enough? Did I work hard enough? Was the training plan right? Can I make the cutoffs? Can I do the work on race day? I think over my work for the past year or more and pick apart the days where I cut things short or went too slow or did what was fun instead of what I needed and wonder if it will come back to haunt me. Does anyone but me even care about this? Will anyone even be paying attention besides me on September 13th?
At this point, it is what it is, it’s too late to change things.

The Swim:
Swam the Madison Open Water Swim Challenge last weekend, which happens to be in Lake Monona on the actual IMWI swim course. It was training so I didn’t go hell bent for election, but rather wanted a feel for the distance in open water. I finished the 2.4 mile swim it in 1:43. I was hoping to be in by 1:30, so that was a little disappointing to be honest. Lets hope I can shave off some time at the big show, which serves only to give me more time on the bike. I can make this time cutoff easily, but all time spent lollygagging here could bite me later.

The Bike:
I am really sweating the bike, and I don’t know why. I have let the challenging hills of the course get into my head a little and psych me out I think. Sunday, we were supposed to get in our last 100 miler, which I was really thinking would get me a confidence boost. It was not to be however as I got called in to work and had to give up my long ride AGAIN. Now I am left wondering where I am going to fit in a hundred during my taper and if that is even possible.
The hills on the IM course are just a bitch, simply put. Unrelenting ups and downs, twists and turns that get in my head and take me to dark places where the voices whisper to me “you can’t do this” .. “it’s too hard”.. “you are a cream puff and you aren’t fooling anyone…” Dark places and dark thoughts are a definite risk here.
If I do what the voices in my head tell me to do, then getting done before the 5:30pm cutoff will be a struggle. Getting in before 4:30pm (my ultimate goal) will be damn near impossible. I think my biggest challenge will be keeping my mind right and not letting those bad boys wear on my psyche.

The Run:
I hate running this year. I am frustrated with being DFL at every running event I do over a 5K and I am just getting tired of it. There are a few days here and there that feel easy and fun, but they are far too few and far between to maintain my motivation to do it more often or better. Part of it has to do with the extra 30 pounds I am carrying around, part of it has to do with procrastinating in this discipline, and some of it has to do with me not putting forth the effort I know I should to improve. One of my biggest struggles this year is that my master plan the I adapted from the Triathlete Magazine Plan book uses minutes as a means of making workout assignments for the run, not using miles. I know for a fact that my 13-14 min/mile pace is not the norm and that this plan is probably geared more towards a 8-10 minute mile pace. And yet I am still doing 47 minutes if the book tells me to, instead of adjusting the distance to better fit where I am at and doing what should really be more like 60 or 70 minutes when it calls for 47.
Bottom line here is that if I can make it off the bike by 4:30, I can walk/slog the run in by midnight. If I am much later than that, I will have to do more running than walking. If I don’t make the bike cutoff, I can go eat some pizza and cry in my beer.


The next 18 days will be where I work on my mental fitness as I taper physically. Positive thoughts, visualization techniques and positive self-talk will abound. I CAN do this. I WILL do this. I need to believe in myself.
I’ll be reading a lot of articles and sweeping negativity out of my head.

And I’ll be enjoying watching my kid kick butt all over the football field when I need a little distraction.

Perspective

Sometimes I am left wondering about my attachment to reality. I know you are shocked to hear that (not really.....lol). I have gone from a life of relative inactivity to the opposite extreme, and yet I still find myself feeling like a total sloth when I compare myself to the people I surround myself with socially. And by socially I mean some pretty hardcore, driven triathlete type people. People who get up early to swim or workout, bike all the time, and who give you shit if you take a rest day that wasn't on the plan because you are tired, it's rainy, or life got in the way a bit. I can always seem to find a way to compare myself to these folks and feel inferior to their skill or their perseverance.

Is that really reality?

Once in a while I get a snippet of how "regular people" see me and what I do. A few months back, Mike was bantering around with some of Lucas's friends on Facebook, talking to them about how he was willing to help them organize a summer running group. Justin referred to us as "the running gods of Janesville." As in Mike and I. Running.GODS. ....... Really? My first thought was that the poor child really should get out more and meet some folks. Most days I don't feel particularly god-like. Chugging Freight Train, maybe. Not a God.

