After the storm...

After some neglect, my bike got a new chain and sassy bottle cage today...and a bit of a cleaning :)

VIDEO TIME

I just had a good brick workout and figured out when I am officially moving! Let's celebrate with this.

A Taste of Colorado

It has been one interesting weekend plotting out my plans for moving to the great CO.

After many delays, I arrived in Denver at 3:30 am on Thursday. I woke up later in the AM and was so eager to run that I forgot about hydration and food. I headed out and was surprised to not feel the altitude too intensely during the 25 min I was out. It was tough, though I figured more due to not being physically prepared in other ways.

On Saturday, I woke up early in Boulder and head out for about an hour. I did 5 min of warming up on a nice gradual hill. The plan was 8 min repeats and spent my first repetition pushing up a little incline. When it came to the next I found myself facing a huge hill (which I later determined to be 1 mile long), gasping for air, struggling to keep my HR in a normal place. This involved a bit of walking. I noticed a stable 174 bpm as I walked up the hill at a quick pace. Unbelievable. It took a lot of motivation and willingness to compromise my 8-min intervals to finally get through 66 min of slow suffering. I finally met the altitude.

Yesterday I got out for my last run - a 35 min struggle through the slight hills of Colorado Springs. Though everything was a low grade hill, it was still tough to maintain any normal heart rate. I spent all 35 min running until my HR reached 175, then walking down to 150.

I got to stop by a local bike store in Denver where I learned about bike routes, one of which includes a trail that is about 2 min away from one of my potential housing options - SO COOL. I also talked to the guy who worked there about cycling clubs/teams and a time trial series in the area. Yeah, I'm ready.

Today we headed back to Colorado Springs for a quick visit to the USOC training center, which was very cool. I saw some people swimming who I am CONVINCED are triathletes. I was thoroughly impressed by their freestyle stroke. I want someone to teach me! This whole visit got me that much more psyched for the games which start in 3 days!

I really liked this TT art at the USOC training center

Racine 70.3

On a more positive note from my last race, I had the awesome experience last weekend of getting to see three of my teammates kick butt at Racine 70.3.
Here is a narrative in pictures:

Kendyl, Nikhil, & Tyler all geared up before the race!

Nikhil is FLYING, Kendyl is READY

Here comes Nikhil from his AWESOME swim

The Chicago tri club was awesome and lent me some chalk... so naturally this happened

Nikhil is just a happy runner. I wish I looked like this when I ran

Let's go KENDEEERRR. Oh yeah, and I cut my hair off - see? But more importantly, Kendyl starts her half marathon. NBD

Here comes Nikhil finishing up loop 1 of the half marathon in a stellar time

Bought a few finisher presents for Kendyl and Nikhil (couldn't locate Tyler). I was thoroughly impressed by both of them. Naturally, I am now scared out of my mind.

Evergreen Lake Triathlon x2

I owe a race report, though I hate to tell you, it isn't a good one.

I had this goal of 2:45. Then they rerouted the swim and I hammered it...I was convinced I'd PR the swim until I got out and saw my watch was just under 41 min. As a team, we all decided it was long. I'm thinking more like an 1850m than a 1500m.

I think I was aiming for a 72-73 min bike. But after that awful swim, I had some dreams of doing a 70 min bike. That didn't happen. I came in at 73:40, which was still a decent bike split for me, especially with some nice hills. I had a 40-something clydesdale racing along side of me for a lot of the race. At the end he said "Nice riding, let's finish this up" and I left him in my dust :)

I remember this being taken. I made sure to not make a crazy face.

The run I took hard for 3 miles...until my mind got the best of me and I gave in to pain and exhaustion. Ended up walking a lot and gave up on the race.

I can make excuses about lack of hydration and not enough run training... But ultimately it was a bad race that I gave up on. It happens. Ended up placing second in my age group anyway, and the awards were neat.

Now to Denver for the weekend. May the high altitude training begin.

Oh hey heat acclimation

Check out this awesome article from the Washington Post!

Sign and Back

Man, do I have a whole new appreciation for what the tour riders are doing right now.

July 3rd was a rough night. I had a speed workout earlier that day and let me tell you - a track in 95-degree heat is no joke. I was supposed to do 1200m repeats. Did one, then laid on my back to recover. Started #2, got 650m in and walked. HR not coming down. That was horrifying. My friend Zoe, who was doing 800s talked me into running her last two with her. Let me tell you - if it wasn't for that girl a LOT would not have been accomplished this week.

I came home and drank water, didn't feel like eating food so went with a smoothie and gatorade. Still not too great. Sleep was rough and the dehydration was rougher. Though I had planned a Wisconsin ride on the 4th, I was worried about my recovery for the coming day.

But Zoe arrived around 10:30 and we headed out around 11 on our epic 73-mile journey.

The beginning felt great, though hot. We made our first water/ice stop only 10 miles in - mostly in anticipation of not having another option for a while. Perhaps stupidly, that was our only stop for the next 26.84 miles until we got to the sign.

The last 7 miles to the sign were the most difficult. We were hot, tired and thirsty, but determined not to stop until we got there. Various signs teased us along the way, but eventually we made it!

I made it. Second time!!

Zoe is excited! :D

Immediate next stop? Across the street for a 35 minute ice-pop, water, gatorade, chip, and sanity break :) I looked down at my phone and it said "Pleasant Prairie. 101 degrees and Sunny." Awesome.

It was so hot that the ice melted almost instantaneously upon hitting the sidewalk.  

Zoe was impressed by my ability to house ice pops and I was impressed by her will power to sit on the boiling hot ground. We filled up with ice and water and hit the road again. We started on a nice "pedal-pedal-coast" technique, really feeling the miles, even though we had both ridden over 45 miles before, something about the way there had killed us. We were ok with stopping for a picture of the lake just outside of North Chicago.

Soon enough, the water in my aerobottle was at about the temperature at which I would happily eat soup, and the icy water in my insulated Camelback bottle was almost gone. Desperately we walked around a Metra station, hoping for a water fountain. With no luck, I poured the remainder of my aerobottle into my ice, hoping it would at least come down to about 70 degrees. We made a pact to keep an eye out for a water fountain and stop as SOON as we found it. 

By some miracle, a mile down the road in a baseball park, I spied a water fountain and IMMEDIATELY signaled for a left turn. Zoe couldn't believe I found a fountain... clearly I meant business. We lucked out and also got a bathroom break out of it, then back on the road with full bottles and slightly fresher legs.

I felt good as we were nearing home. We hit the 56 mile point and I yelled "HALF IRONMAN DISTANCE DONE!" Knowing we had less than 20 miles left invigorated me on our way back down Sheridan Road. We chatted and zipped a little faster now up and down little hills and around windy roads. Both of us were struggling to find comfortable positions on the bike. I began to appreciate cycling gloves as the heels of my hands started to feel raw. Finally we hit Fort Sheridan for stop #7324 (or 4, or 6... depending on how you look at it). We bought another bag of ice - me: more gatorade, Zoe: apple juice.

My gatorade was the same color as the windshield wiper fluid  - see it on my elbow pad?

This time I only filled my aerobottle with ice in order to avoid the soup-water predicament. Not to mention the heat was sort of melting my straw so it tasted pretty plasticky (is that a word? It is now). Luckily, this worked out, and I sloshed with ice cubes in both bottles the whole way home.

We took it hard from the Fort down to Kennilworth, but with a few miles left the fatigue got the best of us and we eased off to a nice leisurely ride home. Though the heat was against us and though my back "looks like a cookie" (as coined by Brad), it was truly a feat. 

Now to get my legs to stop aching so I can actually swim and run and nonsense like that.