Weekly Run-Down

Swam: 6000m

Rode: 98 miles

Ran: 23 miles

Strength training: 1 hr

Total hours: 13 hr 15 min

Another exciting week in the world of working out. Ok fine, not that exciting. I’m still messing around with my schedule to figure out what the best pattern/routine is. Trying to make it so I always follow up a ride with a run as the next workout in an attempt to get used to running on tired legs. Yes, I know this makes me more prone to injury. No, that does not stop me. I might also be adjusting certain days so I can do more of my strength training with other people. I’m not very creative at coming up with my own strength workouts. Thanks to all of you who write them up so I don’t have to!

I love my current Saturday ritual. It starts with a run downtown with the girls. “The girls” started with only Ashlee and myself but this week we were up to four girls! Woohoo! Had I not been with those girls, I honestly would have quit around mile 6 or maybe when it was time to run over the bridge. But if they could do it (including one who ran 7 faster miles before joining us and one who hadn’t run in weeks), I had to do it so I kept my mouth shut and kept on going. Much easier to silence the “quit” demons when running with other people. You guys are my angels! Now please give me wings so I can fly rest of the way. Post run is the better part. This is the light at the end of the tunnel that makes it so I don’t quit and take a nap in the tunnel. Bread!!! After the run we head to the farmers market for part two of the ritual. Getting bread from this awesome place that mostly focuses around banana but has a large variety of flavors (see newest below). This time I finally caved and also got an iced coffee. We start eating said bread as we leave the market as our post workout meal/reward. It’s a delicious reward!

Today was a gorgeous summer day. Temperature was in the 60s when we started the ride and only low 80s for the day. Today was another new route for me. This time it was the “bakery ride” so wisely named because at the top of the mountain there’s a bakery where riders often stop for a yummy mid-ride snack. Once again, it’s nice to have a reward waiting. Extra motivation to get through all the climbing. It was a very nice ride being in the mountains surrounded by trees (yay shade!). On the ride back we went a different route half way down to add a short but very challenging climb which I was not expecting. Either way that was tough but at that point in the ride my legs were just done. I’m actually better at this climbing thing than I expected though. Today was a new record for elevation gain. After the ride I threw my bike in the truck and went out for a short 2.5 mile run. I fully intended it to be an easy pace run. Mile one…9:10… wait what? That’s awesome! Why am I going so fast? Mile two…9:06… sweet! Not really sure what was going on but for some reason running on very tired legs was making me faster. Perhaps it was because it wasn’t so hot? Whatever the reason, I’ll take it!

Overall, very successful day and weekend and now my legs feel trashed.  At the moment I can’t tell if I feel hungry, full, sick or thirsty. I’ll just keep drinking until I can at least cross two off the list. Another record for me this week: highest weekly hours yet! I know you might be wondering how that many hours doesn’t equal more miles but keep in mind I’m slow. I’m making progress though and for now that’s all the matters.

Food & Fat

As you know (or not if you didn’t read this post), this life change originally started as a way to lose weight. This turned into making two lifestyle changes: the way I ate and actually exercising on a regular basis. Let’s look at these one at a time.

Food: I love food! I mean I reallllly looooove food! I don’t consider myself a picky eater (vegetarianism aside) but I never would have considered myself a healthy eater. Now I did improve significantly from where I was in high school or even college. Freshman year of high school sometimes consisted of a vending machine lunch of coke and splitting a zebra chocolate cake with my friend. I also loved fast food (like most of America). At some point in college I gave up fast food. Now the idea of fast food makes me sick other than Chick-fil-A. I also gave up soda other than the occasional drink at a restaurant or something. Ok, so maybe I wasn’t the worst eater but there was still plenty of room to improve. My biggest weakness has always been dessert. Chocolate! My sweet, sweet love. Chocolate is the single best flavor in the world. Probably followed by peanut butter. Even better, melt the two together. Yes I do this and eat it by the spoonful, judge all you want, it’s delicious. I have it with milk so there’s a healthy aspect. At the time I was already a vegetarian for about 3 years at that point.

Exercise: I already hit on this in an earlier post so I won’t go through those details again. I will say that for the most part I never liked working out. I loved cheerleading and honestly still miss it. Who wouldn’t love being thrown in the air (I was a flyer)? I also love yoga. When I lived in Pennsylvania for a year I did yoga religiously. I would do a few other things while at the gym sometimes but I lived and breathed yoga. Flexibility was the one thing I was always good at (and the only thing I can beat Ashlee in!). I loved the way I felt after yoga and I loved trying new challenging positions. When I got married and moved, yoga somehow fell to the wayside. I had a hard time making it part of my routine and didn’t have an instructor I really liked. Right before the bet started, I was essentially doing zippo.

Whenever I worked out or even ate healthy my focus was always to be thin. I never gave much thought to having a strong body unless it was needed for the workout. I never thought about wanting to look like I had strong, lean muscle.

