2008 Totals

OK, well 2008 started out pretty good, and then kinda fizzled out.

Got in a marathon in early summer which burnt me out on running for quite a while. Then came training for 2 half Irons within a month of each other, as well as a couple of other minor events just for fun.

After that came the IMWI hoopla and excitement. Next thing you know, I am just kinda sailing without a training plan and doing whatever I felt like doing, which ended up being a fat lot of nothing much and piddling around.

by the time December had rolled around and I was feeling a bit more into it, my body quit cooperating. I spent most of the month with a cold, then a cough, then what was some sort of freaky ear issue. The Urgent Care doctor that insisted that the reason I couldn't hear and that my ear was feeling like it was going to explode from pain and pressure was a wax impaction (RANT: um, WRONG! I did not get to be almost 40, an experienced nurse and mother, and a reasonably smart person by not recognizing when I need to flush my ears with peroxide instead of spending $200 have a doctor pressure wash my eardrum with his magic potion of, um....peroxide.....to get some wax out of my ears. The problem was a little bigger than that I think and it ended up resolving on it's own in the following 2 weeks).

So anyway, in a year where I was on track to far exceed the numbers form the year before, I fizzled out into a lackluster finish. **SIGH**

Final numbers:

Swim: 64.51 miles (2008: 32.93) .... 41hrs, 13.53 min

Feeling pretty good about that number. I spent a lot of time in the spring working on swimming when I was having ITB issues to rest it from running.

Run: 431.49 miles (2008: 594.88) .... 106 hrs, 15.27 min

I really lost my motivation to run this year. First injury, then I just couldn't seem to gain the ground back that I wanted to and I struggled. Alot.

Bike: 1750.23 miles (2008: 1885.7).......84hrs, 32.22 min

It got colder earlier this year so I got fewer rides outside and haven't spent nearly as much time as I needed to in the trainer as I should have I guess. I am surprised at this number actually.

Also of note here is the time I spent doing alternative cardio (videos etc), stretching, yoga, and pilates in the early Spring. The time spent there was significant as I tried to heal my IT Band, and then moving forward through the year.

Overall, I suspect the time spent (over 232 hours in 2008, and I can't get the report to run for 2007) is probably about the same from 08 to 09 as a much larger volume of time was spent in the pool, but I am still disappointed overall. Rather than kick myself, it's just time to get moving forward int he new year.

What's next:

*Take off the 35 pounds that crept back on this year (WTF!!!! Where did that come from? )

*Train for IMWI in September. I think this will also show an increase in my total mileage for 2009 as the volumes needed to be successful almost require it.

*Find a few races to do in the meantime that are fun and will keep my motivation going.

*Finsh my training plan and work the plan without finding excuses not to follow it.

Oh Yeah, in case I forgot to mention it today......

253 Days to Ironman Wisconsin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Snowshoeing: part Deux

Well my ACTUAL snowshoes arrived today while I was at work. Mike and I took a turn around the cornfields across the street for an hour checking them out.

Mine are quite cute, much smaller, more difficult to secure, much less flipitty-floppity, in short they are LADIES snowshoes....... you know all dainty and shit just like their owner.

Oh yeah.... and the little "feather" shape of the back of my RedFeather Pace snowshoes is PERFECT for flinging craploads of ice at my back and head. And I mean lots of big ice chunks.

Mike posted my video on his post and you can see the ice flying in action. It's really quite cool except when it pelts me in the back of the head. I would post it myself but it seems pointless to post the same dang thing as he did. So go check it out. It's OK, I'll wait right here.

Done laughing yet? Good.

So the snow went through a major metamorphosis since I took my solo mission in Mike's shoes on Friday. We had a lot of melting so we lost melting, then on top of that we had rain, then a little more snow, then a little more melt. It made the snow really thick, almost plated, and crispy. I think that's why the snow chunks kept flying around me.

I do think I like Mike's snowshoes better, but I will keep my own since that's what I chose! (Anyway, I'm not sure I am comparing apples to apples anyhow since the two trips were on much different snow conditions)

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?