Tonight, I was kicking myself for going for dinner and postponing a scheduled run. We ran into someone who works in the same building as Mike. He introduced to his wife, who said "Oh, you guys are THE Athletes." It really took a lot to stifle a big giggle. She called me an ATHLETE! Ha! As is athletic..... as in skilled, fast, maybe nimble even....... An.Athlete. Interesting, since I really have a hard time classifying what I do as athletic. It is slow, sometimes painful, almost always slower than those around me, hardly what I would call athletic. But I guess it is a matter of perspective and what you see as your own reality. I surround myself with people I consider athletes so that I can learn from them, draw motivation from them, and hope that someday, somehow I can achieve 1/10th their speed, strength, and stamina. But to someone who has more contact with mere mortals and not superhero types? maybe, just maybe, I might qualify to be way far in the back of the pack of what might be called athletes........

OK, you can call me an athlete, but you have to use air quotes when you say it, that's the new rule.

Reflections

It has been a few days since we finished up the marathon and I've been a little quiet, reflecting back on the experience. Originally, I had wanted to find out if this was the stuff I was made of. Because I know that I want to try IMWI next year, I felt like I had to do this, to know what it felt like to go this distance by itself, to know what it feels like and to assimilate it into how I wold think it might feel to go this distance AFTER having swam 2.4 and biked 112 miles.
I had a very specific progression in mind for my year this year. First, the marathon, followed by two HIM distances (SORT and Pigman) in relatively quick succession, all completed prior to going to IMWI with the intention of feeling solidly like I have the fortitude to successfully complete that particular journey next year. Sure there are some smaller fun events I have in mind, but those are really my A races and objectives.
I think the reason I have been so introspective the past few days is that I feel like I shortchanged myself. I have spent weeks, months really, trying to work a plan to get me across the finish line in 5.5 hours or so. That's not lightning fast, but a respectable enough time for a first attempt.
My plan started in January, carefully mapped out with tempo runs, long runs, speedwork (that makes me laugh a little to write that....... speed...it's all relative I guess.) and all the things I needed. So many factors contributed to not fully working it - blizzards, cold, family crises, and finally nagging injuries I brought on myself trying to ramp up too quickly towards catching the end of the plan and being ready. Sometimes just plain laziness get in the way. The end result is that I failed my plan, and I don't feel like I gave this race the best I had. I disappointed myself.
One of the things I have found in the past couple years of getting to this point is that triathlon is about competing with yourself. That means training for and with yourself, and competing towards the goals you have set for yourself when you toe the line. I am comfortable, probably most comfortable, doing these training things by myself, alone. Sure I enjoy taking a bike with a friend or going to the Tuesday Tri-Out for SWAT, but really feel like my most productive days are those where it is just me on the road or in the pool working on my own personal goals and having that time in my own head to clear out the stressors from the day. I enjoy spending an hour, or sometimes two or three hitting the road alone.
Does all this take away from my time with my family? Really I don't think so. For me it boils down to planning. If I have somewhere to be to be there for my kids, I need to figure out something to be able to meet my needs and theirs too. Let's be honest- these boys don't need or want me around them 24/7. They need to know I am there for them if they need me, to provide enough groceries/meals to sustain themselves, and then for me to get the hell out of their way and let them live their lives. most days they barely notice that I get home from work, let alone to say much more than hi or to have even a 15 minute conversation with me that I don't initiate. They are on the verge of adulthood- they don't need me breathing down their neck all the time, they just need some guidance from time to time when they start to wander off the path. I think there is room for me to get my "Me Time" in and still be a good mom. Scratch that - a better mom who is happy and healthy and hopefully setting a good example. I can make excuses about how I need to give p that time to offer it to my kids, but that would just be making excuses. Life happens, and you have to arrange your training plans around it so that you can balance them both. Pirate says it alot and it's the truth, "The more you do, the more you get done."
So anyway where as I going with this?
Oh yeah- I've been in a funk a little bit because I don't feel like I gave it my best effort, all that I could have done. Some of it was training, some was injury, but there was a part of me that made a choice not to push myself.
So no commitment yet for sure, but i am thinking about doing it again. If not this year on another course, then the same run in 2008. For me. Smarter, faster, and more satisfying.
In a masochistic kind of way, i kind of liked it. Not so much at the time, but the process of getting there and getting it done.
Life is a process, and this is only the first of many steps. This wasn't just something I checked off my To Do Bucket List as ToDone.