Let’s fast forward to post bet. After the bet I continued to lose a bit more and bottomed out around 111 lbs, 20 lbs lighter than where I started. Although some (ok a lot) people said I was too skinny, I was so happy with my new body. Everyone has opinions no matter what weight you are but for some reason people think it’s more acceptable to verbalize those opinions when you are thin vs fat. For example, just today I was getting on my bike to head home from downtown and a homelessish looking guy says "You too thin girl, get off that bike, you don't need to lose more weight." Me... crickets. Normally I can muster up a response, a "yea" or at least a nervous laugh but this time, nothin. Unlike most women, I truly like it when people tell me their honest opinion so I would have preferred people told me when I needed to drop a few pounds instead of telling me after the fact (I’m looking at you Bill). So random comment guy, thanks for the comment... noted.

Since last year I’ve put weight back on and am currently floating around 120 lbs. I’d like to drop back down a few lbs but I have to remind myself that some of the weight I gained back was muscle. I have to admit, I love my muscles now. I never would have thought I’d like being muscular. I’m not overly muscular to a gross point but I’m proud of what I have. Some of my family likes to joke and give me a hard time about how I look now but I take it as a compliment. I saw a quote somewhere: Strong is the new skinny. I agree. Of the 10ish lbs I’ve gained back I have no idea how much is fat vs muscle so it’s hard to say what an idle weight is anymore. For some reason I have 115lb in my head but maybe that’s too light based on how much muscle I have and still need to build. Really I just want to lose a few lbs of fat so I can better see my muscles. I know there are good abs under there! Attempting to drop just a few lbs now so we shall see how it goes. Wish me luck!

Training for Training

My first half marathon in February I finished in just over 2:15 (too lazy to look up the exact time). This was slower than my main goal to bet 2:11 (10 min pace) and even short of my backup goal of 2:15. What's frustrating is a did a 13.1 mile run just a few weeks before and did it faster. Not really sure where I went wrong during the race but I'm pretty sure it was mental. Perhaps I'll try my best to do a race report at some point so I have a record of it before I completely forget it.

Round two. Ashlee and I decided to sign up for the Savannah half marathon in November. I randomly decided that I wanted to break 2:00. Why, I don't know but it seemed like a good goal at the time. I've verbalized the goal to people so now I have to stick with it. Now lets so the math. Sub 2 is a 9:09 pace. I did my first half marathon this year about a minute slower. I mean I know I've been improving but am I crazy? 

Turns out Ashlee decided on the same goal. Let's get one thing straight though, Ashlee is a much better runner than me. She did track in college. Although it was pole vaulting, track is still track. She also did her first half marathon this year and got pretty much the exact same time as me. But! she was on a very hilly course and didn't kill herself on sticking with the training plan. Since we both had the same goal, Ashlee found a training plan for breaking 2 hours. 

I have both a problem with the easy run pace and the speed work paces but for very different reasons. Easy run: 10:30? Are you kidding me? Why, I mean just why? I can't seem to comprehend running the majority of your weekly miles at such a slow pace. Not to mention that I seem to be incapable of running at a slow pace. Ashlee would always joke I had two speeds: fast (fast for me) and walk. Speed work: these range a decent amount depending on if its tempo, intervals, etc but no matter what the workout, I really don't think I can do any of them. 

I still have a few months before I officially transfer from triathlon training to half marathon training. That's a few more months to essentially work up to those harder paces. But even with those few months, I'm still very worried so I decided to do a test run (pun intended). One of the workouts was 1 mile warm up, 3 miles at half marathon pace (9:09), 1 mile cool down. 

Mile 1: 10:12 - warm up, this is a good warm up pace right?
Mile 2: 8:59 - ok time to kick it up. wait you're going to fast. nope this isn't going to happen, I'm going to die.
Mile 3:9:54 - this sucks, no way, let's switch to "intervals"! easy mile, go hard next mile
Mile 4:9:34 - ok this still sucks. nope not going to make it. 0.6 miles in... I give up, slowing down
Mile 5:10:03 - you should just quit, why are you even doing this? because how are you going to run 13.1 miles at 9:09 if you cant even finish this half ass workout? no wait, how are you going to run 6.2 miles after you swam and biked for 2 hours?!? fine I'll finish! but I'm going slow!

Fail. Just plain fail. Average pace 9:44. This is the same pace I did my "easy" run two days prior but my average heart rate was 13bpm higher today. Now I will give myself a tiny bit of credit. I was running on tired legs from the previous two days which consisted of a 4 mile run followed by strength/circuit training for an hour on Monday, 3000m swim Tuesday morning and 30 mile ride in the evening. But still, this wasn't fail by a little, this was fail a lot. 

Soooo based on today I'm not feeling any better about half marathon training. In fact I might be feeling a bit worse. I'm thinking I might need to switch Monday easy run and Wednesday speed work run so my legs aren't as tired for the speed work. Of course that's following my long bike day but I still think it will be better. Either way I have a lot of training to do before my half marathon training starts. Training for training....greeeeat.

 

Queen of the Mountain

I started cycling last May for my triathlon training. Before that I can’t remember the last time I was on a bike and even when I was on a bike, it was a slow fun ride. After my two triathlons I stopped cycling immediately which was mid-August. I didn’t really pick it up again until March. Based on that, it should be pretty obvious that I’m a newbie when it comes to cycling.

The main place I ride I can start from my house and be on a road with bike lanes the majority of the time. When I first started I thought those “hills” were difficult. Those were the biggest I experienced last year. This year I expanded the route a bit further which included on hill which is about 0.3 miles at 5-6% grade. This was (and actually still can be) a difficult hill for me. I end up in the lowest gear and my heart rate goes super high. I’m weird about getting out of the saddle so I muscle through it in the saddle. Over time the hill got easier and I knew I needed to try some try climbing.

Enter Paris Mountain. I’d heard about the steep 2 mile climb and to be perfectly honest I was afraid to try it. It’s not like running, when you get tired you just stop and walk. I refuse to get off my bike to walk, that’s just too embarrassing and the idea of taking a break mid hill (or mountain) would be more painful than continuing to mash on.

I actually didn’t know exactly how to get to Paris Mountain so I told a coworker I wanted to try it. A group of us started at my house and off we went to downtown and then to the mountain. One of the riders threw her chain right before we started so we ended up a bit spaced out before starting but agreed to stop at the top. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I turned onto the road to head up the mountain. Right before starting I confirmed 2 miles (I needed to know when the pain would end) but was informed it was 2.2 miles. Damn. I began ahead of everyone by a bit and was convinced I would be passed very early on. To my surprise only one of the two guys passed me maybe half way up and he didn’t end up that far ahead of me. The gap actually grew between me and the two behind me. At the top they asked if that was my first time since everyone had done it before (the guys just the day before). They told me I did a very good job considering it was my first time so yay for that!

I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was fun. It was hard. And slow. My Garmin kept auto pausing because I was going so slow at times. I kept switching my watch between speed/mileage and heart rate. I couldn’t decide which was worse to look at. I knew counting down how much further was a bad idea which is why I tried to stay on heart rate but looking at that high number made me want to stop. But I made it to the top after an 800+ ft elevation gain. And you know what? I’m glad I did it! And I’m ready to do it again. They told me that if I could do that, I should have no problem with the other climbs in the area. Bring it on! The best part of doing the climb…. riding down the other side wheeeee! That mountain officially claims my slowest (3.2mph… don’t judge) and fastest (35.6mph) speeds on a bike. Honestly I could have gone a bit faster but I was afraid. Hopefully next attempt both numbers will be higher. We shall see.

Sunrise 8K (6/13/15)

Sunrise 8K started, surprise surprise, at sunrise. I can’t say I’m used to waking up at 4:45 for a local running race but that’s at least my normal weekday alarm time. However, that doesn’t mean I was happy to wake up that early on a Saturday. My one positive thought was at least we could avoid the heat since it was going to get to mid-90s that day. Wrong! Ok it might not have been super hot yet but it was humid. 

I’m still trying to feel out what my pace should be for different distances. I decided to make my goal time 46 minutes since that was right at my goal pace for my November half marathon. I figured if I couldn’t meet this goal I was royally screwed at any chance of meeting the half goal. Beyond my time goal, a random goal I threw in the mix was to not get passed by someone pushing a stroller. It’s never a good feeling to get passed by someone pushing a stroller. I figured I had that one in the bag because I only saw one stroller.

I met up with Ashlee at the race. We did our slow mile warm up, hit up the bathrooms and got to the start line. Although starting the race together it takes only a few seconds for the distance to grow. I quickly forget about her and settle into my pace. Not too far into the race I saw my extra goal pass by me with the stroller…fail.  Always amazed by the guy running barefoot. Not necessarily amazed in a good way. I just imagine stepping on a very sharp object. I might run barefoot on the beach but the road is a whole different story.

Start of race

First mile, below 9 minutes. Ok… good but not good. Faster than the 9:12 goal pace which is awesome but this might mean I’ll tire out well before 5 miles. Second mile, faster. Third mile, a second faster than mile 2. At this point I’ve run a new 5K PR on an 8K. I’m not going to make it. This is also around the time that the hills start which I was not expecting. Then suddenly, 3.9 miles in I see Ashlee…walking. I had been debating about walking and was trying really hard to silence those thoughts. As soon as I saw her it was all over and I was walking next to her. Luckily a coworker I had passed a bit earlier back came up behind up and literally pushed us. That was the motivation I needed to start running again. But here’s the thing. Once I start walking, I’m done for. I never walk just once. I start to walk more and more often. So that motivated from the push died very fast and I was walking again. In total I walked less than 1/4 mile but it was enough to kill my last mile time and piss me off. That’s worse is I swore I only walked twice but after looking at Garmin, I was wrong. I walked a third time. I was still able to sprint it out the last bit of the race. And by sprint I mean still running slower than the pace of the first wave of people to finish.