Confessions of a Drama Queen

Okay, so here is my confession. When I was really little, our kitchen had an oven that was set into the wall across from my place at the table. The front of it was reflective and I spent nearly every meal looking at myself in the oven door, making faces, and generally not paying attention to what was going on at the table. My mother finally got so sick of it, she would cover the oven door at dinner so I couldn't vamp it up all through the meal.
I haven't really had a big problem with that for a long time. That is, until I discovered the webcam feature on my new laptop. Basically I can set it so I can have a little streaming live video of myself the whole time I am puting. Which is dangerous. I find myself looking at what I am doing, all.the.time. AND taking pictures of myself puting. And making goofy faces. And fixing my hair. And thinking about what I could take a picture of myself doing next. And......you get the picture.
I am really not sure how to fix this. Maybe my mom should come and put a towel over the webcam so life can get back to normal.

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This weekend, Mike and the boys went trout fishing, so I was home alone. I did some picking up around the house, did a bunch of laundry, got caught up on all the shows I had DVRed, and trimmed the dogs nails. (Sounds exciting so far, eh?) Friday night I watched Martian Child from the spinner (pretty good movie). Saturday, my planned bike ride with the SWAT team got rained out (boo) and my parents stopped over to get caught up (they got back from snowbirding in Costa Rica on 5/1, first I had seen them since Christmas). I got some shopping done in the rain, including buying a foam roller with a video for some pressure massage for my knee (anyone have any good tips?). I watched 27 Dresses from the spinner (great chick movie!).
Today, I got up and went to breakfast with my sister and her kids, and my parents. After I got home, I worked up the courage to go out on my long run, a scheduled 18 miler of long slow distance.
I made sure I had plenty of fluids (water and Gatorade Endurance), some Sharkies, some sports beans, and a goo. I took some naproxen about an hour before, I stretched and stretched. I made sure I had my phone and I took off. The first several miles were OK, I took it easy and tried not to watch the time. I walked a little bit at first, but not too bad- I always seem to have a hard time getting started anymore. I got to about mile 5 and it started to get kind of uncomfortable so I walked more and ran less. I was able to stop for water refill and potty at the hospital, and took off again. Since that area was pretty flat, I decided just to zigzag back and forth through the neighborhood at about 50/50% walk/run. The discomfort was pretty constant but not really bad, I ran as much as I could then walked until it was better, then ran again. About mile 10, I was thinking I was doing pretty good that the pain was just a dull annoyance and had really not gotten worse so I started planning the rest of my zigzag route. I stopped to cross the street and walk a bit at about mile 10.5 and as soon as I started walking the knee hurt BAD. I decided to just give up the ghost and walk home for fear of making a bad situation worse. I limped for a while, especially on the downhills (think driveways and crosswalks), and it gradually loosened up and felt a little better. It was barely a twinge when I got home. I stretched more, iced it for about an hour, and now I rest on the sofa. Feeling pretty good now, we'll see what tomorrow brings. Wanna see the ugly details and graphs? Click here for the BIM post.
We are 21 days from the marathon. My plan is to take it kind of easy until then (with just one more long run next weekend) and other than that, focus on bike and swim, yoga, and foam rolling like mad. I will start the marathon. If I can't run it, I will walk it after I have to stop running. There is a 6 hour cap on the event, so i will either a) finish just under the wire, b) get scooped up by support because I have no hope of finishing in time, or c) flag down course support and eat brats at Johnsonville Bratfest until Mike gets done. Let's all cross our fingers for option A shall we?

Stupid Cross-Training Tricks: Snowshoeing Edition

Today was a day off for me, a well deserved day of rest and relaxation after several 70+ hour weeks, including last week which ended in a double shift when I was trying to leave early to take back some hours (I am salaried, so if I work over 40, it's my treat. When this happens I try to flex my hours down the next week to even things out... sometimes it works, more often than not I get the weenie.)

Anyhoo.....

I got up this morning after sleeping in til about 8:30. Did some yoga - I need to spend some time on the core again. It worked..... I can feel all of my stomach muscles tonight while just sitting around, which tells me tomorrow they will be good and sore.

After the kids left after lunch, I got ready to do some snowshoeing. Mike's new snowshoes arrived yesterday, but for whatever reason mine got rerouted and hung up in Utah UPS limbo and were rescheduled for delivery on Monday (*sigh*). I decided to give Mikey's snowshoes a try and took off across the cornfields around my house. I learned a lot today, mostly the hard way. Here are a few of the myths I dispelled:

1) I should have no problem running in snowshoes. After all I run all the time!

I had envisioned strapping them on a taking off jogging across the top of the snow, kinda like a gazelle. Um yeah.... about that....

I took off down a gentle downward slope at a little jogging pace. The snowshoes have kind of a flip flop action and before I knew it I was catching my toe on the snow which stops the foot's forward motion and pitches you face first into the snow. But I'm sure I looked graceful as I flung forward full force. Also, when you jog in the snow you sink into it on the downstroke more than walking so each stride felt kind of like a high skipping/striders drill. And it made my heart rate skyrocket. It didn't take me long to change my pace to a really brisk gliding walk.

At one point, I got the back part of the flip-flop hung up in the snow and when I picked up my foot, I flung a huge snowball down back of my pants .... while still standing upright. Quite a feat! There is nothing like a snowball rolling down the crack of your ass to get your attention. Lot of opportunities to laugh at myself today.... I guess the first order of business is to work on technique!

2) I won't need anything to drink!

I was out there running around for more than an hour. I was really thirsty! After a while it dawned on me I was running around is fresh powder undisturbed by anything for miles around. None if it was yellow. I ended up keeping a pristine white snowball in my hand and eating it like a snowcone the rest of the way home. That worked great! I haven't eaten snow like that since I was a kid, so really kind of fun.

3) Patches of burrs are dormant in the winter, so it's not a problem to go trucking through a patch.

At one point, I was coming down into a gully full of brush. Now I know that in the summer I stay away from that kind of stuff because they are full of briars, burrs, and other prickery stuff. But in my mind as I headed into the thick of it, it was winter so all the picky stuff and and burrs had fallen off these plants, like leaves from the trees in the fall.

I ended up spending 10 minutes picking big wads of burrs off my mittens, jacket, wind pants, and out of my hair when I got through the brush patch. That was just the big chunks - I spent another hour at home picking off the little pieces. Just so ya know.... burrs stay on the stem ALL.YEAR.LONG. My little public service announcement. You are VERY welcome!

4) Snowshoes will keep me floating over the top of the snow... I couldn't sink!

So when snow blows around, it pulls the depth off the high point of hills and into the low areas, so everything looks to be about the same rolling elevation. I did great on the hill crests. In the gullies, I had to be sure to keep moving or I started sinking. I had a fair amount of float going, but it certainly doesn't keep you from sinking into the drift a little bit I'm sure if I took the snowshoes off and tried to walk through the gully, I would have been up to my hips, but I still was sinking up past my ankles in several spots.

5) It's winter, the critters are all hibernating.

We had a fresh dusting of powder overnight, so for the most part the fields were pretty much untouched looking. There were several paths of critter prints I found along the way. For a while I was interested and followed alongside their paths. For a while, there was a red-tailed hawk circling over the top of me in a full-on vulture like mode. I imagined it was waiting to swoop in and peck my eyes out when I keeled over. In reality, I think it just thought I was probably disturbing the hiding spots of field mice and other critters and was just waiting for an opportunity to find an early dinner. The further I got into the fields and woods, the bigger and more numerous the footprints got. It was kind of cool for while. Then I ran across a ginormous raccoon that hissed at me for a while from up in a tree. Tough to turn around and put your back to the grouchy little guy to retreat......

A while later I walked through what looked like dog tracks. A lot of them. Like the place where a pack of canine type things had hung out for a while. I got to thinking and realizing that they had to be pretty fresh tracks, I hightailed it out of there. There have been rumors of coyotes around there and I have personally seen a couple of foxes running into those woods. I really didn't want to meet a bunch of them face to face.

So there you have it, my first snowshoe foray. Overall it was pretty fun and something different to do. It was a lot tougher than I thought it would be, but I assume it will only get easier with practice.

Anybody have any tips for my next trip?

Random Ramblings about Everything I Know Today

Seems like I am reporting the same things over and over again, since we last met I have swam, run, and spun a bunch. A whole bunch.

The whole indoor activity thing is really getting kinda old, hamster-in-a-wheel-ish feeling. I can hardly wait for the cold to break. Anything below zero with wind chill is too cold for me, and I was feeling pretty cowgirl about going out in that. So in January, I have done exactly ZERO anything outdoors. Blech.