Looking like death

Time: 44:21

I beat my goal time. Although I should be happy with that time, I’m not because I could have done better. Instead of running slower I gave up and walked. Three times. I told myself beforehand that I would run the whole race and I didn’t. But I will take this as a lesson and move on. Lesson to self: When you see you are running too fast after the first mile, slow down. Don’t go faster. 

All in all it was a decent race though. I like the idea of running at sunrise despite the temperature seeming like later in the day. Nothing like being saturated in sweat from head to toe. But at least I had an ugly sleeveless race shirt to throw on before getting in the car (doesn’t hurt to have an extra layer to soak through before the towel on the seat). And to end on a positive note, I got a PR! (I’ve never done a 8K before, ssshhh.)

The Start

It all started with a bet. But let’s back up and give a boring background before getting into a dragged on explanation of the last year of my life.

Many triathletes start as swimmers, cyclists or runners. I started out as a couch potato. The only sport I did was cheerleading in high school (yes it’s a sport!). I’d go through phases of trying to get back in shape but it never stuck. During the previous summers I would “run” with friends at a track occasionally. This consisted of me running half a lap (if I was lucky) and walking the other half mixed with some more walking while they lapped me over and over again.

Spring 2014 my husband and I decided to do a weight loss bet. Neither of us was overweight but we wanted to drop a few pounds. The winner was based on who lost the most body fat percentage based on our inaccurate scale. We started right after Easter. I had no plan going into it other than the usual eat better and start exercising. My close friend Ashlee had signed up to do a super sprint triathlon with some other friends. She somehow convinced me that I should sign up for it as a way to help lose weight. Having no knowledge of triathlons, I signed up for the race.

My feelings on running at the time were only negative. I hated running! There was nothing good about it. My biggest issue was always my lungs. Doctors told me I had exercise induced asthma but I’m starting to question that. My heart rate is still much higher than others and my breathing is always more labored but I’m not sure I’d consider asthma as the cause. But who knows, I’m not a doctor. My lungs were always the first thing to hurt. Unlike telling your muscles to shut up and keep going, feeling like you can’t breathe is hard to push through. I really had no background in cycling other than the occasional leisurely ride with my mom. I grew up with a pool and loved the water but never had any formal swim lessons. Nevertheless, I was determined to try my best.

Even today I consider myself slow in comparison to other triathletes but I like to look back on where I started to remind myself how far I’ve come. My first “run” (aka lots of walking) was three loops in my neighborhood. I did 1.65 miles at an 11:22 pace. My first ride was 4.8 miles at 9.93mph. The first several weeks of training were on my husband’s bike from when he was a teenager. My first swim was 400m with a 2:41/100m pace while actually swimming. Despite being painfully slow I stuck to it and was happy to see my pace improve in all areas. I had spreadsheets and graphs to prove I was improving (engineer… I love my spreadsheets). The biggest improvement was when Ashlee’s mom gave me her old road bike. Wow did that help and I’m extremely grateful to her for that.

On top of training, I changed my eating habits. As a vegetarian I wasn’t great about getting enough protein or eating veggies. When the bet started it was like a switch flipped in my head and I was suddenly super healthy. A lot more beans, fruits, veggies and nuts and very little carbs. Looking back on it, I’m not sure how I did it with so little carbs but that’s clearly how I managed to lose on average 1.6 lbs a week. Man do I wish I could flip that switch again but I’ve been back to having eating control issues for months now.

I started the bet at 131.4 lbs, my husband 178.4 lbs. By mid-July we decided to end the bet early based on the results. I lost 17.6 lbs (4.1% BF) and he lost 9.4 lbs (1.9% BF). I crushed him!

This bet began as a way to lose weight but it transformed more than just my body. I discovered a new side of myself that I’m digging deeper and deeper into. Had you told me before this began that I would be considering half Ironman’s, I would have said you were crazy. I have surprised myself in so many ways. I try to remind myself of how far I’ve come because I often forget and focus on the feeling that I’m still slow. Compared to where I started, I’m not slow. I’d be lapping myself now and I’ll only get better.

Three weeks after I did my super sprint, I did another sprint. That led me to sign up for the Disney Princess Half Marathon which I completed in February. As soon as that was over I jumped back into tri training and did my first sprint of the season last month. Next race will be an international distance. I can’t help but wonder, where will I go from there? Who knows, but I’m excited to find out.