Tuesday afternoon, I took Lucas to go and get his temps. He had already taken the test, so it was just a matter of writing a check and snapping his headshot. Immediately upon getting back into the car, he texted EVERYONE that he got his temps and congratulatory texts came rolling back in ..... and I'm thinking "Congrats for what? Way to write that check, mom! Superior penmanship! All right!"

It was icy and snowing out, and I offerred to take the boy driving a little bit. He immediately said no thanks - it's icy, I want to get home before the BB game, etc etc....... So I told him no one doesn't drive the day they get their license and he was gonna do it. I pulled us into the PHS parking lot behind my house and we switched places. We talked about taking it easy, accelerating and braking slowly, etc. "I know mom." So all excited to be behind the wheel, he turns the key and floors the Matrix on a patch of ice. I hollered out "Stop - brakes!" and he did. Then we started over. He buckled up his seat belt. I got my right hand firmly on the chicken strap and the left hand on the emergency brake. He took off and I tried hard not to shreik and offer some helpful advice like "try to stay on the right hand side of the lane" and "remember to signal all your turns" and "it's icy - if you dont slow down around that turn next time we are going to land in the neighbors pool...." Always the helpful one, Mike drove up in the Yarus (a/k/a "The Yardstick") and commenced spinning all around us doing donuts all over Jim Rockford-style. Yeah, that really did a lot to diffuse the high anxiety level behind the wheel.

Last night, we did our run at the indoor track at the Y. I was kinda hungry when we started, but figured I would suck on my Gatorade and be fine. I was scheduled for some sub 10:30 pace intervals, which I did, and about an hour later, we headed home. I started feeling crappy on the way home and was fully into a bonk feeling by the time I got home. I was still feeling it this morning even after a couple hours at work. I hate it when I do that to myself. It was a good feeling run though. I know sub 10:30 isn't lightning speed for most people, but its pretty quick for me.

Tonight I am off to marshall for Swim. Friday I will spin after work. Saturday I am scheduled for my long run, 14 miles probably on the indoor track. I am dedicated (now) to getting it in. I have blown off my last *5* long runs, a pattern I am trying to dig myself out of. You know how everything you read says skip anything but don't skip that weekly long run? Well yeah I was listening but not so great at following directions I guess. Will I make it an even half dozen this week? Hope not. If I do, I fully expect y'all will give me some shit about it.

BTW: 115 days until the Madison Marathon.

I Hate Conference Day

Nick is good kid, very smart. He does well on his tests and doesn't turn in homework.

Lucas is a diligent student, does what is expected of him, and is a little too social at times.

I spent 2 1/2 hours hearing this today. I knew it before I got out of bed.

Back on the Road Again

Lately I will admit I have felt a little like a slacker. I look at my activity calendar for FitDay and see that there are several weeks where I only did 3 or 4 days of activity, far less than the 5-6 days/week I strive for. I still am striving for 1600-1800 calories a day, but finding the "extra treat" days are coming more frequently. My Google-15 weight average is creeping up a couple pounds too.
So, I made sure to get in a 6 day week for the second week in a row.
Today, I made up for yesterdays off day by hitting it hard. After work I did:
- 35 minutes of power yoga
-45 minutes on the spinner (alternating sprints, stand drills, SLPs)
-30 minutes of strength training at the Y using the Cybex machines
- 1+ hours of SWAT swim practice drill work

I need a focus for the upcoming months, especially the rest of November through Christmas/New Years since it is easy to get off track then with everything that goes on.
I ordered some more yoga and pilates videos from Amazon as well as a couple training books. Lucas is going to teach me some Ab work drills from football.
I will stay on the good eating wagon and get through the season. I will break through my plateau and lose that last 20 pounds. When I get there, I will reward myself with a Plastics consult to talk about trimming of all the hangy skin. (Someday I'll post a pic - it's gross...)

Football Abs reminded me: One day when I was feeling sore last week, Lucas was going to teach me some of the "stretches" they do for football. The first was "inchworm", which really was Cobra Pose. Then he showed me a relaxation stretch- I know it as Childs Pose. He showed me a stretch they call the teepee or something.......... also know in yoga circles as Downward Dog. Funny how they manned up those yoga poses with manly-man names and called them stretches. Struck me funny. It's still YOGA!